Sunday, March 05, 2006

An Impotent Mind

Pakistan's daily Dawn is a sober newspaper that carries meaningful opinions -- which we greatly respect notwithstanding their sometimes antipathy to India.

This is why we are puzzled by their sponsorship of Jawed Naqvi and his astonishingly offensive Dateline Delhi.

Writing there about the nuclear deal, he invokes horrible imagery -- in fact, rationalizing a profoundly racist, anti-Indian, song written by South African Mbongeni Ngema where he insinuates that Indians in that country are part of a new apartheid.

Mr. Naqvi chooses to see the nuclear deal in these bizzare terms. He then insults Dr. Manmohan Singh in terms so offensive that they take one's breath away. Here they are:

Jean Paul Sartre may have never heard of Manmohan Singh, but he had a fair idea of what he would be like. In the introduction to Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, he describes the prototype thus: “The European elite undertook to manufacture a native elite. They picked out promising adolescents; they branded them, as with a red-hot iron, with the principles of western culture; they stuffed their mouths full with high-sounding phrases, grand glutinous words that stuck to the teeth. After a short stay in the mother country they were sent home, whitewashed.

These walking lies had nothing left to say to their brothers; they only echoed. From Paris, from London, from Amsterdam we would utter the words (Parthenon! Brotherhood!) and somewhere in Africa or Asia lips would open (...thenon! ...therhood!) It was the golden age.”

This aggressively secular blog condemned in the strongest terms the offensive cartoons insulting the Prophet Mohammad. Mr. Naqvi's insult to India falls in the same category.

We demand that Dawn apologize for this outrageous calumny and remove this disgraceful columnist from their august pages. We hope other Indians will join us and demand the same by flooding the newspaper with protest letters written in the sternest possible language.

Mr. Naqvi has the right to free expression, but surely Dawn's readers deserve better than the flaccid thoughts of an impotent mind.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think this Naqvi is an Indian muslim writing for 'Dawn'.

libertarian said...

PR: your refrence to flaccid impotence is apt. The man's pathetic rage shows in his rambling rant. Will make sure to register a string protest with Dawn.

RS: no he's not Indian. The person you're probably thinking about is Saeed Naqvi.

Anonymous said...

Eh...you expect a Paki newspaper to ditch a proud Paki columnist (who is undoubtedly of fair, Central Asian tight a$$ed martial stock), because he made a few derogatory comments about some Kaffir Sikh? And that too because you Kaffir Hindoos want it? The nerve of it all!

- Akash

Kathiawadi said...

PR,
Thanks for raising the point. This is not the 1st time he has compared Indian administration in similar fashoin. Even last year, he compared Indian govt with apartheid regime of South Africa. JN has his e-mail displayed at the end of his article.

Liberatarian,
I also have the same doubt as RS. I have read him a couple of times writing about Indian govt as "our govt"; can't find reference currently. However, I'll be extremely surprised and hurt, if he happens to be an Indian.

God,
Do you think the Booker prize winner communists are not hurting me enough?

Btw, Saeed Naqvi is a nice guy.

Anonymous said...

Hi,
I have bad news for all of us.
Dawn's Jawed Naqvi is an Indian from Lucknow. Infact he is younger brother of Saeed Naqvi. I got it confirmed from a media blog on news channels.

libertarian said...

RS: can you post the relevant links. If this is the case he's certainly the black sheep of the family.

Anonymous said...

Below is the link for the news on Jawed Naqvi. Pls see the comments section. The main post is irrelevant to this matter.

http://warfornews.blogspot.com/2006/03/jaya-gaya-now-were-talking-navika.html

Primary Red said...

Thanks, RS.

libertarian said...

RS: bad news, but good to know.

Anonymous said...

libertarian,
I too suspected him to be an Indian for some time now and now that we have it confirmed shouldnt we do something about it. His background is known only in the media circles and there they are all one. Can the bloggers write about him and expose him?? He sounds more Paki than a Paki.

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