Which was sent to us by Yusuf Ghori from Lahore for the interest of the readers
I am a university professor. I have retired on completion of my tenure.
I was happily fired because what I wanted to teach, I was not allowed to teach. The mediocre professor looked at me suspiciously. Out of jealousy and envy, the professor used to conspire against me by using incompetent students. I watched everyone silently.
Invitations to participate in conferences from foreign universities and countries kept disappearing. During the martial law regimes, pamphlets were issued against teachers like me. Those who took all kinds of promotions on the strength of flattery continued to receive the Best Teacher award. Instead of teaching, he continued to do the personal work of the vice-chancellors. In the name of research, straw-filled papers were kept hidden for advancements. They continued to provide moral justification to undemocratic governments with great success. Those who chanted the word of truth in front of the oppressive Sultan kept licking the shoes of the oppressive Sultans. I watched all this. And I was forced to teach the structured books he made. In the culture of universities, knowledge, and transparency were replaced by bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and conspiracies. We continue to consider it our success to create the ears of the blind.
What I wanted to teach, I could not teach and what I did not want to teach, I was forced to teach.
Today I want to confess that the disciples I have produced have become doctors, engineers, bankers, and teachers. But there was a spark left in them. I guess that from time to time. When I was in the hospital for six days for treatment of my injuries, I was shocked to see the bill of six lakhs. One of my students said in my ear, “Sir, you have to give it to me that this is possible in what you taught us.”
Then when I entered for angiography, my student doctor said in my ear, “Sir, if you want to get government treatment, it will come after two years and if you get treatment out of pocket, it will come in ten minutes.” He looked at him and said, “That is all that can happen in what you have taught.”
One day he went to the secretariat for some work. Sent the name slip to the secretary, but he did not call. I sat dumbfounded. When I left to go to a meeting, I came forward. I told the work. He said, “Sir, this work is not possible.” It has taken us a long time to forget what you taught us. I forgot all that with great difficulty and reached this place. I can’t do anything.
One day my house did not have electricity for several hours, so I went to the SDO and he looked at me and said. “Sir, whatever you taught us, this is the electricity you are getting.” This should not be found either.
Today, I realize that I have contributed to the generation of the lovely lame, and sad.
How narrow-mindedness and bigotry made their way into the literate. Then how extremism managed to gain credibility in our society. How big columnists, political leaders, intellectuals, and bureaucrats justified extremists and terrorists. When a suicide bomber blindfolds his heart, mind, and eye, I hold myself responsible. When innocent minorities and Muslims are blown up in places of worship after graduating from universities, I have a part in it too.
Today I confess what I should have taught. I wanted to teach that Allah loves beauty. What is aesthetics? What is his philosophy? There were many books on the philosophy of aesthetics. We did not turn to them. Without understanding aesthetics, we cannot be in a position to say, Subhan Allah. No one taught me how to appreciate beauty. All the fine arts debates come into it. I wanted to make geography compulsory because the ladder to understanding Allah is geography. Its lands, its seasons, its forests, its rivers, its seas, and then the life in the seas, the life in the forests. The bird is stupid. Their generations. I wanted to study their habits. Wanted to dispel the negative stereotypes associated with animals. We did not do this, others did it. There is no better university than the National Geographic Channel.
I wanted to teach when our history begins. I wanted to teach human history. I was made to teach kidnapped Pakistani history. Historians who read qasidas of cruel kings laid the crooked brick on which the Zia-ul-Haqs ticked the slave circles of the edifice that was built. At the execution fair of Pappu’s killers, the sellers of pithore and golgappe earned silver and the process of numbing the human beings began. I wanted to point out the history distorters. I was prevented from doing so. Some people cheated the idea of Pakistan from the whole nation. And then marketed it at length. Which continues till now. I wanted to tell the students who these people were, who came out of the corners like insects. More than that, Quaid-e-Azam wanted to introduce thuggish dwarfs and thugs to the students. I was stopped. I wanted to teach the students how Ayub Khan became a field marshal and how his advisers set the prices for buying literature and writers. How he martyred Hasan Nasir in the Shahi Fort. How to use tactics to keep intellectuals, politicians, and conscientious people awake all night.
