Why is so much hatred spread in Pakistani Urdu newspapers? If this is what is read by Pakistanis, no wonder there is so much hatred against any Non-Muslim.
TALKING TERMS : DILEEP PADGAONKAR
Pakistan`s Urdu Press
SATURDAY, JANUARY 01, 2005 11:57:29 PM ]
Every week I receive through the e-mail a review of Urdu newspapers run by jihadi and right-wing outfits in Pakistan. The English translation, as we shall see in a minute, can be a bit co*k-eyed. All the same, the excerpts offer an insight into the mindset of Islamic radicals and conservatives. Their influence on public opinion cannot be underrated. For, in terms of circulation and readership figures, Urdu papers are streets ahead of the sober and moderate English language ones.
Much like the Pakistan Studies textbooks taught in schools and colleges, the right-wing Urdu press harps on conspiracies and threats from within and without. It heaps scorn on the West, Israel and India for waging an ideological-cum-religious war against Islam and Muslims. And it berates the country`s venal military, political, bureaucratic and business elites for kowtowing to these conspirators, including, in the first place, Gen Pervez Musharraf.
But since the Urdu papers denounce every conspirator in an equally vigorous manner, it is hard to say whether they have a pecking order in their list of enemies. For instance, one quotes a jihadi politician as saying that America is the “biggest terrorist” because it attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in a bid to “crush the Muslim world”. The papers routinely castigate President Bush as a “Christian, fundamentalist extremist” who is in cahoots with the Jews to establish US monopoly in the world.
A columnist in another paper vents his spleen against Condaleeza Rice, the US Secretary of State designate. She is said to be a “natural extremist” who is “far ahead than Bush in enmity with Islam.” Why? Because “she is suffering from inferiority complex. She is a black and she wants to prove herself a white through her hard work. That hard work is in the form of enmity with Muslims.” And what is the evidence of her extremism? “One evidence is that she is unmarried.”
When it comes to India, the right-wing papers are brazenly venomous. This might bring cold comfort to the Muslim baiters of the Sangh Parivar. But it should know that no Indian Muslim echoes the vile sentiments of the Pakistani jihadis. Here, for example, is what one extremist author asserts: “So long as the Hindus will keep on worshipping the cow and the Muslims would keep on slaughtering it and eating its meat, the two-nations theory will remain vindicated.” In his short book on Hinduism, Amir Hamza, who is described as the “intellectual supremo” of the Jamaatud Dawa (the defunct Lashkar-e-Taiba), writes in the introduction: “Hinduism is the enemy of Islam. Hindus are the enemy of Muslims…friendship is impossible unless the enemy comes into the fold of Islam.”
There is more in this vein: “We should raise weapons against the Hindus who are hell-bent to implement Hindu rule over Pakistan. We should destroy India that is playing Holi with the blood of innocent Muslims. As long as the Brahmin imperialism will not be destroyed, peace will not prevail in the region.” Other passages berate Brahmins for persecuting “shoodars” (shudras) and Hindus generally for their “bizarre” religious practices like the worship of the lingam. Their hygienic habits are derided. And their divinities are insulted and ridiculed.
For all these reasons, according to the right-wing columnists, the duty of every Pakistani is to wage jihad to “liberate” Kashmir and bring about the disintegration of India. The establishment in Islamabad may well argue, as it indeed does, that one should pay no attention to the rants of these fringe groups. But so long as a blinkered vision about Hindus and India continues to be disseminated through textbooks and the jihadi media, the pursuit of peace and amity between the two countries will be akin to chasing a chimera.
