The right to think

The state of higher learning in the country and our failure to produce excellence, creativity or high levels of research has come under discussion many times. Everywhere in the world, universities, their students and often their faculty create forward momentum in society, generating new ideas and taking them forward. By stifling students and restricting independent thinking at campuses, we have suppressed this process. The oppression of students, the denial to them of the right to know, of free expression and the right to association – all basic liberties written into our constitution – assumed especially dangerous dimensions in the 1980s, under the Ziaul Haq dictatorship. The trend has continued with the JI as well as other groups acting to prevent functions from being held or talks delivered on themes that range from literature to aspects of science.
Most recently, the administration of Karachi University attempted to prevent a seminar from being held on the issue of the missing persons of Balochistan on Wednesday by locking the doors of the Arts Auditorium, the venue of the gathering. The talk was eventually delivered outside the hall. A similar seminar had been called off at LUMS in Lahore a few weeks earlier. To a large extent, the precise content of such seminars is irrelevant. What is important is that like their peers elsewhere in the world, our students too gain an opportunity to hear opinions and views of various kinds. They need to know all aspects of the injustices that are perceived to have been perpetuated by the state. They can choose what they wish to believe. By suppressing dissent and debate, our universities and colleges become little more than degree-churning factories. The sort of suppression we see today has to stop. It can only cause further damage to an already crippled society which is being denied even the air it needs to breathe.