Submitted by Amir Jafri, Dec 6, 2007 09:18

No matter my impatience to get history lessons from international print hustlers, Gupta clearly understands that Jinnah's drinking was as irrelevant to the Indian politics as was Nehru's fondness for women and/or Gaandhi's relations with his or other people's children. The point was not that he "revealed" Jinnah drank; there are no secrets there. The point was Gupta's use of "whiskey guzzling" for a man as proper as there have been on the subcontinent political scene. He tried to make him sound, say, Laaloo, with a permanent drum of moonshine in hand. To say--with a tinge of sympathy--at this stage of our exchange that Jinnah's drinking led to his early death is feeble obduracy; it is what we call in our discipline a red herring. It has nothing to do with the venomous seepage that was evident in his otherwise taut essay, and what I addressed in my praise for Gupta's piece.

And, no, we should not spell bapu's name as "Gandhi" as the English taught Gupta and his ilk to spell it. (To this day, I haven't heard a gora sound the sounded "th" right--they sound the "daa" as in the tabooed anatomical part..) Further, as a "brown man's burden" it our duty to spell it to accentuate and stretch the vowel as we understand it in the hope that the Westerners and their bandmasters may understand and hopefully make the effort to pronounce the sounds of our language right. If we don't do it, Kaanpoor will forever remain Cawnpore, and Mohammad, Mohamet.

I look forward to the areas that Gupta's casuistry takes us from here.

Amir Hamid Jafri, Ph.D.

Department of Communication

Davis and Elkins College

Elkins, WV 26241

(304)637-1366

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