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Friday April 19, 2024

Living just life like oil lamp

Have we ever thought seriously how many of our total population of about 180 million, including Rawalpindi and Islamabad, are deprived of primary and middle level education, or have not yet availed themselves of facilities available in that regard? The number of almost illiterate and little educated people is stated

By Zafar Alam Sarwar
February 24, 2015
Have we ever thought seriously how many of our total population of about 180 million, including Rawalpindi and Islamabad, are deprived of primary and middle level education, or have not yet availed themselves of facilities available in that regard? The number of almost illiterate and little educated people is stated to be between 110 and 120 million.
There should, therefore, be no surprise if we daily come across such young men and women who do not know anything about the father of the nation; and when they’re told how Pakistan came into being and who he worked hard for its achievement, they at once say he was ‘a great man’.
When such people without necessary school education are told something righteously about the Khulafa-e-Rashideen (RA) they happily say they all were ‘very great men’; and when they’re told many things about the Prophet (peace be upon him), they proudly say he was our ‘greatest leader’ who liberated the poor and the oppressed from tyranny and slavery.
Today’s poor, illiterate and uneducated ordinary citizens, who come to Islamabad and Rawalpindi, or go to even Karachi, from other towns and villages, for domestic and commercial jobs, ask their employers kind to them: “what did those great men do and how did they complete their task when there was no electricity? Did they’ve lot of money to buy fruit, vegetable and mutton?” Many more questions come out of their mind after they come to know A, B and C of basic knowledge.
One fails to understand why the number of such down-trodden people is increasing unexpectedly when in this age of democracy we’re trying to overcome the social and economic problems of all the people — middle, lower middle and poor. Perhaps, the spirit of rights and duties, fellow feeling and brotherhood, lawfulness, honesty and selflessness etc. has yet to come back to villages, towns and cities. Food and energy, one may say plainly, will easily come down to the ordinary man if that lost spirit returns to us.
By the way one is reminded of a very significant saying of a successor of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), and that is: Live a life of justice like the oil lamp which provides to the palace of a king as much light as to the hut of a poor man.
zasarwar@hotmail.com