Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

Mainstream leaders are in a strange predicament; they have stakes with both the sides and they clap for both of them. Philosophy, art and religion all have taught us the importance of the metaphor and reality of play or game and all second Shakespearean view of life as a stage and our role as actors. Art is in fact premised on seeing life as play. The world is God’s play ( lila ) and the best answer given by traditions to the question why God created the world is that it is free activity (play) of  the Divine. All things have to be done artistically, with an eye on beauty or perfection ( ihsan ) and that is all we are called for Sports have been our prized activity, akin to artistic and religious activity and its ultimate rationale/end is spiritual or celebrating the glory and freedom of Spirit which has been likened to a child. Worship involving rituals also plays on the elements of repetition, self forgetfulness through rapt attention on activity and attuning wi...

How many houses need to be burnt in order to force Fire Service Department to rush its extinguishing machinery? How many cries from how many rooftops from stranded people in flood will be needed to have rescue operation in action?       These analogies apply to education where we see all burning or stinking on ground and people resigned to leave houses burning or flooded and move on to beg for other spaces. None asks why not reclaim our lost territory.  If Naem Akhter attempts this task and succeeds that would be history. He has to embark on the task if he is true to his stated goal of making govt. schools attractive. “Akhteization of education” faces a crucial test. The public will screen its sophisticated logic and moralistic tone through this test. Naem Akhter is on trial. Will he muster courage to take note of countless dreams, cries and sighs of children and their parents denied right to free quality education? Or should we expect suo motto action ...

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...

Reading Political theory on Ethics and Bureaucracy Bertrand Russell has a collection of essays called Unpopular Essays. Today I am not commenting on it but attempting to write an unpopular essay. Though often reminded of Mark Twain who when asked to comment on heaven and hell said, “No comments. I have friends on either side”, I wish to express suspicions/questions that have haunted me and compelled me not to pray for success to anyone who requests when administrative exams are on. I try to pray instead with Iqbal: Meri dua hae ki teri aarzu badal jayae (I pray that your wish changes). These questions include: •Generally speaking, masses have felt alienated from bureaucrats and great social thinkers from Marx to Max Weber to Foucault have explained why this alienation is a product of the very system. Modern democracies are controlled by the interests of the Capital or are instruments in the hands of an elite class that has ascended in social hierarchy by a system that ultimately r...

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...

Questions for State Women’s Commission We have one of the most violent societies with respect to women. All of us know cases of violence against women. All of us are responsible in some measure. Have we participated in any movement that targets this issue? Aren’t we violent in our own homes? Do we recognize her rights, her right to be herself, her right to choose modest way of dressing, her right to pursue education and travel to fulfil her dreams, and many more such rights? To put my case clearly let me state some of the lesser known points for consideration of the State, State’s women commission, NGOs, religious authorities who can make the difference. Islamic law doesn’t oblige daughters-in-law to: ·         Do domestic chores in husband’s family. ·         Accept any dictation regarding preparation of meals, washing of clothes from either husband or mother in law or any member of h...

“Each of us is guilty before everyone for everyone, and I more than the others,” writes Dostoevsky in  The Brothers Karamazov . This statement expresses the quintessence of traditional ethics as developed by mystics and in modern times by Dostovesky and Levinas. Sufi ethics is an elaboration of this theme. This great idea of answerability or responsibility is a response to Ivan, the famous character in the same novel who says: “If there is no God, all is permitted.” In Kashmir we behave as if there is no God and all is permitted and none is guilty. Let us analyze the question of responsibility in the particular case of scenario of water bodies in Kashmir. Our water bodies are fast becoming history. Most of the springs are gone. The Dal is politicized to death. Anchaar story is getting repeated in the Wular as it is dying a silent spectacular death. Glaciers are melting. Pure water in streams or rivers is becoming a fiction. We have to pay for water bottle and business of water pu...

Mulla Nasruddin is said to have accidentally hit someone on the road and he fell. He was abused and called names like mad Mulla. He coolly said “Yes I am mad” and the argument ended there and then. Onus often lies on us. Or at least assume it lies on us and we will see things in a different light. Perhaps we will have conscience to prick if we are not totally given to blame mode. There is a sentence by Dostovesky’s character  that may be phrased as ‘I am responsible for any crime that happens anywhere’ that should be enough to lead us to blame ourselves rather than the other. Jesus’ “Judge not” also implies the same thing. Levinas’s view of self-other relationship in which we have infinite responsibility towards the other as the other is ultimately none other than God also implies the same attitude. Most of the troubles in the world can be traced to assertion of will or ego and Islam demands nothing but its surrender. Getting angry when abused or humiliated is, at root nothing ...

In the light of Ancient Futures by Helena Norberg-Hodge Tourism can be a scandal. It can lead to destruction of not only land but cultures and sacred traditions It can ultimately create, rather than cure unemployment. It can, especially when unregulated, open up Pandora's box that are not foreseen by planners. This is one of many other important theses of the greatest book written on Ladakh ( Is it not ironic that one of our tourism ministers has been from Ladakh in the past? The sordid side of tourism – in the name of development we can turn sanctuaries of spirit into deserts where even devils would not dare to tread – is not kept in consideration.) The book, that every Kashmiri who is concerned with development discourse, tourism and identity of pir-waer should read, argues quite lucidly and brilliantly many theses that almost all of us would intuitively consent to. . It also argues the importance of Ladakh culture for the world that has severed ties with tradition.  Fir...

It is not usually recognized that Islamic spirit is utterly incompatible with present day consumerist culture sponsored by free market capitalist economy. It is not a serious matter of debate in theorists of Islamic banking what to finance and why to finance. Any financing enterprise that calls itself Islamic must make very clear its often undefined policy regarding extent of compatibility between Islam and the very question of business, manufacturing commodities as dictated by market demand fulfilling often unethical desires of people, warrantability of current currency models that use fiat money and assume dollar’s sovereignty, artificial or manipulated inflationary pressures and the very question of market in a unipoloar world manipulated by big bosses. The question is how ethical or Islamic is capitalism sponsored modern individualism that fuels demand for separate houses even at the cost of agricultural or other productive enterprises, need of private transport at huge environmen...

There is neither any knowledge divorced from power relations, nor possibility of either peace or sustainable development in a unipolar world may not be governed by the immoral ecocidal logic of corporate globalization. There is piling information overload and lack of real discernment or knowledge in the age aptly called the Age of Information. The age valorizes surfaces and has little use for depths, essences, reality behind appearances and truth behind illusions. Postmodernism is content with illusions and is committed to the “ontology of singular events.” Knowledge of reality is denied to most people in an age that puts onus on utilitarian or pragmatic consideration and maintains subtle control on media. The true story of exploiting financial structures, of neocolonialist banking masquerading as aids/loans, of dissolution of gold standard, of inflation, of recessions, of remote controlled speculative businesses of markets especially stock markets, imposed myths of national interest...