Ayesha Siddiqa’s fatuity

Ayesha Siddiqa, a Pakistani who lives in London, has praised the film Pathan in this article published in the Pakistani portal thefridaytimes.com

https://www.thefridaytimes.com/2023/02/15/how-to-watch-pathaan/

I replied to her politely on twitter asking her to read my article criticising Pathan

https://writerscafeteria.com/guest-blogging/why-justice-katju-opposes-the-pathan-movie/

In response I got a highly offensive and insulting tweet from Ayesha saying that I should use my brains before I open my mouth.

I never object to polite criticism of my views, and if Ayesha disagreed with what I said she could have certainly said so in polite language, pointing out where she thought I was wrong. But perhaps that is too much to expect from a conceited boor like Ayesha.

In her article Ayesha has written many totally irrelevant things, so we may consider her main arguments :

!. She writes ” Pathan is not just a typical blockbuster but a brilliantly brave movie that employed all the masala available to have a dialogue with today’s India and its majoritarian political overburden ”.

This pearl of wisdom is like the Biblical ‘Peace of God which passeth all understanding’ ( Philippians 4:7 ). How on earth does Pathan have a dialogue with today’s India and its majority is beyond comprehension. If Ayesha sitting comfortably in London thinks that a film can change the mindsets of Hindus, this notion only exposes her fatuity and intellectual vacuity. Pathan or no Pathan, most Indians will continue voting in elections on the basis of caste and religion.

2. She then writes ” It is not a simple tale of a good Indian spy versus a bad Pakistani spy, but the plea of an Indian Muslim to his own majority not to see him as an outsider ”.

Let me disillusion Ayesha. Though the Indian Constitution mentions that India is a secular country, the ground reality is very different. After all, the Constitution is just a piece of paper. If we write in it that India is a prosperous country with rivers of milk and honey flowing in it, it will not actually become so.

The truth is that in India most Hindus are communal, and so are most Muslims ( and this was the situation even before the BJP came to power in 2014 ). This social reality can only be changed by a mighty historical people’s revolution. It cant be changed by a film.

3. Ayesha then writes ” Pathan may not be an intellectually perfect movie, but it is certainly a film with a big heart ”.

I confess that I could not make head or tail of this statement, but it is in line with her other fatuous statements, which as Shakespeare said in ‘Macbeth’, are ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’

4. Ayesha writes ” In today’s India the Muslim can live, but not be seen or heard ”.

This is true, but it is a half truth.The truth is that in today’s India most Hindus too can live but not be seen or heard ( due to massive poverty, malnutrition, unemployment, inflation, etc ). So Hindus and Muslims are in the same boat in India, and Muslims are not alone in the boat.

Poverty is destructive of all rights, and most Hindus, like most Muslims suffer from abject poverty. Does a poor, hungry, or unemployed man want freedom of speech or food and a job ? I am afraid Ayesha has no real idea of the situation in India

5. Ayesha finally writes ” Pathan is an act of passion and great daring, looking the BJP govt in the eye, and saying that many of the Muslim actors will not give up on India ”

I doubt that Pathan, like any other movie, was made to ‘look a govt in the eye’. Films are made to make money, not to ‘look the govt in the eye’.

But who can explain this to a dimwit?