Presently, certain books by some unqualified authors are under discourse. Diametrically two different approaches are associated with them but there exists a unique consensus that such books are the paid books by the sponsors. However, one incontestable fact is forgotten in the discourse that paid and projected ideas form integral part of our national history since three decades. We are in acute shortage of genuine minds, who being disgruntled have disappeared from the motherland, leaving behind the shrewd and clever minds who see no sin or crime to sell ideas or even national loyalty and human prestige for money. Whenever such a deploring situation emerges with full vigor and force, a severe challenge of collective survival appears evidently. So, the real problems are not the books under scrutiny but the circumstances by which they first get written and then print. It is, indeed, a precarious condition qualifying for immediate appropriate resolution which is hidden in paradigm shift in customary policies and strategies.

Departing from conventional discourse on so-called two books, it looks quit essential to evaluate their significance in a long span of time and age wherein a period of one thousand year, as Toynbee says, of a nation carries no value whatsoever. In this perspective, the total age of the two books, one in the market and another is to be made available, is only 60thieth million part of a second which simply means that they have no value at all. Even in the world of political gimmicks during every forthcoming general elections particularly in the capitalist democracies, the pamphlets, brochures, the books and campaign materials are forgotten at the moment the first result of any constituency is announced. When a nation becomes the chronic patient of bubonic plague of victory, all and sundry lose sanity, rational and self-control, causing wide-spread and deep-rooted emotionalism which is ultimately injurious to the positive growth of civil society. Elections come and go but psychological impact of falsehood, the sapling of which sprouted through propaganda, continues to flourish. When the crop is ready for harvest, the reaper is humanity, sadly, and when humanity is murdered by men themselves, then Genghis Khan and Napoleon Bonaparte surface as a wild wind to decide the fate of the multitudes having no better mental strength than the animal hordes in thrill and wantonness.

With such a devastating weakness dominating everyone in society, no nation state can escape destruction, as one of admitted principle of history tells, clearly and loudly. For, cardinal responsibility on the shoulders of a state is to produce, prepare, help and develop individuals with a mental capacity to behave wisely and nicely whenever time comes to take decision, resolve problem and challenge. At this crucial juncture of national life, the books written a long ago but neglected by the powerful minority played pivotal role in the paradigm shift. At this moment thousands of books, having volumes after volumes are thrown in the dustbin of time and age because these are not books but fallacies and wrong perception. Subsequently, the genuine books, surely far less than rubbish ones, are taken with respect and honour for study and guidance. The total numbers of the books by genius authors are not more two hundred since the antiquity onward to today that literally changed the world. The real books’ authors were burnt alive, they were murdered, or they were forced to kill themselves. The same happened with their books, they were burnt and buried many times but they born with revitalized energy after every death. They enjoyed many lives with new prestige and honour. Immortal and reverend eternally; thus the authors, thus the books.

Among a few others in Greco world of drama, art, philosophy, science and mathematics, Euripides is privileged to have a title of one and only dramatist “all the nations of the world have produced”, Goethe says. According to Plutarch the Athenians faced “a living death” during attack on Syracuse in 415 BC. They were made enchained slaves in Italy. Life and liberty were offered only to those who could recite the verses of Euripides who had told his brave country men that “they are barbarian in war and their enemies are the heroes in defeat”. Athenians humiliated, disgraced Euripides and forced him to kill himself, but the liberals, humanitarians, feminists and peace lovers followed and praised Euripides during eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as if he was the great brain of their own age. Here comes a man of immense genius and insight in the form of Copernicus who got education in the conservative church who made an “elan” that earth is not the center of the universe. He was ignored for more than a century then came Galileo who made yet another “elan” that Roman Catholic Church was wrong and Copernicus right. Both the genius men were primarily clergy men and each of them demolished the two thousand years old false world of Aristotle and Ptolemy wherein the earth was the center of the universe. Copernicus’ book was published in the year when the author died but Galileo’s book came in the market much earlier to his tragic death. After these two men of great genius comes Newton whose scientific discoveries were ignored at least for two hundred years when he was recovered during the last years of the World War-II.

If we go nearly two thousand five hundred years back in the Chinese civilization we see such kind of treatment with the ideas and philosophy of the Great Master Laozi who wrote a book on “The way and Virtue” which means in Urdu:” Husan-e-Sulk awr Naiki”, and of Confucius whose ideas about national and universal life were the same, for his great ideas were preserved again and again by his followers and buried by his adversaries. During the reign of Chinese emperor Shi Huangi in the third century BC all books on philosophy were burnt and the philosophers executed. Even then, Shi’s fire and gallows failed to kill the great books by great minds of China. These were the books history has preserved forever and the rest have been proved to be frivolous and stinky vomiting of indigestive human mind and body, only despoiling a good taste of history. Still, there exists another bitter truth that even then the books of bad taste possess syndromes affect emotional minds that are, of course, in majority produced by the reckless authors who have been writing the script for national policy and strategy. If the elections 2018 are won and lost on the basis of these books, it would be nothing new but another fallout of misled state and society, demanding change in paradigm shift in our collective approach. More shocking dilemma the nation is suffering from is that our nation is surviving under and enduring too the failed education, despite our false claim that we are the great nation.

Among the five hundred universities on the globe, there is not a single university of ours is to be mentioned in the long list. The so-called great nation has not produced sufficient men of letters whose books form part of the text books of any important educational institution in the west. Instead, our children are taught the books by the foreigners particularly on social sciences. In the state of 230 million souls, we merely find an economist the book by whom is regard as a world class creation for other nations. The reasons behind this depressing scenario is that our libraries, book shops and reading places are full of the books written by the authors who are the victim of their subjective approach, arrogance and fragile ego. Either they promote indoctrination or mislead the readers for ulterior motives. Can we prepare the nation under this condition to accurately response the challenges by our powerful adversaries?

The writer is Ex-Director General Senate of Pakistan.

Trusthem@gmail.com