During my recent visit to Karachi, I attended the Sixth International Conference ‘State of the Media 2023’ at Greenwich University . It took me back to the 1990s when I used to teach.
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Rebel with a cause
February 27, 2021
Those of us who believe in scientific reasoning as a core base of analysis in the development of human society and individuals, would not buy the general beliefs about ‘gifted people’. Yet we read about people in human history whose qualities, work, character and role leaves us wondering how they became the people they were.
For the past three weeks, besides mourning his tragic, untimely and unfair death, I have been thinking about who Zainul Abedin was – his conditioning, early influences on his life, the books, ideas, people and movements around him. Despite the fact that I had known him for the past 25 years, I am unable to explain this prodigy that senior editor Talat Aslam described as a “powerhouse of ideas”.
In a country where philosophy is not even taught in most public and private colleges and universities, and where there is a systematic effort by the state and society to wipe out any logical reasoning or rational thought, it is unbearable to lose men such as Kazi Javed and Ashfaq Saleem Mirza.
The sense of loss becomes more acute when we realise that both men used Urdu as their main language of expression. Because of their passing, serious scholarship in Urdu which is already diminishing has met a major tragedy, particularly when it comes to original writing and translations in the discipline of philosophy. There is hardly anyone left who either enjoys the same stature, or would be able to contribute the way Javed and Mirza did by dedicating their lives to harness logical thinking in an intellectual wilderness.