THE POWER OF NEWSPRINT

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/27/the-power-of-newsprint/

• Publishers appear to be unaware of this potent tool in their hands

Pakistan, with its poor literacy figures, needs to improve them by making a concerted “one, two, three…Pull!” effort, because literacy is important. Studies show that literacy impacts on population growth, its health and the mental state of individuals.

Education is one of the best things a person can possess, but there can be no formal education without literacy. So, while both are crucial, literacy is the more urgent of the two.

Teaching a person to read isn’t easy. In a positive development there is much more and better reading material available now than there was a few years ago: colourful, well-illustrated books for children using clearly written letters and words, and for adults, books with interesting but simple content to encourage a reading habit. The OUP (Oxford University Press) has made some great contributions in this context. But still, the most easily available reading material is a newspaper.

Hot roasted peanuts, channa choor, fabric, dishes… these and many other things are wrapped in newspapers in lieu of bags; newspapers are also a commonly used packing material in crates of fruit and are used in many other ways. This makes a newspaper the single most likely reading material to be freely available in even a poor, illiterate household.

Yet newspaper publishers appear to be unaware of this potent tool in their hands, and a glance at the average Urdu newspapers is enough to drive one to despair. Letters scrambling one on top of the other, interwoven with vines, squiggles, curlicues, and other elaborate decorative items… what a waste of a resource, and what an example of thoughtlessness.

There are government schools and colleges, but private educational facilities for the disadvantaged sector of society are more than a match for what the government provides. There are many Trusts, individuals and NGOs involved in the field and they are doing excellent work. No one can say that people are either unaware or negligent regarding the importance of literacy. But still, a lot of work needs to be done. The point about newspapers being crucial is worth considering.

Perhaps newspaper owners throughout the country could put their heads together and come up with a plan at very little cost to themselves?

The desperate situation we find ourselves in in this country calls for cunning measures. With the population where it is at present, few people are likely to have funds left over after housing and feeding the family to invest in books and school. People who can afford them buy books, but they generally don’t give these books away. Newspapers on the other hand are either thrown away or sold off. Which only means that a person with a newspaper will not mind giving away segments or even the entire paper to someone who needs it. So, even though newspapers may not be a conventional aid to literacy, nothing prevents them from being a creative and viable route towards achieving it. For adults looking to learn English, newspapers with news regarding everyday life may be more interesting than stories, because they deal with every individual’s day to day concerns. It might be more interesting to read about Imran Khan and his U-turns, about why the CJP imagines he should be allowed to dock people’s salaries for the purpose of making a dam, and about the Kartarpur corridor …than about how Surayya’s doll was both short and fat, and whatever else it was.

Perhaps newspaper owners throughout the country could put their heads together and come up with a plan at very little cost to themselves? Perhaps they could each devote a very small section of their newspaper for the use of people with poorer reading skills. This applies to English and Urdu papers both, but Urdu papers might also re-assess the font they use, and how to make it easier to read. A student trying to learn from an Urdu paper has started sticking a little symbol rather like a dangling earring under her words. When I asked her why she pointed to the daily Urdu newspaper lying beside her and said: It’s like this one, here.

She was right. It was there, everywhere, and it didn’t make any sense in the newspaper either.

EDUCATION - OF THE 'AZAAN BAJ RAHA HAI VARIETY'

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/19/education-of-the-azaan-baj-raha-hai-variety/

• U-turns all around?

The various convent schools dotted across the country used to produce what we were pleased to consider an elite; in the case of female students that meant women known for deportment and cheesecake, best described as ladies of the ‘azaan baj raha hai’ variety able to speak English better than their mother tongue.

Aitchison was even then in a class of its own, producing young men who looked impressive on horses; able to mount a horse on one side without falling off the other. They were also skilled with a polo stick.

Someone probably realised that the fledgling nation was hardly in crying need of such skills. A different set of skills were needed. So, a new batch of schools appeared and proliferated, the Beaconhouses, City Schools, LGS etal.

Like the schools mentioned above the education these newer schools provide is of an international standard. Most students enrolled here get through O and A levels and continue to higher studies at home or abroad.

All these schools however address the needs of just the few. The majority, as always, is ignored.

And still, those different set of skills needed by the fledgling nation are not to be seen.

The convents were not expensive, but it was hard to get admission in one unless you were related to someone who was someone. Aitchison was never affordable, and the newer schools are not affordable at all. None of these institutions provide what this country needs most: an equal opportunity for all its students. The deep, very deep chasm that runs through this society and pulls it apart remains, only now it is deeper than before.

Just as it is wrong to foster a minority that has very little in common with the majority, it is not the best idea to produce a set of young people with a great deal of academic but no life skills. In this country, members of the elite would generally not know what to do if a set of plyers were to fall into their hands. Not that a set of plyers would forget itself so far as to do that. And, of course, there’s always the lucky matter of mummy knowing of a very good plumber…

They do nothing around the house, and summer jobs are almost unheard of. Life starts at two in the afternoon and ends at four in the morning. Rather a waste of an education? That fact that Pakistan is a poor country, now also a malnourished one, skittered across their horizon at some stage, but then it disappeared because there are few reminders in such a pampered life. Even the beggars that come knocking at car doors are invisible because these children have phones in their hands. All things practical are learnt during higher studies overseas where this chasm does not exist, or at least not to such an extent. Because yes, that is the sad thing, that these children, educated lopsidedly as they may be, are, after all’s said and done, educated. And they leave the country taking that education with them.

The Supreme Court and the High Court of Sindh in their combined wisdom have suspended the registration of some schools because of their high fees which – annually – rises more than it is allowed to rise

But who, given a choice, would live in the same country as Khadim Hussain Rizvi, one of the many markers at which the government made a U-turn, today a move much touted by our PM, but more of that anon.

The government run schools in Pakistan are most of them abysmal. Graduates come away with no language skills – either mother tongue or that of strangers, and next to no understanding of geography, science, or much of anything else. Practical skills are learnt on the job.

The country needs more schools where students are taught life skills in addition to academics. One such school – there may be others – is the Chand Bagh School, in Muridke, about 40 km from Lahore. It is a residential school with a reasonable fee — which would still be out of reach of the common man, but the school itself provides some two hundred scholarships to address that problem. In addition to academics, students are taught plumbing, electrical skills, gardening, and even though they are boys… cooking. It is a laudable effort, and that is what we need.

The Supreme Court and the High Court of Sindh in their combined wisdom have suspended the registration of some schools because of their high fees which – annually – rises more than it is allowed to rise. Thousands of students across the country have been cast into a dilemma regarding their education. Clearly, official understanding of this issue is that one must shut down what is available instead of providing alternatives.

Of course, the suspension of registration will not last long because students belonging to these schools belong to rich families, the only currency that never dips in Pakistan – and someone or the other will use their clout to put things back on course. The courts will, in short, do a U-turn then, which according to our PM is the best example of leadership, or else we all stand in danger of being defeated, like Hitler or Napoleon.

Well, Hitler is beyond the pale, but Napoleon, despite his lack of U-turns, had several achievements which are best described in this passage by Wiki:

‘Napoleon’s influence on the modern world brought liberal reforms to the numerous territories that he conquered and controlled. He implemented fundamental liberal policies in France and throughout Western Europe. His Napoleonic Code has influenced the legal systems of more than 70 nations around the world. British historian Andrew Roberts states: “The ideas that underpin our modern world—meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on—were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman Empire”.’

All this without a single U-turn. Tut. If the Supreme Court of Pakistan or the current government can achieve one tenth of this, particularly in the field of education, or any field really, I’ll eat my hat. I may not wear it, but I do possess one. I was after all once at CJM.

WHO'S THE 'THEY' THEY SPEAK OF?

this column was printed in the paper but was not published online.

Anyone following the trajectory of Imran Khan’s rise to prominence must wish, most arduously, that he’d settled back into a semi-private existence after retiring from cricket. He could have made occasional forays into the public eye to sign autographs and perhaps write a book or two instructing Botham and Lamb on how not to be racist, but that’s it. Instead he went on to build a Cancer Hospital. Fame is a heady experience.

The Shaukat Khanum University Hospital is a great achievement and has turned out to Imran Khan’s credit, a lifesaver for countless people who could otherwise not have afforded the care this hospital provides. But with SKUH the captain appears to have peaked, and thereafter ‘captain’ has been replaced by ‘Taliban Khan.’ Sadly, a great portion of his electorate was unable to get the charismatic captain out of their mind, and the man who refused to condemn the Taliban and insisted he would negotiate with them stood for elections, and with the support of these fans has been able to form a government in this country.

Pakistan can ill afford a man of Khan’s uninformed grasp of politics, beset as it is by itself and others. Mr. Khan thinks in terms of slogans and knee jerk reactions due to inattention to planning; he imagines the country can be run by such means, very much like the very people we most need to shake off. Such inept politics has managed to place the government on the back foot, more than at any other time. Had ‘they’ searched from this pitch to that, they would not have found as ideal a stooge to serve as front man.

It’s a moot point exactly who the ‘they’ are. The usual ‘they’ appear to have had little to say, when as Irfan Hussain points out in a major daily, they were on the blasting end recently. That is something that has never happened before. So who exactly benefits from the PMs random bouncers here, there and everywhere, and his predilection for all things right of centre?

Could it be that Pakistan has finally done what it has been trying to do since it came into being, and like the Americans given the country’s helm into the hands of someone who is holding the ship fully on course to the bottom of the sea? Will ‘they’ stand forth then, as Saviours and steer the nation towards…heaven knows what. Or is it that by allowing themselves to appear outdone ‘they’ are not actually outdone? That ‘their’ aims and the aims of Pakistan’s foul-mouthed Voldemort actual dovetail? It isn’t difficult to imagine where they converge and what one gains from the other’s success; the prospect is frightening, yet that is the most likely scenario. Because dharnas like the ones our PM set into fashion for his own ends, without a thought for the losses incurred by the nation, do not and cannot just occur. They take finances, and finances, in this country, are most of them in ‘their’ hands.

Have they overstepped their intentions though? Because since the latest three-day bout of savage violence up and down the country, the common man incurred so much loss as a result of shutdowns and road blockages that the narrative has changed with the suddenness of a game in which the team most cheered-on has been caught tampering with the ball. Or match fixing. Or threatening the umpire. Or whatever-ing in that vein. You wonder if Mr. Khan is aware that most of his die-hard fans who voted for him because “well, there is no one else after all!” or because “we need a change,” or because “he did a great job with the hospital, maybe he’ll do as well by the country,” or “lets see this ‘naya Pakistan’ he speaks of,” have since been eating their words as if there were no tomorrow. Very likely there isn’t, and if there is it won’t be pleasant.

See – and this is an important observation: nobody likes to finance their dreams themselves, and that too as brutally as people have had to do during the latest dharna, only to find that – lo and behold! Those dreams are still somewhere in the dim and uncertain future.

And also, because most people, uneducated and uninformed they may be, dislike the sort of language they heard from persons who claim to uphold the will of the Prophet (pbuh).

So, IK needs to be aware that as when a beautiful woman looks in the mirror and finds (gasp) a wrinkle on her nose, his charisma, based on much the same theme, has lost a great deal of the grip it possessed at the outset. You wonder if that is what ‘they’ wanted and he will now be cast aside as unnecessary, or was it all a big boo-boo in the general scheme of scheming? Who knows.

WILL THE REAL BLASPHEMY PLEASE STAND UP?

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/11/05/will-the-real-blasphemy-please-stand-up/

• What kind of government allows itself to be hamstrung and held hostage this way?

On 19 August 2014 Imran Khan was addressing a huge rally in Islamabad during the course of which he yelled — as he does — that the IMF and the World Bank should not give further loans to the then government of Pakistan. He threatened that if any loans were given they would be turned down. At another rally just before his party came into power he offered to do himself in if his government ever forgot itself so far as to seek such loans. Now, his government has done exactly that, and the gentleman continues amongst the living. You’d think experience would have taught him not to utter such words without thinking first. Obviously the words taste good, otherwise why make a habit of uttering them before turning around and eating them? But such forbearance takes foresight.

At his inauguration speech the PM made some very commendable remarks regarding the equality of all citizens, before appointing Atif Mian to the Economic Council a few days later. Very soon after he caved in to pressure — as he does — and took back the appointment because of Mian’s affiliation with a much persecuted group of citizens.

And there is Asia bibi. Most people breathed a sigh of relief when she left prison, and prayed that she and her family would leave the country as speedily as possible for their safety. The PMs most recent speech followed Asia Bibi’s acquittal. It was a firm speech, such as you can imagine a cricket captain delivering, saying that any member of his team caught ball tampering would be ousted from the team, end of story. He said no person could go against the writ of the State. If they did they would be dealt with sternly. Yet the bearded ones and their cohorts continued breaking, screaming, burning, beating, until the government went into a huddle with the rioters. As expected the PM did a U-Turn and ate his words. He’s getting adept at that.

So now we have Asia, a lady who spent many years in prison under a death sentence as a result of a questionable accusation from a questionable source, an accusation that was never proved. She was released from prison only to be placed on the exit control list. She is stuck in this country where she and her entire family are under imminent danger of being murdered by rabid sections of society. Whither firm moves?

A free citizen’s movements cannot be restricted without just cause, also by law. Asia and her family have not committed a crime so they cannot be placed on the ECL, by law

The group of persons implicated in the riots is the TLP a registered and recognised far right political party. The first mistake was of registering them. That was committed by the ECP. By negotiating with them not only has the PM gone back on his assurances but he has given such parties a boost, a power which tells then that if they break and burn and utter enough threats they can pretty much get whatever they want. Government, courts, laws, all be blowed.

What kind of government allows itself to be hamstrung and held hostage this way?

The government has caved in to the demands of a set of persons who has called for the murder of the Chief Justice of Pakistan among other violence.

Is the government aware that they have negotiated with a group of persons who have enough against them to place them in custody without further investigation, seeing that incitement to murder and violence is a crime, and is caught on video?

The government has also agreed to restart proceedings against Asia, when a verdict by the Supreme Court cannot be taken back to court by law.

A free citizen’s movements cannot be restricted without just cause, also by law. Asia and her family have not committed a crime so they cannot be placed on the ECL, by law.

One of the stated aims of the TLP is to confront and punish blasphemy against the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

So far, the only blasphemy has been committed by the TLP itself when it claims that its actions are sanctioned by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). He was a man who believed in forgiveness, education, persuasion and peace. Witness the name Islam. If all else failed the Prophet (PBUH) was asked to say, “To you is your way, to me is mine,” and carry on with life.

To see the country’s elected government hijacked by a party based on violence is bad enough. To see one’s most beloved Prophet’s injunctions so trampled upon is quite another matter. He taught us to use force for a rightful cause only if there was no other means of defense possible. All of this has been violated here.

This, that is being shoved under our noses, is a caricature of Islam. Which then is the actual blasphemy?

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF THEIR MINDS

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/10/22/out-of-sight-out-of-their-minds/

• Culture of violence

On December 14 2012, in Connecticut in the USA, a twenty year old man shot and killed his mother, then twenty children between six and seven years of age and six members of staff at their elementary school at Sandy Hook before shooting himself dead. It was the deadliest shooting at an American school. It was found that the shooter had Asperger’s Syndrome and had suffered from depression, anxiety, compulsive obsessive disorder and a preoccupation with violence. Under the State’s laws he was old enough to possess a rifle or shotgun but too young to possess a handgun. A large quantity of all of these and semi-automatic weapons were found on him, in the school and in his car.

The old school was demolished after the massacre, and now, a new Sandy Hook Elementary School building costing 20 million dollars is ready to welcome back its students. It does have heavy duty windows and a high-tech security system but there are also courtyards, study spaces made to look like treehouses, a raingarden, and also: ultra-safe ‘soothing’ classrooms all set to give students a ‘great big hug’ when they walk through the doors.

In the meantime, many cases of gun violence later the US has been unable to set any restrictions on the possession of arms. The National Rifle Association, the NRA, has too strong a lobby and is well able to protect its interests. So, God forbid should any such thing happen again, at least the victims will have been hugged when they walked into school. It hurts to be flippant about such a matter but the intention is better than these words.

In short what has happened in Sandy Hook is that the issue of gun violence and the ready availability of guns has been hidden behind an expensive new cover and words that mask the seriousness of the problem.

It needs no stretch of imagination to extend this analogy to many places and issues, including to what is happening in Pakistan, where the very serious matter of harassment of women by men is put aside, instead of which whether or not women shroud themselves in chaddors and burkas is focused upon. The claim is that this is demanded by Islam, that women who don’t shroud themselves deserve harassment. Meantime nothing is done to change the male mindset which if it were as it should be, would not hurt a woman – or any other human being – regardless of dress. Nothing is done to prevent men from hurting and harassing women. Men in this society possess the clout and attitude that the NRA does, and nothing appears to dent it.

At a recent incident at the Punjab Secretariat a guard denied women entry unless they were wearing a dupatta. He said women would be allowed to go in so long as they had a dupatta on their person, even if it were slung over one shoulder like a sash

There are a thousand examples to bear out this observation about the attitude. Such as the official calendar published by the Punjab Bar Council which contains the Bar Council’s logo at the top of each page. The page for the 6th October of this calendar bears the following words of wisdom: The society that gives its women too much freedom will definitely regret its mistake one day.

Not only does the statement sound ominously like a threat, but it has nothing to do with the law, or with justice, or with anything to do with the Bar Council. It is grossly misogynistic and brutish which makes it both illegal and unjust. It casts a slur upon women as something that must be kept contained like a disease, and nowhere mentions the fact that those who impede the freedom of women are the ones who must be curtailed instead. Such as those who provide the guns should be the ones to be stopped.

At a recent incident at the Punjab Secretariat a guard denied women entry unless they were wearing a dupatta. He said women would be allowed to go in so long as they had a dupatta on their person, even if it were slung over one shoulder like a sash. He also claimed that the directive was a new one and had been issued by the provincial minister for primary and secondary healthcare Dr Yasmeen Rashid.

Dr Rashid refuted the guard’s claim, and said she had issued no such order. It is to be seen whether those orders were some kind of a practical ‘joke’ by someone whose idea of funny is to drive around the city passing lewd remarks at women. The guard, when passing on the false orders appeared to be courteous enough. Wherever they came from, they are as sharp an illustration of the way people think in this country where making women invisible and keeping them out of sight is supposed to cure the problem, like making a school pretty, colourful and welcoming is supposed to cure gun violence in the US.

JARNDYCE and JARNDYCE vs DECOY DETONATOR

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/10/15/jarndyce-and-jarndyce-vs-decoy-detonator/

• Time to do the right thing

With just a couple of months to go till retirement, the CJP has thrown himself into his mohim to fix the country and bring it onto some kind of track. With a pack of photographers and hangers-on in tow he arrives unannounced at institutions and questions personnel on the premises about the institution’s administration, and contribution to society. He does this with the best will in the world, one is sure, and the zeal of a reformer, although you wonder what set the zeal in motion so all of a sudden, and why the aggressive stance, but oh well. It isn’t clear what but something’s going on. If you’ve read the Harry Potter books these incidents smack of Weasley’s Decoy Detonators which are little objects that run around letting off bangs and puffs of smoke, creating diversions where required. What the bangs and smoke are hiding… in Harry Potter it could be something quite sinister, like He Who Must Not Be Named. Real life is often quite out of a book.

But the CJP is right. Everything needs fixing. Not least of all the judiciary, which seems to have been included in the list at the last moment as if it had suddenly occurred to someone as something that had best be mentioned too.

The legal situation in Pakistan smacks of Dickens’ Jarndyce vs Jarndyce in Bleak House, a case that dragged on and on. Dickens describes it like this:

Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, over the course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit. The little plaintiff or defendant, who was promised a new rocking-horse when Jarndyce and Jarndyce should be settled, has grown up, possessed himself of a real horse, and trotted away into the other world. Fair wards of court have faded into mothers and grandmothers; a long procession of Chancellors has come in and gone out.

There are several cases this reminds one of but none as much as the case of Asia Bibi. Please CJP, settle this before you go if you want to earn that medal of a knight in shining armour.

Aasiya Bibi is a 47 year old Christian woman who has been in prison since 2009, ten long years, made that much longer for Asia as a woman with five young children, who like the wards of Jarndyce have grown older while their mother’s sentence drags on. A death sentence hangs over Asia’s head but has been postponed several times following appeals.

The reason for Aasiya’s incarceration appears to be an accusation of blasphemy made against her by a woman already involved in a tu tu mai mai (unpleasant disagreement) with Aasiya’s family regarding damage to property. Aasiya’s crime was said to be drinking water from the same cup as some Muslim women, which they claim is not allowed in Islam. Really? My daughter in law is Christian. She and I have no such hang ups. But then of course she is white which is categorised differently.

In response she was thrown into prison. Is that really what our Prophet (pbuh) did, or what he would have done? What an ideal opportunity to have thrown away, if one must proselytise at such a point, of enumerating the Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) great deeds and forgiving nature, how he would never belittle another person’s beliefs to start with, or treat a woman like Aasiya had been treated, how he was kindness incarnate, and just and merciful as well.

What the CJP and Imran Khan’s government does in the case of Aasiya Bibi is likely to be the pivotal point of judgment with reference to them. You hope they will have the strength of character to do humane justice by her.

IT WAS THE BEST OF TIMES, IT WAS THE WORST OF TIMES

https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2018/10/06/it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times/

Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation shows how far the #metoo movement still has to go

Despite protests by thousands against his appointment, Mr. Brett Kavanaugh appears set to be confirmed to the American Supreme Court with undecided Republican Senators announcing to vote ‘yes’. But the imbroglio involving Kavanaugh and his accuser Dr. Christine Blasey Ford has added one more pebble to the well, raising the water level a tad higher for women in the struggle against sexual exploitation. It’s a shot in the arm for the Me Too campaign, even if Kavanaugh is nominated.

It is an emotive issue, an explosive one, in which almost every positive has a negative, but in the end, it is a winner because it empowers women to speak out against sexual exploitation.

Sexual exploitation is nothing new. It takes place in every society to a lesser or greater extent. It is probably women’s physical frailty that causes it. That, and the fact that with countless exceptions, men appear to be ego-bound for which nurture and not nature is at fault. What makes a difference in this battle – as in others, are justice and the law.

It makes you cringe when a potential judge of the Supreme Court is accused of sexual aggression, not for the first time either. Any judgement given by such a man, unless the accusation against him is proven wrong, would always be suspect.

It makes you cringe when a potential judge of the Supreme Court is accused of sexual aggression, not for the first time either. Any judgement given by such a man, unless the accusation against him is proven wrong, would always be suspect.

Women who accuse men of sexual exploitation are almost always accused of being attention seeking.

In the case of Dr. Ford, this does not smack true. Mr. Kavanaugh has served as a judge for the US Court of Appeal for the DC Circuit since 2003, to which position he was nominated by President Bush, Jr. Dr. Ford had time to accuse him then, but she did not, even though she did not know if she would get another chance. The Supreme Court appointment appears to have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Yet all things taken into account there is no way to prove either the accusation or the rebuttal. Yes, Kavanaugh’s ranting rebuttal of the accusation was enough to set up most people’s back, that and the fact that he is Trump’s nominee. The indecent manner in which he was defended by Trump also works against him. And yes Dr. Ford’s clean record and a testimony that appeared extremely genuine gains support.

But these are all subjective reactions. There is no proof, and that is what is most required for justice. That’s the damning thing.

Issam Ahmed in his well-written report for AFP has presented different views held by participants at the recent rally against Mr. Kavanaugh in DC. Among these was a Ms. Robinson who does not believe Dr. Ford. She says, “I have a son and a daughter. I wouldn’t want my son treated like Kavanaugh, and I wouldn’t want my daughter saying that somebody assaulted her and not have any evidence of the fact.”

I couldn’t agree more with that last bit. No one who has children would wish something like this to happen to them.

But Ms. Robinson appears to have missed a crucial point, that had someone really assaulted her daughter, Ms. Robinson would be the first to want her daughter to have the ability to bring the incident to light.

Also, that if Mr. Kavanaugh has really committed the acts he is accused of, is he the best person for the job of a supreme court judge? What price justice in a country where such persons dispense it?

The American constitution does not place any criteria upon the appointment of a supreme court judge, which is at the discretion of the President and the support of the senate. For those who argue that there ought to be stipulations there is the example of ‘sadiq and ameen’ in Pakistan, which is about the most misused stipulation in existence.

Such cases are important for Pakistan where sexual aggression is probably more common than in many countries, where women are muzzled by society and prevented from speaking up, and men get away with anything.

At the same time one would hope that one’s judge would be free of such accusations.

At the same time yet again, how easy is it to discredit a person by making such accusations against him or her? How many instances can we enumerate in politics and in social interaction when persons have been wrongly accused?

A crucial question is: should an accusation if it is unproven – or unprovable, be taken into consideration?

Without a doubt, accusations destroy lives. Yet all accusations must be taken into consideration and investigated. The FBI in Kavanaugh’s case has been accused of making a poor investigation.

The second question follows that while it is unproven, should such accusations be made public?

A proven accusation must be made public. But in the case of Kavanaugh vs. Ford, whether you believe this side or the other is a subjective matter, and there is no chance of an objective ruling. It would have been better to keep the issue quieter than it has been until proof is obtained. But that is easier said than done, and in this case almost impossible. Yet you wish that the media were less vociferous. But then if the media is restrained too much it creates a situation we are familiar with. And the issue would not be brought to public attention. It’s a tough one.

So really, the best thing about this incident is that women seem to be on the way to being able to speak out, which is a major win and a great thing. That, and the fact that the Me Too movement into which this case slots has started a crucial debate about what is appropriate and what is not, what can be done about it, and shown how sexual exploiters are brought down. It’s an immense deterrent and a debate that was long overdue.

Such cases are important for Pakistan where sexual aggression is probably more common than in many countries, where women are muzzled by society and prevented from speaking up, and men get away with anything. “Log kia kahain gay” what will people say, “tumhari shadi nahi hogi” you will never get married, “khandan ka mun kala ho jai ga” the family will be disgraced – such sentiments are part of the social psyche. Here, if accusations without evidence are given official credence, something they already possess to a great extent unfortunately, it is mindboggling to think of the injustice that will result.

At present Pakistan is not the best place for a woman to live. Check the polls. The only way to help women is to bring the law more into line with women’s needs so that justice can be done. It would truly be a great thing if women feel empowered to speak up. But unless they are supported by more stringent means, relevant education in schools and homes, and greater punishment for proven aggressors or those who give false evidence, none of these measures may lead very far.