On ‘incidents’ and other euphemisms

I don’t know whether it is the postcolonial remnants of Victorian propriety, self-censorship, or an attempt to mimic ostriches, but in Pakistan, we have a bizarre proclivity to euphemise things.

Newspaper readers would be familiar with the ‘encounters’ that take place between law enforcement agencies and ‘miscreants’ on a daily basis in Karachi. Lethal gunfights against vicious criminals are distilled to sound as if two people bumped into each other fortuitously. But we read about far more than encounters in our newspapers. A rape shall heretofore be referred to as an ‘incident’. So will sexual harassment — ‘eve-teasing’ if you really want to be specific. Ask any woman who was verbally and physically assaulted in the workplace, on the streets, or at home, and she will tell you that ‘eve-teased’ would be the word to describe her ordeal.

And we have all sorts of ‘incidents’. Murders, acid attacks, riots, armed robberies, terrorist attacks are all ‘incidents’ that regularly feature in our newspapers. Recently, the Rawalpindi ‘incident’ took place, killing nine people. Why call them ‘violent sectarian riots’ when ‘incident’ suffices and you can save on the word count?

Financial scandals, protests, negotiations are always ‘matters’ that need to be ‘taken notice’ of. One always feels a tide of satisfaction when a politician ‘takes notice’ of any untoward incidences. Whether further action is taken or not ends up being less important than a politician noticing it. If the former prime minister’s son has been arrested in a scandal involving the siphoning of ephedrine from a pharmaceutical company in order to facilitate the clandestine production of methamphetamine, then he is one of the ‘parties involved’. Similarly, when the government decides to offer peace talks to militants that have killed almost 50,000 Pakistani citizens, they become ‘stakeholders’.

Plus, we’re a country dogged by ‘issues’. Whether it’s the drone issue — the problems created by the liquidation of civilians and militants by unmanned American aircraft hovering over villages and shooting Hellfire missiles below — or the Kashmir issue — the thousands of deaths incurred by a militarised conflict between two nuclear armed countries currently shooting artillery fire at each other, including over an inhabitable glacier — it seems that there are many issues that this country of ours has to confront. At least our government expressed its dismay over the drone issue by calling drones ‘counterproductive’. After such strong words, the US must have been straightened out.

We have the ‘missing persons’ issue, which sounds as if a lot of people lost their way coming back from work. This one’s particularly intriguing because they’re not really missing. We know the ‘parties involved in the matter’, and the ‘parties involved’ know where every single one of the missing persons is — alive or dead.

Another really big issue is the ‘law and order situation’. The problem is that with an ‘issue’ you already know that there is a problem. One needs to be told what the ‘law and order situation’ is, unless of course, you have been mugged, shot at, held at gunpoint, kidnapped, asked for protection money, or seen the ambulances go past you. I once received a text from a friend cancelling a lunch plan because of ‘haalaat’.

We also euphemise the identities of the people who run this country. While some are less imaginative — the ‘establishment’(the jury’s still out on whether the ‘e’ needs to be capitalised), and ‘agencies’ — than others — the ‘Deep State’ and the ‘boys’ — we have, so far, successfully subverted the term ‘government’.

The names of our regions have also been euphemised. Historically, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Gilgit-Baltistan were defined by where they were, rather than what they were. FATA, which by now should be spelt Fata, is a designation, not a name. It suits our purpose in pigeonholing the region better, but I wonder if Fatans — I’m guessing that’s what they’re called — call it Fata.

At least we can take solace in the fact that other countries also do this. When innocent civilians are killed in ‘surgical’ airstrikes, there is ‘collateral damage’. Prisoners languishing in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib suffered ‘enhanced interrogation’ and shooting at someone is ‘engaging the enemy’. Invading Iraq is ‘liberation’ and bankrupting Iran is ‘coercive diplomacy’. Being upset with economic inequality is ‘class warfare’, and a rich person is a ‘job creator’.

We bend reality, and then reality bends us. We would rather hit ourselves with a certain garden tool than call it what it is. In Pakistan, ‘incidents’ and ‘encounters’ save us from recognising the literally unacceptable erosion of our moral eyesight — and ultimately our society.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 28^th, 2013.

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