Mediafile

    Some sad news to report about The Hindu, a newspaper which fortunately has not lived up to its name, in the way that modern-day Hindutva defines it. On 5 March in Pondicherry, Hindu editor N Ravi accepted the Sri Jayendra Saraswathi Lifetime Achievement Award, named after the pro-nuke Hindutva acolyte. Pondicherry governor KR Malkani, well known for his Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) credentials, also spoke at the ceremony. Ravi's acceptance of the award is troubling on many levels, not the least of which being that it follows the acceptance of the Vajpayee government's Padma Bhushan award by India Today editor Prabhu Chawla. But all of this pales into insignificance when you have 'Veer' Savarkar's portrait unveiled in the Indian Lok Sabha, hanging opposite the hall from the man whose assassination he in all likelihood condoned – MK Gandhi.    

     If you find Himal circumlocutory and recondite, or even downright operose to read, you are not alone. By the terms of Robert Gunning's 'fog index', which measures the readability of writing, this publication scores a 14, placing it in the stratum of very difficult (and to some, unintelligible) writing. The fog index is calculated by dividing the total number of words in an article or publication by the number of sentences, and adding to that the total number of 'difficult' words (without counting prefixes or suffixes, defined as being words consisting of three or more syllables excluding proper nouns or compound words) multiplied by 100, divided by the total number of words and then multiplied by 0.4.(If you find this fogy, consult the formula at left). Of publications evaluated, only The Guardian and The Times of London scored as high as Himal, while Outlook, The Times of India, Newsweek and India Today all registered an even 10. Chhetria Patrakar is torn between a sense of pride at elevating Subcontinental writing above the jejune standards of Reader's Digest (8 on the fog index) and concern that the index rating may be an animadversion that Himal's prose suffers from gratuitous obfuscation. Readers, write in and offer your own assessment.    

        Fruit and vegetable distributor by day, Goliath of the wrestling ring by night, and president of a political party boasting one member… The formidable Bharat Bahadur Bishural – aka The Nepali Himalayan Tiger – is truly a renaissance man of the South Asian expatriate universe. A former Royal Nepalese Army soldier based in New York for the last 11 years, the 90-kg Bishural is believed to be the first Nepali semi-professional wrassler, and certainly the first member of the Nepal Conservative Party to don war paint before paying spectators. His career began many moons ago with a bout against The American Black Panther (possibly an inspiration for his own nationality-adjective-carnivore ring name?), and Bishural has not looked back since: he has faced 650 opponents during the last decade and won 17 awards. Currently, the Tiger also holds the Nepali-American Wrestling Association (membership total unknown) title belt, so young expatriate South Asians with a hankering for testosterone glory might just have a new role model. Grr-r-r.      

      What do Kabul, Kashmir and Kathmandu have in common? Other than K-names, proximity to the Hindukush-Himalaya, and historical autonomy or independence from the British Raj, one might suspect not much. But owing to alliteration and turbulent recent histories, these three were recently adjoined together to suffer the common misfortune of being the catch-line of a CNN advertisement in South Asia. In recent weeks, however, with Messrs Karzai and Franks lording over a less turbulent Afghanistan, Mufti Muhammad Sayeed taking charge in Kashmir, and Nepal engaged in peace, this alignment has lost its usefulness for CNN. The new triumvirate? Bali, Baghdad, Bangalore. One wonders how that tech-savvy capital made it to that list. What's next: Lahore, Lucknow, Langley, or maybe Pokhara, Pondicherry, Pyongyang?      

      The South Asia Foundation, a well-endowed trust started by philanthropist Madanjeet Singh, is one of the few organisations actively seeking to foster people-to-people friendship in South Asia today. It has just put out a glossy booklet, handed to Chhetria Patrakar in New Delhi recently, on which s/he (Chhetria Patrakar) has a negative comment and a positive. Negative: A gathering of chairpersons was held in April 2002 at the Villa Surya, Beaulieu-sur-Mer in France, and included were hallowed personalities such as Inder Kumar Gujral of India, Sangay Ngedup of Bhutan, Ibrahim Hussain Zaki of the Maldives, Salima Hashmi of Pakistan and Lakshman Kadirgamar of Sri Lanka. Apparently, the jurist Kamal Hossain of Bangladesh and Ambassador Bhekh Bahadur Thapa of Nepal could not attend, or at the very least were still having their dessert when the photograph was taken. So what they have gone and done is to digitally manipulate Mr Hossain and Mr Thapa into the group picture and put together a make-believe tableau. Tch. Tch. Positive: I like the way the designer (perhaps the same person who did the digital manipulation) had chosen to depict South Asia graphically in the form of a collection of dots. It is pleasing to the eye, gives a sense of unity to the whole matrix, and – very importantly – does away with all nationalistic posturing vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir. Try and find Siachen and the line-of-control among the polka dots!      

      Saleem Samad was finally released by the Bangladesh authorities, for which we thank them. But for having incarcerated him, and tortured him, for nothing other than doing the duty of a journalist (which is to get a story out, no matter whom it helps or hurts) – no thank you. Samad came out custody with his pen afire, and he has written compellingly of his ordeal in the Asian edition of Time, which you can read at http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501030210-41942      

      It is terrible how unthinkingly the media and academia now use 'terrorist' whereas a couple of years ago they would have been saying 'extremists', 'radicals', 'insurgents' or 'militants'. The world has not changed that much, notwithstanding 11 September, and it is time to go back to the old usages if you please. The adage still holds that often one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. How can we forget the long history of this debate just because, in this instance, America got attacked? Chhetria Patrakar hereby institutes a rebuke mechanism for all academics and mediawallas who should know better but who use the term 'terrorism' without hesitation. Demerits will be awarded. And so….       Ladies and gentlemen, let me now introduce two institutions who get demerits for prejudiced use of the term 'terrorism' over the last month:       ·         The South Asia Terrorism Portal, for using the term in its very title.   ·         The Regional Centre for Strategic Studies, Colombo, for calling a conference on 'Terrorism in South Asia: Impact on Development and Democratic Process', in which the keynote speaker was Ambassador Dr Georg Witschel, Commissioner for Combating International Terrorism of the Federal Government of Germany. For good measure, I also hereby award a demerit to Mr Witschel, for taking up a job that is so black-and-white and cut-and-dried in its definition when the world itself is so very complicated.      

      Syed Iftekhar Geelani is the Delhi bureau chief of Kashmir Times and son-in-law of Hurriyat leader, Syed Ali Shah Geelani. He spent seven months in prison for possessing information which was 'prejudicial to the safety and security of India'. The information, unearthed by an income tax team (hmmm) in his computer hard drive was apparently about the placement of Indian troops in Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian Express thereafter reported that the incriminating document was already publicly available on the Internet and had also been printed by a Pakistani journal. The home ministry later stated that the report was baseless, and after it became clear that the journalist was being falsely implicated, he was released. The Indian Express needs to be thanked for staying with the case, as does the Delhi-based Network of Women in the Media, which organised a 'do' to mark Geelani's release. Simple things mean a lot in extraordinary times.      

      The schizophrenia of New Delhi's national English dailies continues. Are they to become city newspapers, because that is where the middle-class readership lies, or are they to try and represent all of India, dealing with hoary national level politics and economics which will turn off that very readership which delivers the advertising? Recently, the Hindustan Times decided it was firmly of a mind to serve as a city paper when on 10 February and 14 February its front-page headline was on the bottled water scandal. No doubt, it is a good story, that every one of the bottled water companies in India was serving substandard aqua to the (bottled-water-drinking) people. But only if the HT is a city paper should that have made the headline. Ergo, it must be a city paper.    

      I reproduce here two pictures from a collection of "memorable photographs" printed in the latest issue of Vidura, the journal of the Press Institute of India. One is a recent photograph, titled "Last train to Pakistan from Old Delhi railway station on 30-12-2001", by Manish Swarup, catching a poignant moment of separation. The other is historical, "Cleaning up after the 1977 elections" in which election posters are being swept up after Indira Gandhi's defeat, with a family planning wall hoarding significantly providing the backdrop.

Loading content, please wait...

Related Stories

No stories found.
Himal Southasian
www.himalmag.com