Allama Iqbal's complaint against Muslims a century ago -

By: Kashif Kamal
A century ago, Hazrat Iqbal said in his poems, “Muslims, you will not receive any benefit from the book, because you read the book and do not understand it.” Iqbal is saying to the Muslims that you are not going to get any benefit from the book because you read the book but you are not able to write another book after reading the book. But this suspicion of Iqbal has become very old by our time, because now the situation is that the people who write books and read books have become rare here. Rather, the fact is that now there are no newspaper and magazine readers among us. The population of our country is about 25 crores, but the total circulation of all the newspapers and magazines published in Pakistan is probably not more than a few lakhs.
As far as the publication of books is concerned, well-known poet and fiction writer Ahmad Nadeem Qasmi narrated a strange incident in a television program twenty-five or thirty years ago. He said that a delegation of Chinese writers came to meet Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, and during the conversation, the question of how many books are published in China was also raised. The head of the Chinese delegation said that no book is published here in less than 50,000 numbers. The head of the Chinese delegation asked Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi how many books are published in Pakistan. According to Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi, he lied to the Chinese delegation for the sake of national honor and said that a book is usually published in the number of 5 thousand. However, the fact was that at that time a book was being published here in the number of 1000. Now the situation is that most of the books are being published in the number of two hundred. If this is the case, there will come a time when the book will be published in the number of 50 just for the purpose of launch. God forbid, maybe after that the time will come when the book will stop being published.
The trend of reading books here is low because 99% of the population of the society does not know the benefits of reading. Along with hunger, poverty, our society is suffering from famine of knowledge. There is only one cure for all these famines and that is study, Study increases human knowledge. One of the superiority of man over angels is also due to his knowledge.
A terrible tragedy of our society is that people whose mother tongue is Urdu do not know Urdu. Those whose mother tongue is Sindhi and Punjabi do not know Sindhi and Punjabi and majority of children studying in English schools do not know English. Experts have defined the criteria of language acquisition as language acquisition to one who can read, understand and enjoy the poetry of his language. Unfortunately, the majority of our students can neither understand nor enjoy the poetry of Mir, Ghalib, Iqbal, Shah Latif and Baba Farid and Bulhe Shah. To solve this problem, the government should establish a few translation centers in different districts or in the center so that we can get an opportunity to understand the thoughts of the writers in our own languages.
Looking at this critical situation, Islamabad Libraries Department has established dozens of public libraries in different sectors and parks for the promotion of book literacy, where ordinary and special citizens can read books of their choice free of charge, but we are not ready to go there. But Why? I think we need to do something more than that, to deal with this momentous issue, we need to organize national level book fairs in various parks and libraries, invite well-known authors to the libraries and teach them about the importance of bibliography. Seminars related to efficiency should be conducted. So that the new generation can contribute to the development of the country by using the book.
But it is a pity that the list of priorities of our politicians and rulers does not include the chapter of awareness in the nation. I wish they knew that the development of the society depends on the promotion of education.