“All wars are fought in the name of religion”, so said my grandfather. I can’t remember if that were during the doodle bug years, when we lived in the dugout at the bottom of the garden, or when I was going to the pukka school nearby, where my classmates were nearly all Jews.
The Kalasha people of the North-Western Frontier province of Pakistan have forever been exploited. Timber mafia, tourism mafia, development mafia, and so forth. Now the federal and provincial governments, as well as the local district council, are working hard to relieve poverty, implement good projects and protect the rights of the Kalasha, as well as their culture and heritage.
The Kalasha did not reckon on foreign editors wishing to use them for their own interests. True, I have seen false statements about the Kalasha in the Pakistan press, but that is usually due to ignorance rather than any nefarious motives. Usually, these stories are by young eager reporters, who do not check their facts, or by writers who do a story but do not actually travel to the area.
Recently, I experienced two incidents that were evidence of dishonest behavior on the part of editors of the foreign press. Two American journalists emailed me. They wanted to come to the Kalash valleys. They had logged on to our NGO website. They were keen to get a story. Would I help them? Of course. Delighted. Then slowly the questions came. At first they did not get to the point, it was circled around, but I began to get the gist of what was going on in their minds. They wanted to do a story of the Kalash surrounded by Islam. When I told them conversions were only two or three a year, the emails began to drop off. Suddenly these two American journalists were no longer interested in the Kalash valleys.
This was followed by a call and email from a journalist on a British newspaper. He would love to do a story on the Kalash. After a moment or two, he blurted out, “And what about the conversions?”
Oh, about two to three a year, I suppose, I answered.
His voice lost its enthusiasm. Would another story on the Kalash be of interest? I could facilitate his journey. His voice faltered. Well, his editor would probably not be interested. Obviously, preconceived ideas are not the basis of honest journalism.
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