Three-day Sindh Literature Festival at Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi is going on in full swing While speaking in the second day program of the ongoing three-day Sindh Literature Festival in Arts Council of Pakistan, “Tradition of Public Knowledge”, the country’s leading intellectuals said that with the increase in universities in the country, ignorance is also increasing.
Our educational system is such that intellectuals have stopped coming out of the universities. Today, the tradition of public knowledge has ended due to which the society has fallen. In the session, the president of Arts Council Muhammad Ahmad Shah, well-known poet Iftikhar Arif, writer Noor ul huda Shah, Ghazi Salahuddin and Dr. Jafar Ahmed spoke while Hasnain Jamal performed the duties of Moderater.
Iftikhar Arif said that in the past intellectuals guided the people due to which the society moved forward. It is not necessary for a man to be a good historian, he is also a public intellectual. Everyone has his own priorities. Today, as many educational institutions are increasing, so much ignorance is increasing, intellectuals are not coming out of our universities, Ibrahim Joyo has a great role in awakening Sindh, and public knowledge is what awakens the people by its spread.
Muhammad Ahmad Shah said that in the recent past, many people were intellectuals in their own right, where the youth used to learn from them. These were the traditions of public knowledge that were passed down from generation to generation.
Those public intellectuals are extinct or less today, there is a need to revive these traditions to prevent ignorance from the society and to spread knowledge. Our students have to stand up to raise their voices, bring out their inner strength, he said that in our religion we have been given the right to raise questions.
Dr. Jafar Ahmed said that public knowledge demands sacrifice, courage and bravery are needed to speak the truth and call the wrong . It is difficult to get our point across because sometimes the ruling time does not like the process, we have to decide how to get our point across. He said that knowledge is that which awakens the consciousness in the society by its spread, unfortunately, there are not those people who can face resistance in our educational institutions and the people who graduate from educational institutions do not have enough knowledge that they can contribute to the society.
Noor ul Huda Shah said that after the establishment of Pakistan, our intellectuals did not encourage people to connect with the land, due to which even after 75 years we do not know which areas are in Balochistan. If the youth of Sindh is active on public issues and prevents fundamentalism with arguments, people like Rasool Baksh Plaju, Sheikh Ayaz, Gian Chand have given him mental training.
