Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Fraudulent Practices in Modern Medicine Those who care to think raise some uncomfortable questions and teach us to doubt. With one such doubting doctor who is also called poor man’s doctor, we deconstruct some reigning ideas in modern medical practice. In fact we can easily show that there have been some errors, even scandals, in modern history  that resulted in a dominance of modern allopathic system of medicine.        Dr B M Hegde, despite being criticized for right wing sympathies and some unsupported generalizations and  certain inconsistencies nevertheless emerges as one of the very few scientist-philosophers of modern India who needs to be widely read and debated. Passionate, informed, brilliant, witty, iconoclastic, provocative and lucid, Dr Hegde is a renowned cardiologist trained in allopathic system who has exposed, along with certain lesser known but significant scientists, fraudulent or somehow problematic nature of certain medic...

John Derrida is considered one of the chief architects of postmodernist worldview. We are living, willy-nilly, in the postmodern age. And one of the chief characteristics of this is incredulity toward ideologies, especially those ideologies that make big claims. Deconstruction that Derrida advocated consists in taking nothing on face value, in noticing the gaps and absences and contradictions in the terms in which an argument or claim is made. It teaches us valuing difference and suspecting totalitarianism, fundamentalism and all such discourses that speak in the name of God/Truth/Future/Utopia/ Justice. Derrida said that Justice can never be done in absolute terms and all one can do is to approximate it and ruthlessly questions all judgments, all claims of justice from authorities. Deconstruction deconstructs all constructions imposed on people through sheer power or force or propaganda. We need the language, if not the methodology, of deconstruction to present truth to power, to sh...

There is a village in Azad Kashmir that has so far not recorded a single case of cancer. This is attributed to organic food locally produced. Few decades ago the similar story was of this part of Kashmir. Where have we gone wrong? Today we lament Green Revolution, we think agriculture is no longer worth investment, we find massive unemployment of farmers. All this implies catastrophe for a population that heavily relied on agriculture for livelihood. Let us understand how we destroyed our traditional basis for livelihoods and replaced it with something that is elusive and deceiving. And we end up with hardly anything worth having at such a huge cost. I illustrate the case by turning to Ladakh that has been very recently modernized and can be seen as almost a contemporary case for anyone to see. I simply reproduce few passages from a book  Ancient  Futures  written on modernization of Ladakh by internationally acclaimed scholar Helena Norberg-Hodge that traces ...

Today almost all of us are skeptical about the possibility of K resolution in near future? Why? Because we at least unconsciously do understand that the forces that want conflicts are stronger. That neither India nor Pakistan nor Kashmiris are really free to solve the issue. Let us try to understand the point and many related questions that we need to handle for the purpose. Kashmir is more an economic than a political issue. There are no political issues which don’t involve mostly economic privileges. Once upon a time many people believed it is a religious issue. Later even the hardliners in religion came to understand that it should be approached as a political issue. But political issues are not very difficult to resolve. More than six decades and three wars would not be needed if it was a mere political issue that a farseeing or smart pacifist prime minister at the Centre could resolve.  Tossed among contending Stakeholders such as US, China, Pakistan, India and Capitalist fo...

Kashmir is assumed to be a  pir-waer  and its implies values will count in every sphere. Here belief in God is shared by almost everyone. Here is a legacy of four religions and great literature all centred on values. What happens if we practically delink values from our lives is nothing short of death of soul if not of body as well in the long run. This death is what is imminent today in Kashmir and I think we have no moral right to call ourselves sons of the soil, the soil where shrines are on every nook and corner and saints used to rule the hearts and the minds. We were a  pir-waer  and are fast losing this identity if we don’t care to take values seriously. I take the example of economy delinked from values to state my case. Three quotes to give an idea regarding what happens in a value centering culture with regarding to economics. Abu Yazid Bistami was asked what is the fatwa regarding how much money should one possess to be eligible for  zakaat and p...

Questions that our posterity will ask Posterity and in fact the current generation will ask us few difficult questions. As parents I don’t think we have any answers. A few questions and issues they will raise I discuss today. What we have made of Human Resource Management in Kashmir? Once it was not a big problem. Take the case of log winters, handicrafts and extensive local manufacturing of important woolen, matting and other commodities in most houses. Neither women nor the elderly people were jobless. Today even our youth are unemployed. And most of the jobs are in sectors that are not really productive or contributing in real sense to solving local problems. Previously it was almost all green. Just take the example of constructing house. A few decades back it cost almost nothing. Only certain patience. In the first year bricks were prepared. In the next year other requirements were gradually completed. Then labour was mostly either free or community based. Hardly anyone was hir...

Marriages can be made simpler. Nothing is easier than this. Just one step to be taken and that can be taken so easily. A step which will not invite narazgi of any particular person, friend or relative. A step that eliminates all customs which are morally, religiously, socially and economically unwholesome. A step which everyone can take, even the weak willed. We take much harsher steps   when it comes to our small interests. We can take a quarrel with the whole village to safeguard the merit of a candidate for this or that post, say RT post. A small step that many have taken and many take. It is the decision to invite none of our relatives or friends to our marriages, a decision not to make a party out of simple issue of transporting a girl from one home to another. We can even go in homely clothes or ask the parents of the bride to drop her at groom’s home as was the tradition of our forefathers, our aslaf . Guest control, control on variety of dishes and many other extravaganza...