Whitewashing history

acter as disagreeable. The corpulent John Reed in Charlotte Brontë’sJane eyreand a similar Mrs. Van hopper in Daphne du Maurier’ss wicked. Pudgy and victimized, Piggy in William Golding’sLord of the Fliesis sympathetic, but also weak and pitiful. So, the prejudice goes way back. And it continues, with for example J. K. Rowling’s Dudley Dursley, Aunt Marge, inharry Potterwho are loathsome, their bellies an outward manifestation of interior defects.

And let’s not forget Umbridge, Crabbe and Goyle.

There was Jabba the hutt, the bad guy in the Star Wars anthology. And ‘Fatty’ the leader of the Five Find Outers by enid Blyton who was a very good guy, and ‘The Fat Controller’ in Thomas the Tank engine who was not a bad guy at all. his real name was Sir Topham hatt. The presence of those particular other names has been criticized, however, for fat shaming, because both of them were corpulent.

ideals and values, even if a book is changed to delete one value and depict another, it would be variously acceptable…or not, to different people in society.

Changing what Dickens or Wilder said is tantamount to attempting to white-wash history. The new edition is not the way Dicken’s spoke, or the way Wilder presented her stories.

It is also important to see the struggles mankind has faced to reach the point it is at now. When the struggle is successful it is useful to know how that success was achieved, to study the methods and analyse them for application to other such issues. When the struggle is ongoing, or has failed then too it is useful to be able to study the process. This is how man learns, starting in childhood.

M. A. Niazi

Joint Editor Umar Aziz Executive Editor

Mian Rauf

The constitution of a country is meant to be a permanent document or a lasting charter and the judicial organ of the government is entrusted with the powers to uphold and safeguard its sanctity. Alexander hamilton, one of the authors of the Federalist Papers, described the judiciary as the least dangerous branch of the government. he meant that it cannot significantly damage the rights of the citizens. If there is no independent judiciary, there will be arbitrary government.

Obedience to the Constitution under Article 5 of the Constitution of Islamic Republic of Pakistan is an inviolable obligation of every citizen and organ of the government. A conscious or deliberate disregard of a constitutional mandate or requirement is nothing short of “subversion” of the Constitution which amounts to “high Treason” under Article 6 of the Constitution. In contemporary Pakistan, the judiciary is playing its parts to preserve the constitution, democracy and the security of the state when faith in country’s all institutions except judiciary has evaporated.

There is so much political turmoil in the country and nothing is being done by our political leaders and other powerful players to address the situation. If democracy has not flourished in this country as was expected, then part of the blame of this malady lies upon the chosen representatives who sit in the parliament. The common man has suffered and continues to suffer on account of the institutions in the country not discharging their responsibilities in accordance with their Constitutional and legal mandate.

With the early dissolution of the Punjab and KP assemblies, a debate has started in Pakistan over the issue of appointing the date for holding of general elections to the two Provincial Assemblies. The election Commission of Pakistan and Punjab governor have shirked their constitutional responsibilities by throwing ball in each other’s court. Article 218 entrust the election commission with the following duty: “ it shall be the duty of the election Commission constituted in relation to an election to organize and conduct and to make arrangements as are necessary to ensure that the election is conducted, honestly, fairly, and in accordance with law, and that the corrupt practices are guarded”. The constitutional provisions on holding of general elections and the election Act, 2017 are very clear and unambiguous but the matter was made complicated unnecessarily. The election Commission was written a letter by the President of Pakistan and the former was reminded its constitutional and statutory duty to announce poll date after consultation with the latter, but the

IT is impossible to adapt the world to a single set of values. There will always be a wide variety of opinions. One must take that or leave it, like it or not. The options are to block our eyes and ears, or live in a cave.

And yet, the act of trying to force everyone onto a uniform platform is familiar for us here. But what about this current attempt in some Western countries to force the literature of the past to confirm to the opinions of the present?

As it happens, this practice is nothing new. Roald Dahl and his books might have come more intensely under the public eye recently because of their publisher’s attempt to sanitize his language, but there were other similar cases which seem to have escaped the uproar the changes to Dahl’s books have caused.

Six books by Dr. Seuss are no longer published because they contain images said to be racist and insensitive. Cat in the hat seems to have escaped the ire of the literary mullahs. enid Blyton’s popular The Magic Faraway Tree series has been edited to cut out the kids having adventures on their own, without adult supervision.

The children’s name in that book have also been changed, Bessie and Fanny to Beth and Frannie, and Jo, the boy to the more valid spelling in current days, Joe, for a boy. As for Rick, he was known as Dick in the original text; his name has been changed for obvious but unnecessary reasons, even though Dick Cheney still retains his name and fails to attract the giggles his name is apparently supposed to.

And then, as Lionel Shriver in The Cut points out that in literature, ‘fat has persistently marked a char-

Other books have faced that ire, for example the Babar the elephant series, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little house on the Prairie series, the first because they were said to be a celebration of colonialism, and the second for a stereotyping of Native Americans.

In the C S Monitor, Gay Andrew Dillin reminds us that in the 1980s, Judy Blume, a best-selling writer of children’s books wrote about several subjects that tend to get various reactions, such as homosexuality, the female body, menstruation, racial prejudice, cruelty among peers…etc. And there was her most popular book: ‘Are you there, God? Its me, Margaret.’

The very name suggests an “Uh-Oh! Be careful!”

Blume’s books have come under repeated attack, to which Judy Blume’s response was worth thinking about. She said, ‘“You don’t teach values. Values are there. You absorb them. One doesn’t say, ‘I’m going to teach you these values.’ Children absorb them by watching their parents’ behavior. If your parents say one thing and do another, the values they are teaching their children is by doing, not by saying.”

And that is a most important point.

Once a book is published, it comes into the public domain and ought to be out of the publisher’s hands; he/she should no longer have the right to edit it.

Over the ages, we have had different values, and different ways of expressing ourselves. Words that were once considered acceptable, are no longer so, generally with valid reason. But to pass on these values to our children is the job of parents and teachers, not the job of Penguin house, or Simon and Schuster. Because we and our children belong to a varied group with different