As we are shifting from genuine libraries to commercial reading rooms, there is an urgent need to revive Kashmir’s fading reading habits and intellectual heritage
In recent years, a growing trend has emerged across the towns and districts of Kashmir: the establishment of so-called “libraries” — spaces where students preparing for competitive exams gather daily. But these spaces, often rented and commercial, are not libraries in the real sense of the word. At best, they are reading rooms — study halls that offer basic amenities like chairs, tables, internet connectivity, and sometimes tea and snacks. What they lack, however, are books — the very soul of any real library.
Yet these reading rooms are being misbranded as libraries. This is not merely a harmless misuse of terminology; it is a distortion of academic and cultural values. A library is not just a room. It is a living repository of knowledge — a place where one can access curated books, journals, archives, and intellectual support. More importantly, libraries are community spaces that foster dialogue, discussion, and a shared culture of inquiry. They are places where ideas are exchanged, reading groups are formed, and minds grow not just in isolation but in collaboration. Most of these reading rooms offer none of that.
Worryingly, the popularity of these spaces reflects a broader cultural decline: the decline in reading habits among students. Book reading — once a cherished part of student life in Kashmir — is slowly disappearing. Exam preparation has been reduced to digital notes, WhatsApp PDFs, and shortcut material. The result? A generation of students is more focused on clearing exams than cultivating depth, imagination, or intellectual inquiry.
What we often forget is that book reading is not merely academic — it is deeply transformative. Books nurture the imagination in ways that shortcut materials, digital notes, videos and visual shortcuts cannot. Where videos offer ready-made imagery, books invite us to build mental worlds of our own. Reading stretches the canvas of our inner world, helping us grow into more thoughtful, curious individuals. As George R. R. Martin wisely put it, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies… The man who never reads lives only one.”
Moreover, reading strengthens our vocabulary, and vocabulary is nothing less than the architecture of thought. Just as bricks shape buildings, words shape our ideas. A rich vocabulary gives students the ability to reason, argue, and express themselves with clarity and confidence — a skill that cannot be developed through digital shortcuts, social media reels and YouTube videos alone.
“To know the books is to already walk halfway through the journey of knowledge.”
Disturbingly, some students who enrol in these reading rooms with sincere intentions fall into a trap of digital distractions. The availability of unlimited internet, coupled with the privacy of isolated cubicles, often leads to misuse. Many end up spending hours on social media, watching movies, or playing online games like PUBG — with earphones plugged in — giving an illusion of productivity while achieving little. This is not just a waste of time but a silent crisis of discipline and direction.
Recently, the Swedish government (reported in ‘The Guardian’ on 11 September 2023) reversed its push toward digitalisation in education, returning to more traditional, offline methods after observing its drawbacks. Concerns such as screen fatigue, declining reading habits, and adverse impacts on student mental health prompted this shift. The Swedish government reinstated printed textbooks, handwriting exercises, and reduced screen time. As LottaEdholm, Sweden’s Minister of Education, rightly said, “More textbooks are necessary because tangible books are more crucial to learning.”
This intellectual erosion is mirrored in the real world by the gradual disappearance of respected bookshops from Kashmir’s towns and cities. Shops that once stood as cultural beacons — offering everything from literary classics to academic references — have been forced to shut down, not due to conflict or economic collapse, but due to declining public interest in reading. Their closure is not just a commercial loss; it is a cultural tragedy — a quiet sign that our society no longer invests in the slow, nourishing process of reading.
Sadly, this decline is not confined to private reading rooms. Even around prestigious institutions like the University of Kashmir — the oldest university in the region — the surroundings speak volumes. Instead of bookstores, discussion forums, or cultural cafés, one finds a mushrooming of restaurants, beauty salons, and readymade garment shops. The commercial landscape has encroached so deeply that these institutions feel more like marketplaces than centres of serious learning.
To make matters worse, Xerox and stationery shops thrive by offering readymade notes, solved assignments, and “exam-passing kits.” Around almost every college, one can find shops that openly sell the shortcut to success, not knowledge, but convenience. Why read a book or attend a lecture when you can simply buy a bundle of notes with the “important questions”? This easy-access culture is killing the spirit of inquiry and replacing hard-earned understanding with shallow reproduction.
Worse still, we are now witnessing a generation of students — even at the graduate and postgraduate level — who struggle to draft something as basic as a formal application without help. Many have become excessively dependent on AI platforms and apps for tasks that were once considered foundational skills. What students must understand is that even these technologies — no matter how advanced — are built by people who once studied from books. The less we read and the more we outsource our thinking, the more we kill our creativity, independence, and depth. This passive dependence, if unchecked, may lead this generation not toward empowerment, but toward despair.
This must be a wake-up call — for students, educators, policymakers, and the community at large.
We must begin by calling things by their true names. A reading room is not a library, and it should not be marketed as one. Let us protect the integrity of the word “library.” Second, we must reinvest in real public libraries, stocked with quality books, accessible resources, and trained librarians. Third, we must revive the culture of serious reading, not just for marks, but for meaning. And finally, we must recognise that no amount of Wi-Fi or designer furniture can substitute for discipline, guidance, and the genuine hunger for knowledge.
The crisis is not just educational — it is cultural. If we continue down this path, we may produce exam-passers without thinkers, degree-holders without readers, and job-seekers without imagination.
Let Kashmir not lose its intellectual soul to a silent, unnoticed decline. Let us bring back the book to our shelves, to our lives, and most importantly, to our minds.
The writers work as teaching faculty at PG Department of History, GDC Bemina Srinagar (Cluster University Srinagar) and GDC (Women’s) Pulwama, respectively
Dr Masrat Ahmad Mir
Dr Wasim Rahman Bhat