New Delhi: A weekly Urdu newspaper in Pakistan has published a report abusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his mother. This comes amid heightened tensions between the two neighbours ever since the Pulwama terror attack in February.
Targeting PM Modi, the newspaper, learnt to be published from Karachi, quotes news reports in India to buttress its point. The Pakistani report, published on 21 March, said that Modi continues to threaten Pakistan every day.
The abusive report came to light after Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui, who lives in France, posted it on Twitter. Siddiqui stays in Paris since he started receiving threats of kidnapping.
#Wtf!!! Is this for real?! A headline in an Urdu newspaper in Pakistan refers to @narendramodi as the son of a prostitute. The govt must stop such hate mongering and take action. pic.twitter.com/jPU8bW3ZDd
— Taha Siddiqui (@TahaSSiddiqui) March 29, 2019
Siddiqui said the Pakistan government must take action and stop such hate-mongering.
Pakistani journalist Naila Inayat told ThePrint the newspaper ‘Parcham’ is either published from Karachi or Faisalabad.
Contact numbers listed on the newspaper’s website could not be reached for a response.
“Usage of this kind of language in the name of journalism is beyond repulsive. If it was printed and distributed, this goes on to show that the government has no regulation on small vernacular newspapers that can get away with any kind of hate speech”, Inayat said.
Pakistan-based terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) had claimed responsibility for the February 14 Pulwama terror attack, which claimed the lives of 40 CRPF personnel.
India responded to the attack through air strikes, targeting the main training camp of the JeM in Balakot outside Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. Pakistan retaliated with a failed attempt to target military installations in Jammu and Kashmir.
Since then, Pakistan has put its military on high alert.
Also read: Chaiwala to Nalayak: How Pakistan TV anchors are describing Narendra Modi
This article has been updated to source the correct news reports from India.
An earlier version of the report said Pakistani journalist Taha Siddiqui lives in the UK. He lives in France. The error has been corrected.
From the little Urdu I know, the headline reads:
“Musalmano ke khoon ka pyasa Bharati vazir-e-azam Narendra Modi ARAF GASHTI Maa ka bachha Pakistan ko jung ki dhamkiyon se baaz na aaya”
The line above the headline which should be treated as subhead because it is in smaller font reads:
“Modi ki paidaish mein uske Walid ka koi kirdaar nahin hai, Bharati akhbaar “Hindustan Times” ka daawa”.
I didn’t know the meaning of ARAF so I googled for it. It means:
“Araf. Araf is the Muslim sheol or borderland between heaven and hell for those who are, from incapacity, neither morally bad nor morally good. Araf is also a partition.”
“Gashti” of course means “patrolling”.
So, ARAF GASHTI means “one who patrols the undefined line between morally good and morally bad.” If this is a way of defining a “prostitute”, then I would say it is a rather circumspect or decent way of defining her. A more direct and shockingly obscene word would be, “randee” or “vaishya” , or a slightly less offensive word would be “tawaif”.
The subhead is more offensive than the headline because it says Modi’s father had no role in his paidaish or birth. It attributes this claim to our own paper Hindustan Times. Who knows if HT ever said this or not. But here too, the Pakistani paper uses a polite word, “Walid” for father, and not a more crude word, “baap”.
I am not saying all this in a smart-Alec fashion to condone the Pakistani paper. Far from it, I believe such language for anyone should be avoided. But given the present state of hostility between the two countries, tweeting about such news too should be avoided. At least I would call it FANNING THE HOSTILITY. All said and done, as I have tried to point out in the above, this headline and its accompanying subhead ARE NOT ALL THAT OFFENSIVE as made out to be, or “insinuated” by this person Taha Siddiqui. I am not on twitter or facebook etc., but from what I keep reading about the verbiage traffic on these platforms, the words used by this paper display restraint and could have been much worse. Our own lady journalists keep getting much more direct abuses on these platforms.
That is Pakisrtan. But what about “our” own Times Now, Republic News X etc.
Last I checked none of them referred to Imran Khan as the son of prostitute.
But I guess in your case sheer hatred for Modi takes precedence over common decency and logic.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
Rohit, you are absolutely right that such words on mass circulation platforms should be avoided. But when hatred is drummed up on both sides, this is the kind of price public figures have to pay. It is unfortunate, but when one person tells another, the passions get amplified. That’s why I sort of disliked Taha Siddiqui’s tweet. You would notice that he begins it with WTF. (“what the fuck”?). This is what I call a “Tama ash-been” attitude. We must avoid it.