| October 28, 2007 | Sunday | Shawwal 15, 1428 |
Combating communalism
The bad habits of editing
To edit, or not to edit, and how far to edit … in newspapers and magazines across the world, the war between writers and sub-editors continues. Perfectly reasonable people, otherwise advocates of peace, tolerance and universal goodwill, by routine hurl imprecations that can come as quite a shock to the uninitiated observer.
ISLAMABAD, this year, has seen plenty of action ranging from the abortive dismissal of the chief justice that launched a thousand legal “crusades” to the abortive return of an exiled former prime minister, who dearly wanted to touch base, but in vain.
In between these events and after, the atmosphere in the capital has been electric whether it was to do with the unprecedented military operation in Lal Masjid that reportedly left hundreds dead or the more standard suicide bombing fare that also extinguished the flame for countless families.
But what has dominated the show has been General Pervez Musharraf’s relentless presidential ambition and the legal challenges opposed to it with the Supreme Court serving as the arbiter.
The innocuous Election Commission also grabbed its fifteen minutes of action but it wasn’t for fame. Not even Andy Warhol, author of the aforesaid theory, would have imagined such notoriety.
The media continued to be a serious player and its defiance, many tend to overlook, has been as memorable as the legal community’s mien in the fightback for honour.
Fat chance any defining realm would have been set without the fourth pillar’s spectacular vigilance — regardless, of course, of whatever it is that strikes Wasi Zafar’s large mind (he suggested, in his now familiar infamous streak that the media was no pillar — first, second, third or fourth).
Consider Islamabad’s disquieting calendar this year: March 9 (move to dismiss CJ), May 12 (the ruling party’s contrived song- and-dance driven show of strength in stark contrast to the Karachi mayhem), July 9 (Lal Masjid operation), July 20 (CJ’s restoration), September 10 (Nawaz Sharif’s dramatic re-exile), September 29 (beating up of lawyers and journalists outside Election Commission), October 6 (Musharraf’s ‘election’) — the list is long even though one hasn’t mentioned every page-turner.
However, the one huge missing link here that is taken for granted in any respectable democratic polity is the absence of full scale politics involving the hoi polloi.
In this regard, we may be about to turn the corner though one wouldn’t like to bet on it since anything Shahid Afridish is possible in the bananaramus that is Islamabad.
For instance, the Supreme Court could, theoretically, surprise pundits and the perpetually-ditched awam alike by bringing back deliverance in currency (in Musharraf eligibility case) but — as a brigade of vocal ministers in the ruling coalition have been giving to believe — the General has designs to checkmate that possibility with more than one option, the mother of which being bandied about is martial law.
But are we forgetting the queen on the chessboard, who is capable of doing a deft little Maradona on the best plans laid out in someone’s camp office?
If evidence was needed, she is all over the place — occupying the media glocally (a derivative of global and local), at the door of power corridor without actually setting foot as well as performing the nearly forgotten street strut ever since disembarking in Karachi on October 18.
The rush of blood and the blood of rush have both worked to her advantage ever since.
While BB hulks around a la the fictional green giant, sulking in one corner of Islamabad is the brooding Beeba — an addition in the political lexicon, for which, DawnNews can claim some credit.
Musharraf conferred that salutation on ruling party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain in what linguists are still struggling to describe in exactitude. My friend Asha’ar Rehman gave up but not before seeking professional help. It turns out the Punjabi description probably means “docile”.
The General took to Punjabi to defend the one Chaudhry he can always manipulate. Hence, Beeba.
The repercussions of a deepening cleavage aside, the BB-Beeba spat has held the country in thrall, none more than in Islamabad, which offers a power pie prized by BB, Beeba and the like with a roving eye.
Many pundits are writing an early political obituary for Beeba, concluding that the Gujrat Chaudhry has lost his marbles after alleging the Karachi suicide blitz was BB’s own making.
But then, what else can you expect other than for Beeba to go ballistic in sixty seconds when BB starts insinuating at him and his cousin where it hurts!
The BB-Beeba show has only just begun but it is already causing the latest incarnation of Baba a few headaches (remember the “Go Baba Go” chants patented by BB and her own band of beebas targeting Ghulam Ishaq Khan during a parliamentary address in the chequered Nineties?).
Only this time it is worse, since the ruling baba’s fate is in the hands of the Supreme Court, for now at least. Once the decision is out, we will know where Baba, BB and Beeba stand.
Of the three, BB has her nose in front and to think she is yet to descend on Islamabad! Imagine what it would be like once that date materialises and Nawaz Sharif, too, makes a safe landing — beyond the airport.
There is a vast majority of weary souls in the capital, who have endured a bloody year, but still others who yearn to see the return of the genuine article — civilian rule farmed by participatory democracy. As winter sets in, political mercury in the capital is about to shoot. Watch out!
The writer is News Editor at DawnNews. He may be contacted at kaamyabi@gmail.com
JOURNALIST-ACTIVIST Javed Anand, based in Mumbai, was in Karachi to speak at an international conference on religions and cultures in various regions of the world, organised by the Karachi University’s Area Study Centre for Europe and the Goethe-Institut recently. It was his second visit to the city and the country.
When asked what difference he felt since he last came here in 1988, he thought for a couple of seconds and said “Your people used to say Khuda Hafiz when parting. Now everyone says Allah Hafiz. I just heard you say Khuda Hafiz to someone, which makes you an exception.” He paused and then added “Mind you, last time I was here for four days and this time it’s just going to be 48 hours, which is too short a period to form an opinion.”
This combination of Javed and Anand baffled me even when I met him last time but just couldn’t find a chance to ask him. I thought I would not miss the opportunity on this occasion.
“Well, at one time, for a short period of course, there was a trend among the young leftists in Bombay to change the surname and adopt one from a different religion, which was how I dropped Ahmed and chose Anand,” came the reply.
Unlike all others who spoke at the seminar, Anand is not a scholar, but he has a lot of experience to draw upon. He co-edits Communalism Combat, which is basically a subscriber-based magazine. It went into publication as a result of the 1993 communal riots, engineered by the extremist Hindu organisation Shiv Sena. Anand’s co-editor is also his wife and life partner, a Gujarati-speaking lady Teesta Setalwadi, who, too, is wedded to secularism.
In 2002, after the anti-Muslim pogrom unleashed by Narendra Modi, the Chief Minister of Gujarat, 12 activists joined hands to launch a campaign against him and his goons. Called the Citizens for Justice and Peace, the body draws its membership from all religious groups. Of the 12 on the board six are Hindus, four Muslims, a Sikh and a Parsi. The famous playwright and social activist Vijay Tendulkar is its chairman.
Recalling the Gujarat riots, Anand says the terrorists involved in the well-known Best Bakery case were acquitted by the lower and high courts in the state, but the pressure group was instrumental in appealing against the judgments in the Supreme Court in Mumbai. The culprits were given heavy punishments by the apex court. The group was able to get some more Hindu terrorists involved in the carnage of Muslims punished.
Anand is also the General-Secretary of the Muslims for Secular Democracy, which was formed to represent the community that is often misled by the communalists among Muslims. “We challenge the mullahs and those who deprive women of their rights,” he said.
“An average Hindu and an average Muslim is above communal prejudices. But sadly, they can both be exploited by the fundamentalists in their folds,” continued Anand.
He had to go to the police head office in Karachi on two occasions – once to report his arrival and then to report his departure. He was lucky that he knew some influential people otherwise he would have ended up spending two hours on both days. No other foreign participant at the seminar had to go through the ordeal.
Speaking from experience, this writer can say that the Indians are more liberal in giving non-reporting visas to Pakistanis than our people sitting in the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi.—Asif Noorani
The war is in deadly earnest because the stakes are high. As any writer knows, the process of formulating thoughts and pinning their shape down on paper is an arduous task into which one must invest one’s heart and soul. Every single word has to be carefully considered, each comma, semi-colon and paragraph break painstakingly inserted, the whole read, re-read, reconsidered and then re-written. But on the other hand, as every editor knows, it’s not only extremely unwise to put raw copy through (the pitfalls range all the way from acute embarrassment to crippling lawsuits), much of the copy received practically begs correction.
And so, bad habits have hardened. Secure in the knowledge that a subber will fix problems both typographic and stylistic, some writers actually admit that they don’t bother giving their copy a once-over. Galling as this is, calmer reflection dictates that we subbers must take our share of the blame: we have fallen into the bad habit of tinkering without bothering to reflect upon whether it is required.
Some degree of proofing and editing is, of course, necessary, particularly where editorial and stylistic policy, word count requirements and standardisation come into play. However, the role of the subber must also be rationalised.
Newspaper contributors fall very broadly into three categories: reporters, feature writers and columnists. In terms of editing, each category and its subsidiaries must be treated differently.
Reporters, the pillars supporting any print organisation, are newshounds. Their value is based primarily on their ability to sniff out news and make a story out of it, their contacts and resourcefulness. Stylistic flair is a bonus but not strictly necessary because news reporting rarely requires linguistic gymnastics. Report work must be edited with a view towards structure, factuality and clarity, to which end any degree of editing is (probably) kosher.
Not so while editing features or columns. The significance of such writers lies at least partly in their linguistic ability, individual style and approach. Therefore, it follows that the editing of their work must be kept to a minimum for fear of robbing them of the very voice that makes them valuable. Furthermore, given that there are at any organisation usually more contributors than subbers, the fallout of over-editing is that everything in the publication – reports, analyses, features and columns – ends up sounding the same. While overall consistency is a virtue, it ought not to be taken too far: the tone of different sorts of articles must not be virtually indistinguishable.
There are, of course, some writers – particularly in features – who really do need extensive editing. In which case, I would argue that unless they have some merit in terms of specialised knowledge that makes them indispensable, they ought not to be published at all. For example, it may be worth spending hours editing the work of a bad writer who knows the technicalities of classical music, for the average contributor does not have this advantage. (And that specialised knowledge must shine through in the final copy.) If the copy lacks information as well as linguistic beauty, why not look for another contributor?
A further implication of over-editing is that readers are misled about the actual abilities of the writer. This is why newspapers and universities will, for example, always ask an applicant for unpublished, unedited samples of writing – in order to get a measure of the writer’s true abilities.
Part of honesty in journalism is allowing a writer to express himself in the words he chooses. In terms of editing any article, the subber must be able to defend every alteration he makes, be it on the basis of grammar, editorial policy or style.
—hmumtaz@dawn.com