By Ismat Riaz

JUST adjacent to one of Lahore’s bustling markets is an enclosed garden which hosts a colourful, static bus full of books. This is the Alif Laila Book Bus Library stationed right in the centre of a noisy metropolis offering an escape into wonderland for children of all ages. From Aesop’s fables, Tales from Arabian Nights, Alice in Wonderland, Adventures of Umar Aiyar, Mulla Nasruddin’s misadventures and, more recently, the popular Harry Potter series, the Alif Laila Bus carries them all.

Inside, the bus has been carpeted and an air conditioner put in to facilitate little children to browse through books and their colourful illustrations if time is limited. What a wonderful effort for children to inculcate reading habits and introduce the library culture to them.

Once in a while the Alif Laila Bus leaves its moorings to reach out to children in a different part of town to make the magic of books accessible to those who cannot reach it. Alif Laila Book Bus Society has also perfected the art of story telling as a medium to arouse children’s interest in reading.

Traditionally, bed time stories for children have been a part of every culture and civilisation worldwide. The task of story telling was often the prerogative of the older generation when grandmothers and grandfathers gathered a spell bound audience around them.

Story time was a special treat and children looked forward to hearing one whenever the fancy took them. But, in today’s fast paced existence the time for story telling is becoming more and more restricted.

Nevertheless, fondness for stories is still very much a child’s fantasy and is being replaced by a book reading culture. Publishing houses have special departments for producing children’s books which are also illustrated by well-known artists.

The phenomenal success of the Harry Potter books illustrates the child’s inborn thirst for flights of imaginative fantasy which carries such delight and happiness.

Educational theory explains the utility of catching young minds at the earliest for full development later on. The more a child is exposed to discovering the world around, the more likely its mind will reach its full potential. The developed world has capitalised on this and achieved a plethora of wonderful books and learning aids for children.

It is unfortunate that a civilisation which flourished in the subcontinent and left a legacy of scholarship and books is now bereft of these necessary accomplishments.

Nearly every Mughal scholar had his own personal library at home and in 1641 the library at Agra had 24,000 volumes at a time when books had to be transcribed by hand.

The reading culture and the state of literacy can be gauged by Bostan, Gulistan, Akhlaq-i-Jalali, Akhlaq-i-Nasiri and Anwar-i- Suhaili being widely read in the Mughal Empire. There were 57 universities in and around present day Thatta during Emperor Jehangir’s reign.

The precious and priceless libraries of Delhi and Agra were torched by the British capture of these cities. The British then undertook surveys of the prevalent education system and observations made by Dr G.W. Leitner in 1850 show that the spread of education in Punjab and other areas amounted to 100 per cent literacy in the subcontinent.

On the eve of Partition, Pakistan was left with 10 per cent literacy and India 30 per cent and both countries since then have been struggling to improve their statistics.

While India has managed a concerted drive towards literacy and established and preserved its libraries across its many states, Pakistan’s culture is rapidly losing its reading public because of its low literacy rate.

Although newspapers have a wide circulation in Urdu, reading books for pleasure or research does not seem to be a priority any longer. Schools, colleges and universities do not emphasise enough the use of the library as the cornerstone of literacy and academia.

The stress on textbooks and an examination driven syllabus discourages any desire for reading beyond the stipulated course book. Teachers hardly encourage reading habits in students and lay no foundation at the primary and secondary level for love of books.

The institution of the library was upheld up to the ’80s and ’90s when the Liaquat National Memorial Library in Karachi and the National Library of Pakistan at Islamabad were put up. They hold up to date resources for scholars especially in the Humanities and are accessible to the public.

Otherwise, Pakistanis are dependent on libraries located at the American Consulates or the British Councils for recent literature.

It is a pity that despite the libraries attached to universities in the major cities of Pakistan where they serve students, no other new libraries have come up to be utilised by the public.

However, the Defence Housing Authority in the three major cities has set up libraries in their colonies. It is to be presumed that apart from the habitual reader, the young adults and children living there also cross its threshold.

Mid-90s onwards witnessed a steady decline in reading habits and visiting a library to access a book. Horrific tales of neglect of libraries and priceless books stolen made newspaper headlines ever so often but little was done to rectify or improve their condition.

Except for the Quaid-i-Azam Library which is a fairly recent addition in Lahore and those attached to universities, most of the older or pre-partition libraries suffer from negligence such as the Punjab Public Library established in 1884. Karachi also has four such pre-partition libraries — Frere Market Library, Ghulam Hussain Khaliqdina Hall Library, Liaquat Hall Library and Max Denso Hall and Library. They are valuable archives of the country and must receive attention and care from the country.

University libraries are also entering an era of neglect as teachers are not aware of using reading material as much as possible for analysis and synthesis in written assignments. But, no library is worth its name if it is not frequented by readers and researchers.

The Muslim world has declined in stature and significance basically from a lack of scholarship. Libraries were an integral part of Muslim culture from the 8th century onwards. The accumulation of that knowledge received a setback when the House of Wisdom and its library books were torched by the Mongol general, Hulagu Khan in 1248.

Despite that irreversible key moment in history, Muslim learning ignited the technological revolution in the West where libraries grew and flourished in every small town or large city.

However, in a bid to catch up albeit lately, Muslim countries such as Iran, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey and Egypt realised the importance of producing literature and significantly uplifted and expanded their knowledge base to be at par with the developing countries.

In Pakistan, education has to improve through the medium of a reading culture that entails a solid grounding from childhood. Basarat Kazim realized this thirty-one years ago when she put up the first children’s library in Lahore.

Her persistence with her goal has never faltered and Alif Laila Book Bus Society continues to provide the Book Bus, a Reference Library, mobile story telling and reading material in the form of quality story books for children.

It is now up to the government to acknowledge this non-profit, non-governmental effort and help ply Alif Laila Book Bus Society’s buses in all the towns and cities of Pakistan. Education and the reading of books go hand in hand and as explained by Confucius “If you have two pence to spend, you should spend a penny on bread and a penny on a flower, the bread to make life possible, and the flower to make it worthwhile.”--Dawn