'Books' Our Intellectual Wealth.

There was a time some five hundred years back when books, as we know them today, did not exist, and when there were few people who could read things written on stuff that certainly was not paper. At that time our ancestors used rocks, pillars and parchment with a view to recording and perpetuating their most important thoughts and achievements in the language they then understood. Now-a-days the book producing machinery gives to the work of every great scientific thinker, poet or philosopher the character of permanence, reproduces in attractive forms old and rare manuscripts and caters to the differing tastes of millions of people for whom book-reading is an extremely pleasant, intellectual exercise. Moreover, the high percentage of literacy, the growth of libraries in towns and villages and the tendency of intellectuals to have their own private collection of useful books, have given birth to a number of big publishing houses with branches in many parts of the world and publications numbering thousands.

We owe much to the man who first conceived the idea of the printing press and gave birth to a process of preserving on paper the ever- accumulating record of useful activities of human beings. We have no doubt a few other means of collecting and storing for the benefit of succeeding generations the valuable contributions to human knowledge of great thinkers, philosophers and scientists. News papers, magazines, record tapes and Cds are occasionally made use of for such purposes. But the cheapest, the most readily available and much sought after permanent record of our ancient and modern cultural heritage, our intellectual advancement and our phenomenal progress in the fields of literature, commerce, industry and science is to be found only in books. Students, scholars, writers and other types of intellectuals are simply slaves of books which dominate their thinking and determine the shape of all their activities. Nothing but books can satisfy their craving for the ever-expanding volume of knowledge which they are always eager to follow "like a sinking star, beyond the utmost bound of human thought".

The Kingdom of books is as vast as the universe, for there is no corner of it which they have left unexplored. There is no dearth of books on any topic, be it as simple as the composition of sodium nitrate or as intricate as the mechanism of a spacecraft rocketing towards Mars. We make us of books for the dissemination of useful ideas, for popularizing the fruits of our research in various fields of knowledge, and for spreading our progressive views on matters which are of vital concern to our fellow beings. In fact, no single product of human labor has been as helpful to the advancement of civilization as books which are written in all languages of the world and which are decoratively placed in book shelves in our homes and tastefully displayed in book stores and libraries. If to Keats works of ancient poets like Homer were realms of gold from which he derived much joy as well as inspiration, to the modern lover of books the labors of all geniuses, including those of Keats, are mines of inestimable intellectual wealth which he goes on exploring for the sake of his mental and spiritual advancement.

Books guide the destiny of people, and they bring about cataclysmic changes in different parts of the world from time to time by influencing men's behavior and their ways of thinking. Who can underestimate the importance of such books as The Social Contract and Das Kapital which made monarchs tremble on their thrones and the power of money feel helpless in the face of popular discontent? Even the notorious Mein Kampf, the bible of Nazi Germany, gave a new color and shape to world politics and filled many pages of Europe's history with deeds of warring nations and harrowing tales of mass slaughter of human beings in the midst of smoking ruins of cities and villages. Likewise, books of another kind, those written by Thoreau, Gandhi and many other saintly men who sought guidance and inspiration from the spirit of truth which to them was synonymous with divinity, have added to the volume of human happiness and exalted the dignity of the souls of good people to heights of angelic greatness. Books have also exposed the manners of mortals, their pride, their wickedness and contemptible hypocrisy; they have revealed the lowest depths of degradation to which on many occasions these creatures of flesh and bones allowed themselves to be dragged by the lust of power, the glitter of gold and orgies of sex. There is indeed no aspect of human behaviors which has not been carefully scrutinized by the searching eye of the writer.

Movies, Radios, Televisions, Internet and other means of entertainment which also have some instructive value tend to minimize the importance of books and divert our attention from them. But all men of refined tastes know that books and not these instruments of recreations can satisfy our craving for knowledge and for stable and lasting companionship of the wise which is essential for the free development of our personality. Whenever we find ourselves surrounded by a friendless and hostile world we can turn to these books for light, guidance and support. They will dispel our thoughts of gloom and make our dreadful hours painless and bearable. If ordinary books could be source of comfort, hopefulness and patient endurance of calamitous circumstances to people who were shipwrecked on lonely islands, cast into solitary conferment or exiled in foreign lands, there is no reason why the best output of world famous authors should fail to sustain human beings in periods of darkness and adversity. We must therefore, be ever grateful to those who have made us inheritors of this vast estate whose fruitful soil offers us a perennial harvest of learning and letters.