Sajjad Haider
MIZRAAB- an initiative taken by the students of Kashmir University to accord the students of the Kashmir’s premier educational institution an outlet to articulate their yearnings, desires and intellectual output- is being launched today.
Mizraab, it may be stated here, is being supported by the Kashmir Observer. Our support and even encouragement for Mizraab is premised upon our deep seated belief that the educated youth cohort of Kashmir needs intellectual and even emotional efflorescence. Bottled up intellectual or emotional yearnings can, in our view, lead to conflict within and without. This conflict can stunt and retard the personalities of our young people carrying impact(s) that can leave a shadow throughout the life span of individuals. Moreover, our society and culture, over a period of time have become hostile to intellect and intellectual activity. In combination, the lack of an outlet for young people and the hostility our culture demonstrates to intellectual activity leads to a milieu and environment that renders people-especially the young cohort- clones of what the make up of our society wants them to be. This, to repeat, means stunted and retarded intellect and intellectual capabilities and by extension stunted personalities.
In a globalized and globalizing world, this means a handicap: depleted intellectual capital means that in a competitive world, our youth cohort are structurally unable to compete. This is insofar as the utilitarian aspect of intellectual deprivation is concerned. There are other issues related to this as well. Societies are not merely technocratic and technological agglomerations; a healthy society is a composite of the arts, literature, ideas and repository of culture. These are the vitals of a healthy society. Deprivation along these lines means and implies a poor society- not poor by material yardsticks but by intangible yet real and impactful ones.
As implied and explicitly stated, intellectual and emotional deprivation have both individual components (stunted and dwarfed personalities) and larger social and cultural consequences. Both our social as well as intellectual capital suffers. Mizraab aims to remedy the absence of these in our society by both according an outlet to our young cohort and by developing and cultivating a perspective among our young. While the immediate premise or aim is to accord the young cohort an outlet and rendering them as engaged and intellectually productive denizens, the larger goal embedded in this is to create a template for a healthy and balanced society-intellectually, culturally and socially. It is axiomatic that our youth cohort is the future of our society: upon their young shoulders rests the burden of our societys future and cultural longevity among other things.
The need of the hour then is intellectual stimulation and output and articulation of both in a salubrious and healthy idiom that redounds to the benefit-long term and immediate- of our society. Mizraab is one step in this direction. Let us not only encourage this initiative but make it an indelible part of the lives of your youth. As they say, well begun is half done. A good beginning has been made: it is now incumbent upon all of us to help and take the initiative forward.
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