KARACHI: An English-language magazine on Friday organized a seminar on the “Declining Reading Habits” among the public, particularly those who could afford to buy books and spare time to read them.

The programme coincided with the launching of a bookshop in Saddar, the supply of Sindhi language books being its major item. The discourse was held in Sindhi and the speakers included well-known Sindh writers, like Attiya Dawood, a known poet and human rights activist; Noor Ahmad Memon, chairman Sindhica Academy; Hidayat Baloch, Sultana Viqasi, Mansoor Malik and Amir Abro, Editor Indus Magazine.

Was it the all-pervasive computer technology, one speaker asked, behind the fall of book reading? He quoted the example of “bookless schools” in the US where computers hold sway over books. “But in our case,” he added, “being bookless meant something else.”

Mr Memon informed the audience that despite presence of a large number of Sindhis in Karachi, hardly fifty of them bothered to buy a “popular book”. The non-availability of Sindhi books is also one of the reasons, he said.

A sort of intellectual crisis emerged after the collapse of Soviet Union. Earlier, a large number of books on socialism and socialist literature used to be sold, Mr Memon said, adding that “the actual idea of socialism had already been preached by the Sufis in South Asia.

Lack of democratic values has also been a major cause of neglect towards reading — rather all creative exercises —, said another writer. As under a dictatorship, people lose the right of decision-making in political and cultural affairs, they find a creative activity to be “useless”, which dampens their minds. Reading under these circumstances becomes just a source of “idle pleasure” and books lose their values.

The conduct of publishers and book-sellers was also criticized. Ms Attiya Dawood complained that publishers in Sindh were not professionals and most often they did not pay royalties to the writers. She congratulated Ameer Abro for opening the bookshop at a time when in a “consumer culture” books have become the least wanted commodity.

Ameer Abro defended computer and said that despite the massive use of internet in the West, book industry still flourished there. He also pointed out that publishers lacked the will to publish materials on global subjects, particularly after the Sept 11 events.

Earlier, Naseeruddin Abro inaugurated the bookshop.—Hasan Abidi