Category Archives: Language

Bad ideas, Genders, Identities, Language, Law, Right watch, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Women condemn Meenakshi Lekhi’s sexist slandering of Ishrat Jahan

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Meenakshi Lekhi
Meenakshi Lekhi

Over 115 women have signed a letter seeking an apology from Ms. Meenakshi Lekhi for her sexist slandering of deceased Ishrat Jahan in a television channel. The letter has also been sent to the Chairperson of the National Commission for Women for appropriate action.

As the noose is tightening around the conspirators who cynically and coldly planned and executed the killing of teenaged Ishrat Jahan and three other people in 2004, there is a concerted campaign – the final, last ditch bid to save their skins – by tarnishing the image of this college student. There have been planted stories in the media linking her to a terrorist group –all of them false and concocted, even as the Gujarat High Court has clearly said that the CBI’s mandate is to simply investigate whether Ishrat and others were killed in cold blood. Continue reading Women condemn Meenakshi Lekhi’s sexist slandering of Ishrat Jahan →

Everyday Life, Images, Language

In the Belly of the Beast: Peggy Mohan

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Guest post by PEGGY MOHAN: When the size and complexity of a system pass a certain threshold there is a new feature that typically and suddenly appears: self-regulation. If traffic flow through a crossing exceeds a certain amount we wake up one morning and find a traffic light. It is not there to favor any motorist: what it really signifies is that the scale of things has changed.  We are no longer in the realm of the individual but of something much, much larger: a traffic system with compulsions of its own.

It is comforting to think that there is human agency behind the bewildering transitions we are now seeing the world over towards more state surveillance and control along with less regulation of big business. Clearly there are individuals who benefit from the new order. But there is another way of looking at the direction the world is taking. It is possible to see all this as evidence of a phase change, with the emergence of the megasystem itself as a new protagonist, and with human beings relegated to the status of bacteria proliferating in (and dying in) its gut. Continue reading In the Belly of the Beast: Peggy Mohan →

Bad ideas, Debates, Identities, Language, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Three questions for Madhu Kishwar: Dilip D’Souza

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Guest post by DILIP D’SOUZA

Dear Madhu,

20+ years ago, I picked you up at the airport in Austin and you stayed at my home there for a few days. You had come there to deliver a lecture, as I’m sure you remember. We developed a friendship based on a degree of mutual respect and liking. I think you’ll agree? Several years after that I remember a stimulating afternoon sitting with you in Panchgani, catching up on many things and discussing various issues threadbare.

We haven’t met in some years now, but I’m going to call on the privilege of our 20+ years of friendship as I write these lines.

I have no problem at all with your desire to learn about Gujarat and Narendra Modi for yourself. Nor with your desire to see beyond what you’ve called the “targeting” of Modi. Nor with your speaking in support of Modi: if there are people who criticize Modi, I understand and accept that there are those who support him — it’s a democracy we live in after all. Nor with your speaking your mind: you have always done so and it’s the least I expect from you. (In turn, it’s the least you should expect from me). Continue reading Three questions for Madhu Kishwar: Dilip D’Souza →

Culture, Everyday Life, Excavation, Images, Language, Mirror Worlds

Old Films: Habib Tanvir

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This is an excerpt from HABIB TANVIR’s Memoirs, translated by MAHMOOD FAROOQUI, to be released this evening 7 pm at the India Habitat Centre in Delhi.

1-habib-t-mahmood-cover
Memoirs by Habib Tanvir, translated by Mahmood Farooqui, Penguin Viking, Delhi, 2013; Rs. 599, pp. 400

First of all there was the bioscope. A woman wearing ghaghra and choli would roam around from mohalla to mohalla calling out to the children and gathering them at a chowk or in large courtyard, would take out a long stool from her arm pit and place it on the ground, would remove an octangular and muddy looking tin box from her head and place it on top which had a small mouth covered by a black cloth which the child would remove and peer inside. The women usually came from Rajasthan. The box would contain ten or fifteen cards of photographs, she would show them one after the other and also introduce them in a particular musical speech, ‘see the Rauza of Taj Bibi, see the Lal Qila of Dilli…etc.’ At one time only one child could see the pictures, which would be projected through a lens and lit up through a bulb inside the box which would make the photographs appear larger and more dramatic. When one child was through another would take his place. A large and restive crowd of children would be gathered around waiting their turn. Even the elders would be eager to see Hindustan through these pictures. She would charge two to three chhedams from everyone who took a peep. When the show was over, she would hawk her way to another mohalla. Continue reading Old Films: Habib Tanvir →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Language, Law, Media politics

How to respond to a legal notice from The Times of India

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Shamnad Basheer shows the way:

We strongly object to the vile language and the highly aggressive tone used in the notice. We can respond in kind, but we choose to be a bit more civil with you.

You choose to issue this highly malevolent letter, hoping to intimidate us into a meek apology. Unfortunately, while the meek may inherit the earth, they are bound to be shown no favour by corporate powerhouses such as your client.

So, let’s cut to the chase and explore your alleged grievances articulated rather flatulently in over seven pages of a highly intemperate legal notice.

Read the full story at Sans Serif.

Shamnad Basheer for PM!

 

Culture, Debates, Everyday Life, Language

The value of undergraduate education for ‘Other’ students: Sanjay Kumar

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Guest post by SANJAY KUMAR.

We are a tired party after two days quick hike up to the base of IndraharPass in the Dhauladhar range. Half of the students are visually challenged, the other half have been painstakingly guiding them over tricky stretches of the trail. The bus for Delhi is three hours late. We are stretched over our carry mats, reclining on backpacks, on the pavement behind a row of buses at Dharamshala bus stand. The issue under discussion is Atheism. It hasn’t taken long for visually challenged students to split into firm believers who pray regularly, occasional/opportunist believers, agnostics and atheists. Arguments are both experiential and theoretical. During one particularly intense exchange an occasional believer asks a firm believer, “If there really is a God who is omnipotent, good and takes care of every one, then tell me why has he made us so that we can not see?” It is an old normative argument against the conception of God. Presumably Darwin turned atheist arguing similarly with himself after witnessing the pain of his infant daughter due to an incurable illness. Closer home, revolutionary Bhagat Singh gives a liberal juridical version of the argument in ‘Why Am I an Atheist?’ Believer’s reply is spontaneous, in a matter of fact way. “You know what, I find myself really fortunate in being visually challenged. Due to this I got a chance to study. Had it not been for this, I would have been selling sweets from my father’s push cart in our small town.”

Realities of life in a country like India have to be piercingly brutal for a talented young man to think that it is mainly through his physical disability that he got access to a decent education and moving out of a life of poverty. This note is intended to bring some consequences of such reality to the recent discussions on Kafila regarding education at Stephen’s College.

Continue reading The value of undergraduate education for ‘Other’ students: Sanjay Kumar →

Bad ideas, Genders, Language, Media politics, Violence/Conflict

What Rediff Could Have Done to Support Kavita Krishnan Against Rape Threats: Anja Kovacs

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Guest post by ANJA KOVACS: Imagine a TV station inviting a guest and giving the audience the opportunity to freely ask questions, with the guest deciding which questions to respond to. Imagine a member of audience then threatening the guest with rape, and the TV station’s representative responding by simply passing on the microphone to the next person, leaving the guest to fend for herself. Imagine the TV station then also refusing to provide any assistance to the guest following the incident. Outrage would, justifiably, ensue. Last week, Rediff treated a guest in much this way – during a Rediff-organised online public chat.

On 24 April, Kavita Krishnan, Secretary of AIPWA and a leading figure in the anti-rape protests that have been rocking the capital since December 2012, participated in a public chat at the invitation of Rediff. The topic of the chat was the rising incidences of rape and violence against women in the country. During the chat, Krishnan was repeatedly threatened with rape by a participant whose handle read ‘RAPIST’. RAPIST wrote: ‘Kavita tell me where I should come and rape you using condom’. Earlier the same person had made comments such as ‘Kavita tell women not to wear revealing clothes then we will not rape them’, to which Krishnan had in fact responded. All comments by RAPIST were written in capital letters.

Continue reading What Rediff Could Have Done to Support Kavita Krishnan Against Rape Threats: Anja Kovacs →

Images, Language, Mirror Worlds, Movements

चे का चेहरा: ओम थानवी

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ओम थानवी का यह लेख जनसत्ता अखबार में 23 सितंबर 2007 को प्रकाशित हुआ था। ओम थानवी जनसत्ता के संपादक हैं।

che-gu-22

वह तस्वीर चे ने खुद कभी नहीं देखी। उस तस्वीर से उसके छविकार ने कभी एक पैसा नहीं कमाया। मगर दुनिया के हर कोने में आज वह छवि मौजूद है। विद्रोह और क्रांति के एक सशक्त प्रतीक के रूप में। ‘टाइम’ पत्रिका द्वारा चे गेवारा को पिछली सदी की सौ हस्तियों में शरीक करने से बहुत पहले वह छवि दुनिया में सबसे ज्यादा छपी तस्वीर घोषित हो गई थी। Continue reading चे का चेहरा: ओम थानवी →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Everyday Life, Language, Mirror Worlds

India’s other education crisis: The English Teacher

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This is a guest post by ‘The English Teacher’
Here are some statistics detailing the current state of education in India. 4% of Indian children – eight million – never start school. 57%, 74 million, don’t complete primary school. 90% – 172 million children – don’t complete secondary school. To call the situation alarming is an understatement; we have in our country a full-blown disaster. 90% of our nation’s children are victims of this disaster, with barely 10% emerging as survivors. But how fortunate are the 10% really?I’ve been a teacher since 2010, a year after I graduated from university. I taught social studies for a while, pottered a bit in the areas of curriculum and school policy development for a while longer, and have, for the past two years, taught English to middle school students. If these terms – middle school, curriculum and school policy development seem a bit foreign to you, it’s because they are. I happen to work – or happened to, until very recently – in an international school.

When you hear “international school” you may imagine any number of a range of things  – let me tell you right off, though, that we aren’t talking top range international school here. As far as school infrastructure goes, my former place of work is a damned sight better than any of the schools the 90% go to in our country, but as far as international schools go, mine lay in the majority of them that are just coming up in the country, especially in Mumbai. The sort that’s less than ten years old and an educational disaster zone of its own kind.

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Debates, Genders, Language, Law

A Tale of Two Panels: Vrinda Marwah

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Guest Post by Vrinda Marwah

On 6th March, in the run up to International Women’s Day, I was involved in two panel discussions on women’s rights, both adrenalin-raising but for entirely different reasons. As someone who has been working in feminist organisations, and who, like so many others, is trying to be active and simultaneously make sense of the agitations and conversations following the Delhi gang rape, I decided to write about this experience because it was so revealing about how power operates.

The second panel, which I will talk about first, was in the United Nations Information Center, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM approx., organized by the New Delhi hub of the Global Shapers Community of the World Economic Forum, on issues of women’s safety in Delhi and practical measures that can be taken to address these. I don’t know much about this rather fancy sounding group (in their correspondence with me they describe themselves thus: The Global Shapers Community is a network of hubs developed and led by young people who are exceptional in their potential, achievements and drive to make a contribution to their communities). Continue reading A Tale of Two Panels: Vrinda Marwah →

Bad ideas, Centre watch, Empire/ Imperialism, Frontiers, Language, Mirror Worlds, Violence/Conflict

Kindly Deliver My Letter to the PM of India: Mahum Shabir

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Guest Post by Mahum Shabir

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

Maybe it is silly to think that the Prime Minister of the world’s largest democracy will listen to the sorrows of a young Kashmiri woman-you have a billion more people to worry about. Maybe your interest in this letter would be piqued if I began by telling you that we have something in common-an education from two of the world’s best universities, yours from Oxford, mine from Harvard. Maybe it shouldn’t take a reference to where one went to school to get attention on a serious ethical issue at the center of democratic governance in India but nothing else has worked so far. I hope jaan pehchaan will work its wonders this once too. Continue reading Kindly Deliver My Letter to the PM of India: Mahum Shabir →

Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Language, Violence/Conflict

Meanderings of a Female Atheist Muslim Indian: Samina Motlekar

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This is a guest post by SAMINA MOTLEKAR: I come with baggage, with tags not all of my own making. I was born female, and as much as I want to be acknowledged as a person, I learnt early that it was pointless to deny so physical a part of my identity. I was born to Muslim parents, but that does not make me Muslim, a distinction that is unfortunately far too subtle for many minds to comprehend. Complacent in their own inherited identities, they pile on the labels smothering me into little  boxes of their making. Female, Muslim, Indian – all accidents of birth. But not all of me is accidental. By age eleven, the idea of a deity in the sky, concepts of heaven and hell, were at best stories, at worst ramblings of deluded minds to me. Not for me the fence sitting of agnosticism. I was an atheist before I hit my teens, and my belief system has endured the trials and tribulations of time. Yet they call me Muslim.

Continue reading Meanderings of a Female Atheist Muslim Indian: Samina Motlekar →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Ecology/Environment, Language

Leaping Across a Troubled History – Launch of Pratiman

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Poster of the launch event for Pratiman
Poster of the launch event for Pratiman

A new research journal in Hindi, Pratiman – Samay, Samaj, Sanskriti, was launched on 28 February 2013, at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. The occasion was historic in many ways. Given the long and troubled history of the great language divide between Hindi and Urdu and the lost traditions of Hindustani, the fact that the launch was marked by a public lecture by noted Urdu scholar-poet Shamsur Rahman Faruqi cannot but be anything but historic. There is a certain impertinence and perhaps even insolence, in the move to leap across that history of over a century and a quarter, in complete disregard of the custodians of purity on both sides, in the insistence that language is not what the custodians make of it but what lives in the world of creativity and exchange.

It was only befitting of this occasion that Faruqi chose to speak on “Urdu Adabi Ravayat ki Sachchi Triveni.” In what turned out to be a remarkable and breathtaking tour de force, Faruqi turned his scholarly apparatus to the task of dissecting the Urdu poetic and aesthetic tradition in a manner that revealed its three currents (the ‘triveni’) – namely, Arabi, Persian and Sanskrit.Through the metaphor of the Triveni at Allahabad, where the Ganga and Yamuna meet the third river Saraswati, which is invisible but nonetheless ‘present’, Faruqi too perhaps wanted to stress the significance of the third but invisible current of Sanskrit poetics.

Continue reading Leaping Across a Troubled History – Launch of Pratiman →

Bad ideas, Language, Politics, Right watch, Theory, Violence/Conflict

तार्किकता, भावुकता और फासिज्म

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 28 फरवरी को याद करने पर अब कहा जाने लगा है कि यह नकारात्मक स्मृति है और इंसानी फितरत के मुताबिक़ हमें आगे बढ़ना  चाहिए. हिन्दुओं को, खासकर गुजराती हिन्दुओं, यह नागवार गुजरता है कि उन्हें  बार-बार 28 फरवरी , 2002 की याद दिलाई जाए. आखिर गुजरात में 2002 के बाद पूरा अमन है और वह विकास के मार्ग पर एक दृढसंकल्प मुख्यमंत्री के नेतृत्व में संकल्पपूर्वक बढ़ा जा रहा है और वहां के मुसलमान भी अब कुछ और बात करना चाहते हैं.

दरअसल भुलाने और आगे बढ़ जाने की शुरुआत 2002 में ही हो गई थी. 28 फ़रवरी से राज्य-संरक्षण में शुरू हुए मुसलमानों के कत्लेआम ने भारत के उद्योगपतियों के एक हिस्से को भी झकझोर दिया था. लेकिन कुछ समय बाद ही पूंजीवाद के तर्क ने मानवीयता की कमजोरी पर विजय पा ली और उन्होने नाराज़ मुख्यमंत्री से क्षमायाचना करके गुजरात की प्रगति में उन्हें हिस्सा लेने की इजाजत माँग ली  थी. सार्वजनिक रूप से उन्हें गांधी और पटेल से तुलनीय बताया जाना अब अटपटा भी नहीं लगता, बल्कि उलट कर कहा जा सकता है कि गांधी और पटेल में  ऐसे कई गुण नहीं थे जो गुजरात के ह्रदय-सम्राट में पाए जाते हैं , इसलिए यह तुलना वस्तुतः इन दोनों के प्रति पक्षपात है. पूंजीवाद के मूल अंतर्राष्ट्रीय चरित्र ने अंततः युरोपियन यूनियन को अपनी मानवीय हिचक को किनारे करके गुजराती यथार्थ को कबूल करते हुए कारोबारी नज़रिया अपनाने को प्रेरित किया. यह संभव नहीं था कि आर्थिक निवेश के ठोस आकर्षक आमंत्रण को   न्याय के अमूर्त आग्रह  के चलते ठुकरा दिया जाए. Continue reading तार्किकता, भावुकता और फासिज्म →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Government, Language, Violence/Conflict

राष्ट्रवादी न्याय से करुणा की विदाई

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“अगर हम ‘लोकतांत्रिक सरकारों के छिपे इरादों और गैरजवाबदेह खुफिया शक्ति संरचनाओं की जांच करने और उन पर सवाल उठाने से इनकार करते हैं तो हम लोकतंत्र और मानवता, दोनों को ही खो बैठते हैं.” पत्रकार जॉन पिल्जर का यह वाक्य आज हमारे लिए कितना प्रासंगिक हो उठा है! हमें नौ जनवरी को खुफिया तरीके से अफज़ल गुरु को दी गयी फांसी के अभिप्राय को समझना ही होगा. काम कठिन है क्योंकि इसे लाकर न सिर्फ़ प्रायः सभी संसदीय राजनीतिक दल एकमत हैं बल्कि आम तौर पर देश की जनता भी इसे देर से की गई सही कार्रवाई समझती है.

नौ जनवरी के दिन के वृहत्तर आशय छह दिसम्बर जैसी तारीख से कम गंभीर नहीं क्योंकि इस रोज़ भारतीय राज्य ने गांधी और टैगोर की विरासत का हक खो दिया है.अगर अब तक यह साबित नहीं था तो अब हो गया है कि भारत की ‘संसदीय लोकतांत्रिक राजनीति’ का मुहावरा उग्र और कठोर राष्ट्रवाद का है. और राजनीतिक दलों में इस भाषा में महारत हासिल करने की होड़ सी लग गयी है.

Continue reading राष्ट्रवादी न्याय से करुणा की विदाई →

Bad ideas, Culture, Everyday Life, Genders, Language, Violence/Conflict

The Languages of Sexual Violence: Anupama Mohan

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Guest post by ANUPAMA MOHAN

I teach a big word in my critical theory classes: phallogocentrism. It is the idea that our societies are centred by the phallus and language (logos) and is a word that often scares, perplexes, and disturbs my students, but I unpack it using an example. In English, the word seminal, which means something important and path-breaking, derives from “semen” and in contrast, the word hysterical or hysteria, which is a word that has for long been associated with peculiarly female physical and mental disorders (and often used for recommending women’s confinement), derives from “hystera” or the womb. What does such loading of the language – what a 20th century Russian thinker, Mikhail Bakhtin, called the formation of the verbal ideological world  – in terms of the perspective, validation, and supremacizing of one gender over the other do to/in our varied lives? Think of the word vanilla that, at least since the 1970s, has meant the ordinary and bland: its etymology derives from the Latin word for vagina (vaina) or “little vagina” for the pods of the plant that reminded someone of women’s genitals. The word porcelain – a thin, fragile kind of clay – too comes from the word for “cowrie shell” whose Italian links to porcella or young sow (a female pig) for someone recalled the shape of a piglet’s orifice. One more: the word amazon which refers to a legendary race of female warriors and has come to mean a strong woman derives possibly from many sources: from the Classical Greek a-mazos or breastless to the Iranian *ama-janah or “virility-killing” – a meaning that interprets the idea of women’s strength as both a mutilation of her physical self and/or as a threat to men. Continue reading The Languages of Sexual Violence: Anupama Mohan →

Images, Language, Sex, Violence/Conflict

Delhi Gang Rape – Understanding the Structure of Violence: Esha Shah

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Guest post by ESHA SHAH

The social, political and legal debates that have followed the gruesome incident of gang rape in Delhi on 16 December – including the debates on the recently published report of Justice Verma Commission widely hailed for its revolutionary character – have not sufficiently engaged with the structure of violence perpetrated in the act of brutality. In forging the solidarity against the suffering, there is a popular tendency to externalise the act of barbarity causing this suffering as demonic and hence out of this world. For instance, one of the posters in the protests that followed the incident read “your suffering is my suffering” – in the same poster it was demanded that those who caused this suffering were narpishach and should be hanged. The pain of the victim is shared collective pain, but the brutality of the act is certainly not the shared collective responsibility. In the preliminary remarks below I want to argue that we need to revise the nature of power asserted in the act of brutality, and in doing so we need to not only convert the demonic caricatures as flesh and blood human beings produced by this world but also to embed their acts into deep-rooted structures of violence in our society.

Continue reading Delhi Gang Rape – Understanding the Structure of Violence: Esha Shah →

Debates, Identities, Language, Theory

Corruption and Political Correctness: A Severe Case of Intellectual Laziness: Meera Ashar

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Guest post by MEERA ASHAR

Ashis Nandy has been called, rather, accused of being, many things—sociologist, historian, political theorist, public intellectual, philosopher, psychoanalyst, leftist, centrist, right wing, Dalit, Christian, Brahmanical, casteist (he describes himself, more poetically, as an intellectual street fighter and reason buster)—but ‘politically correct’ has never been one of them.

This time, Nandy’s political incorrectness has cost him more than before. As in the past, he has been attacked by politicians and the popular media for presenting his analysis of social phenomena—for doing his job well. The response of the Indian intelligentsia to Nandy’s threatened arrest by the right wing government of Gujarat in 2008 was markedly different from the response now. The difference this time, of course, is that Nandy has not offended the right people. He is seen to have betrayed the marginalized. This time, he has been unfashionably politically incorrect. The similarity between the two episodes is the ‘freedom of speech’ brigade, which has dutifully stood by Nandy. But I shall turn to them later.

Continue reading Corruption and Political Correctness: A Severe Case of Intellectual Laziness: Meera Ashar →

Bad ideas, Culture, Debates, Language, Law, Media politics, Scams

Ashis Nandy’s Predicament and Ours

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For the past few days I have been preoccupied in one part of my mind in dealing with two reasons for anguish. The first reason has to do with the profound sense of disappointment and anger with which I heard Prof. Ashis Nandy, a man I consider to be a great teacher, friend and in possession of one of the finest minds of our time, commit himself in public to a flippant and vulgar position when speaking of the relationship between caste and corruption at the Jaipur Literary Festival.

I was saddened because Prof. Nandy’s statements do a great disservice to the suppleness and ethical integrity of his thinking, and represent one of those sadly paradoxical situations where an intellectual can become their own worst adversary. I am unambiguously critical of the Nandy who chooses to be pompously opinionated and misinformed at a forum like the Jaipur Literary Festival or while riding the hot-air currents of television especially because I remain a partisan of the Nandy who can be (when he chooses to be) one of the most thoughtful and insightful witnesses to our time in his writing. Continue reading Ashis Nandy’s Predicament and Ours →

Capitalism, Debates, Everyday Life, Genders, Language, Movements, Sex

Patriarchy, Women’s Freedom and Capitalism: Kavita Krishnan

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Guest post by KAVITA KRISHNAN

(This article began as a rejoinder to Hindi columnist Raj Kishor [Vaam se dakshin tak ek hi tark, (‘The same argument from Left to Right’), Rashtriya Sahara, January 13 2013], but it has also provided an occasion to address some common misconceptions about women’s freedom and capitalism.)

When women demand ‘freedom,’ why does it immediately raise the spectre of ‘licentiousness’?
Why, in other words, is women’s freedom automatically taken by many as equivalent with ‘licence,’ whereas the similar freedom on the part of men is never branded as ‘licence’?

This question arose in my mind after reading a piece by Hindi columnist Raj Kishor. Raj Kishor’s argument is that those – from Left leaders like I, to those whom he sees as representatives of the market – who are calling for women’s freedom are ‘consigning women into the fire of capitalism.’ When he hears me use the word ‘azaadi’ (freedom) he calls such freedom ‘utshrnkhalta’ (literally ‘unbridled-ness’, or licentiousness). He says and I, and the capitalist market alike, are calling for women to be free to ‘break all bounds of licentiousness’ if they so choose. Of course, Raj Kishor anticipates my criticism of his use of the word ‘utshrnkhalta’, since he says that is a word that ‘has feminists up in arms, demanding with red (infuriated) eyes the definition of ‘utshrnkhalta’.

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Language, Media politics

Three kinds of news: Ali Aftab Saeed

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Lahore-based journalist-singer ALI AFTAB SAEED explains how we can classify news into three kinds, and how doing so helps us make better sense of the world. He says at the end this is true not just of Pakistan – indeed, this is a very useful classification to understand the Indian medial landscape as well!