Has The Dog Been Removed?

A respected colleague of mine shared a story the other day. Once a dog fell in a well in a village and died there. After sometime it started stinking and the residents of the village got worried about it. They went to a gentleman for advice and he asked them to remove forty buckets of water in order to purify the well. The well continued to smell bad. The villagers went to a few more gentlemen and they all asked for removing forty buckets of water. Finally they went to someone with (un)commonsense and before advising to remove any amount of water he asked “Kuttaa nikaala?”.








We are the villagers and our wells are stinking because of the plenty of unremoved dogs. The biggest dog is the false ego and arrogance. Our “dogs” are our preconceived notions, our prejudices and biases that we have gathered and nurtured generations after generations. Our “dog” is our communalism and communitarianism. In our case education has done just the opposite of what it was supposed to. It was supposed to make us search more keenly for truth. We become less keen for truth as we go on collecting degrees. It was supposed to make us humbler. We become more arrogant. Education was supposed to remove these “dogs” from our “wells”. It has only thrown many more there. Just the contrary!







It occurs to me that unlearning in our case is much more required than learning. One may ask why I am addressing Muslims. I am doing so only because they are the upholders of the Book (al-Kitaab). They admittedly have the Light with them which others don’t. This is the sole reason. If we leave the collective spirit of this Book behind then there is no difference between Its upholders and the rest. We don’t know what the Book asks us to do because we are lost in details. We are not able to figure it out because we are not willing to see the whole picture.







Let us make a new beginning. Let us realize that ego and truth cannot co-exist. It is only one or the other. Let us listen more patiently to a different voice. Even more keenly. Let us be all ears to a different viewpoint. Let us ask more questions to ourselves and to others. Let our educational institutions aim at bringing a 360º change in our children – removing all the “dogs”. A student told me that a 360º change is like coming back to the same point where we started from. So where is the change, then? This was a beautiful question. Tried to explain to her that the Benefactor of Humanity (pbuh) went back to himself. He became the same as he was when he was born – on the ‘religion of nature’. This is 360º. When a baby is born he has no “dogs” in his “well”. Then we flood him with ours – by all means possible.







Let us celebrate 17 October by refocusing on critical and scientific thinking – the second stage of the Aligarh Movement. Let us seek alignment of all our Institutions with the VISION and see the connectedness of things. It will remove all the “dogs” of incoherence and disjointedness of our thought patterns. It will give us the much desired (un)commonsense and will enable us to ask more pertinent questions.


By: Dr. Waseem Ahmed Malik