Zamir Ahmad

Once there was a greengrocer who had a parrot; a sweet-voiced green talking parrot. Apart from addressing human beings in a couple of languages it knew, it was also skilled in the song of parrots. In absence of its owner, the parrot would watch over the shop and talk finely to all the customers. The greengrocer was very fond of his bird and prized it as one would prize one’s son. One day, while trying to perch itself on its favourite place, the parrot lost its balance momentarily and spilled a few bottles of rose oil from the shelves. The mishap happened in the absence of the greengrocer. On his return, the grocer, while sitting on his seat discovered that his seat was full of rose oil and his clothes had become greasy. Overcome by rage, he smote the parrot on its head which made the poor parrot bald instantly. The parrot was struck with grief over this maltreatment and refrained altogether from speech. It would sit silent and forlorn for hours, sad and oblivious to the sighs and pleas of its master.
One day a bare-headed dervish, clad in a coarse woollen frock, with a head as hairless as the outside of a bowl, passed by. On seeing the dervish, the parrot, as if out of a trance, began to talk and screeched at the bald dervish, “Hey fellow!? How were you mixed with the bald, O baldpate? Did you, then, spill oil from the bottle?” The bystanders laughed at the parrot’s inference, because it deemed the Dervish to be like itself.
The above story is adapted from a beautiful poem included by Moulana Ruumi in his famous work–The Mathnawi.
Ignorance is many a times considered bliss. But not always. On an individual plane, a person may go scot free with his or her ignorance. He may continue to live in a world of his own, make faulty inferences, be a source of continuous consternation for his fellows and yet carry on with his life. But on the societal level, ignorance is quite an unacceptable trait that can morph the growth of a nation and decelerate its progress. Ill informed societies never make great nations. In this age of information explosion one cannot afford to base his beliefs on mere hearsay. Our nation has not only been deliberately kept ill informed about our issues of greater importance but has also been treated to sustained misinformation so as to alter our cogitative abilities and to render us as naive as the parrot in the fable. Being an emotional people, we get easily involved in heated debates about the political history of our state or its potential as a standalone economic unit. We, though, rarely back our arguments with substantive facts and figures about the history, politics, political turmoil, political economy or natural resources of the state. Only because we don’t have a credible repository of facts and figures that could nurture our collective thought processes. This is a painful situation that needs to be changed and changed soon. Research is the essence of any pursuit. Academic or political. Informed decisions can alter the histories of nations. Or otherwise one can mistake a saintly man who shaved his head to attain humility for a spoiled brat that got punished for his naughtiness!

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