the forgotten treasure.

Today I had my first class on “philosophy, logic and ethics”  Philosophy is one of the things I had been craving to study ever since I came to IBA. I don’t know why people dislike such subjects. Philosophy means “love of wisdom” and how many of us don’t want to be wiser everyday?  To say  I don’t want to study philosophy is to say I don’t want to think and I don’t want to grow mentally.

 So the teacher, Beena Batool,  talked about various things and one of the things was that about language creating barriers in thinking. At first, I didn’t understand but then she said that if we are having any kind of pain in any part of our body, we can only say we have pain but “dunya kee kisi zaban mai yeh nahee batasaktey key dard kaisa horaha hai” This just gave me food for thought.  

If someone tells us that he or she is having pain in his or her head, we can only imagine it. If we see a person who spills hot boiling water on his or her hand, immediately, there is no scar. But what the person goes through is indescribable. We cannot see the pain, we cannot even describe it, yet we know it is there.  That surely means that some of our experiences and ideas are only understood by our minds and our words might play either of the roles: enhance the ability for others to understand the experience better or handicap the ability.

Therefore, to explain any idea, clarity of mind is the most important. Language is just a medium.  We cannot have a clear mind until and unless we have a command over the language we have been brought up in. Because that’s where our roots belong to. That’s why, she said, that all our famous contemporary poets such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz who although have been professors of English but used Urdu poetry when it came to sharing an idea.

And one more example that she gave about Mirza Ghalib was also very enlightening. Once mithai came to Mirza Ghalib from Hindus who had their Diwali. Mirza Ghalib ate the mithai so someone asked how could he eat a mithai since it was from a non muslim. So then he said “ mithai bhee bhala hindu ya musalmaan hotee hai?”  Just to explain how beautifully,  simply and elegantly  Mirza Ghalib explained his idea in his own language.

Not only that, language is extremely important when it comes to knowing our roots. Our ancestors have left us great ideas and wonderful thoughts in the form of Urdu poetry  but it is a sorry state that we are not even aware of it, let alone considering it important.  And due to this distance from our roots, English language has made us slaves because we don’t know who we are and we don’t know what is right and what is wrong.  We do not even know who are true leaders are. For example,  she said that in Matric book, there was a chapter in the book by the name of “Somnath kee fatah” and although it came from a biased writer,  yet there was a dialogue which showed that who we considered our leader was not actually a leader . Of course, had I known about the importance of Urdu and had I studied the dialogue carefully, I would have known that Mahmud of Ghazni, who was being depicted as a leader everywhere is not supposed to be a leader.

Just want to make a point that the teacher was making us think about.  It is only our mother language that can help us understand and form ideas better. Any other language might create a barrier to imparting or understanding the thought.  Also that, our language has preserved our history and our identity, something for which we all are in a crisis.