How we treat our past often says a great deal about our present, and this perhaps is particularly

true when it comes to books and the treasures they hold. Our failure to respect the idea of knowledge explains our decay; it should also raise questions about what kind of nation we have become and whether we can do anything to redeem ourselves by rescuing archives we are simply allowing to rot away and fall apart page by page. The latest account of this comes from the mammoth, five-storey library at the Karachi University, set up in 1976, and named after the first vice-chancellor of the institution, Dr Mahmud Hussain. That learned gentleman would, no doubt, have been appalled to see the condition of the building today: the premises themselves are falling to pieces, vandals have on more than one occasion stolen away equipment and worst of all the 400,000 books and 150,000 newspapers are poorly maintained, some newspapers lying on floors and in danger of falling apart. Among these ruins lies the personal book collection of the Quaid-e-Azam. This is not the only account of harsh neglect. According to media reports, a former top bureaucrat in Punjab had the immensely valuable archives belonging to the civil services unceremoniously carted away and dumped in a stable. These documents include a letter written by Mirza Ghalib, and records of the Bhagat Singh case. The other huge collection of archival material from the Subcontinent is meticulously preserved in museums and libraries in London, accessible to the public. That is a sad reflection of what we have turned into an apathetic nation that has no sense of what care and love knowledge and the written word require. With scores of libraries closed down over the decades, we ourselves clearly lack the will or acumen to keep such irreplaceable material safe with the story of the KUs once majestic library serving as the latest reminder of this fact.

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