Dr Muhammad Maroof Shah

What shall man be doing after 10,000 years from now? Scientists tell us that we shall always have tasks ahead and will not be bored. Science, in Kant’s famous words, is organized knowledge. Kant defined wisdom as organized life. Science is man’s great effort to know himself and the world better at many levels with or without concomitant increase in power or solving this or that problem. It has been part of comprehensive education from the earliest times. Modern science did succumb to certain Promethean and Faustian ambitions and thanks to its wedding with power or technology it has been a mixed blessing and a danger against which most of great thinkers, artists and poets have warned. In its wake many treasured traditional sciences have been a casualty and its myopia and hubris have been factors in the crisis of modern civilization. What we are concerned with today is not this scientism but science in the more general and universal sense that has been part of treasured intellectual a

Attempting to formulate what unites and grounds world religions and allow genuine inter-religious dialogue. Isn’t it sad and embarrassing to note that while political states, “though different in culture and competing with one another,” maintain diplomatic relations and strive for coexistence. Only religions are not on speaking terms.” The core problem that hurts their relationship is the blasphemy expressed thus: “I alone have all the truth and the grace, and all those who differ live in darkness, and are abandoned by the grace of God.”       Despite the enduring perception that religions “disagree profoundly and are in opposition to one another on matters of doctrine” it seems possible that we can express the common statement of all delegates to an imagined international conference in the idiom of every major religion. All we need is to take the best interpreters of world religions who understand language of all or at least some religions and seek to express the same in terms of th

Ancient, Medieval and Modern Kashmir; Insights and Problems in P. K. Nehru’s Satisar to Kashmir. Pandits are homeless in more senses than one. What is especially ignored is chosen homelessness or self exile to barren landscapes where the richness of imagination and culture one owned is disowned. Exploring one’s history, myths and literature constitute vital means to live and refuse annihilation. P.K.Nehru has done such an exploration in Satisar to Kashmir and invites Pandits to their lost selves.       The author seems to take partly historical works rather uncritically as works of history. We know Nilmat Purana is not primarily a work of history in the sense we now understand the term. And even Rajatarangini too makes us pause and requires us sift poetry from history in various places. Just an example: In Rajatarangini , Lolar, now a small part of Kupwara district, is said to be the place where 840000 buildings were constructed.       There is a wealth of scholarship in the first