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A FRIEND of mine has a fixation on two Dawn columnists and has difficulty in getting a good sleep. An orthopaedic surgeon by profession, he says he loves Dawn but can’t understand why it publishes columns by Nadeem Farooq Paracha and Jawed Naqvi.
He finds their columns ‘anti-Islam’ — an omnibus term, which may cover ideas and things ranging from parliamentary democracy, polio drops and cricket to eating at a restaurant with an American franchise. He pleads that their columns be banned because what they write poses a mortal threat to Pakistan’s sovereignty and integrity.
That a piece of writing could pose a threat to the state or to a philosophy of life is antithetical to the very idea of a civilised society. A free play of ideas — different, too many, ‘normal’, abnormal, grotesque — makes a society healthy and equips it with the tools to develop a national synthesis.
In Pakistan’s case, it was not the promulgation of opinions but their suppression that more than posed a threat to Pakistan; it cost the state its majority province and led to a military defeat, from whose psychological consequences we have still not recovered. To still plead for banning a column because you don’t like its contents is to make a case for censorship and eventually dictatorship — and possibly for Talibanism.
A free play of ideas equips society with the tools to develop a national synthesis.
Paracha and Naqvi are two of Dawn’s many regular columnists (almost 30 write for the opinion pages alone), in addition to ‘casual’ writers for Images, Dawn Business and Finance and Books and Authors (besides articles on national day supplements).
By a rough calculation, Dawn publishes (excluding features on foreign pages) over 300 articles per month, the total for a year coming to a staggering 3,600.
Add to this the letters to the editor (‘people’s editorials’), and then you note the cornucopia of opinions, observations and criticism Dawn offers to its reader on issues of the day — politics, economy, foreign affairs, society, literature, religion, science and technology, sports and showbiz.
Dawn may or may not agree with what they write, but by disseminating these ideas this paper helps focus civil society’s attention on issues that matter and need remedial action. This also means having a trust in the Pakistani people’s intrinsic ability to discern what is good for them and ultimately show their preference at the ballot box.
What my doctor friend forgets is that what he may or may not like is not necessarily true of hundreds of thousands of other readers. Take the Leisure page. Its contents range from chess and crossword to Big Nate and Sudoku Alpha.
I have played chess, but I don’t see what the chess feature is doing on the page. But let Dawn miss one of the features, and we get phone calls and protest emails. Syed Munawwar Hassan feels his breakfast is spoiled if Gambols is not there.
As for the Paracha and Naqvi columns, I asked the doctor to read Dawn’s internet edition. While every article does evoke comments, it is Paracha and Naqvi who get the highest number of kudos and barbs. For Paracha there are as many as 150 comments, some ecstatic, some wanting his blood. That — readability — is the criterion that sustains a columnist and ensures space for him.
Finally, let us accept, all newspapers are commercial concerns. While this doesn’t mean that a paper like Dawn would allow advertisers to influence its policy, it stipulates saleability, and it cannot sell by catering to one lobby and blocking the other.
Here, is a reader’s comment on Rafia Zakaria’s article on polygamy (Oct 1). He asked why Dawn should publish “such” articles. His complaint was that Ms Zakaria’s article lacked “critical information”.
The reader said he did search for some statistics but nobody could answer his one question: how prevalent was polygamy in Pakistan? “Is it really prevalent?” he asked, and said it was exactly because its incidence is negligible that Ms Zakaria had not come up with statistics.
He said Dawn should perhaps reconsider its policy about publishing such articles and allow space for “a genuine debate on some very pertinent social issues”.
Rafia Zakaria’s reply: “The intention of my article was not to argue whether polygamy is or is not a common occurrence. Instead, it was to point out the emotional costs on polygamy on women and especially children who have no say in the matter. The information I relied on and cited is widely available on the internet. The article generated hundreds of responses from readers particularly children who said they had been harmed by polygamous arrangements. Sadly, there are no studies being conducted in Pakistan concerning numbers of polygamous marriages or their consequences on children.”
The writer is Dawn’s Readers’ Editor
Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2014
