The New York Times outdoes itself in stupidity, says India was partitioned ‘from Pakistan’

Factual accuracy and respect for truth are not among the strong suits of the American news daily, New York Times. For decades now, it has revelled in the art of peddling fake news, disseminating propaganda, and patronising countries it deemed deserving of civilising pontification, even to the extent of appearing prejudiced, arrogant and outright stupid.

But recently, it marked a new low in exerting its stupidity when it published a report saying India was partitioned from Pakistan.

In a recent article talking about the novel “Tomb of Sand”, a Hindi book written by Geetanjali Shree and translated by Daisy Rockwell that won the International Booker Prize, the New York Times misled its readers by publishing grossly inaccurate information about the partition of India.

While giving a brief about the plot of the novel, which is about an Indian woman’s sudden decision to visit Pakistan, a country carved out of undivided India on religious grounds, the NYT article twisted the facts and erroneously claimed that it was India that was partitioned from Pakistan and not the other way around.

For the western readers who are moderately aware of India’s partition, this blunder of gigantic proportions by the New York Times might just be an “unfortunate slip-up”, a trivial error that somehow passed the editorial scrutiny. But for Indians around the world, especially those who have lived through the horrors of the partition or have heard of the tragedy of India’s vivisection firsthand, the mistake is nothing short of an attempt to rewrite the history and pass the buck of the partition on India while giving a clean chit to Islamists responsible for the creation of Pakistan.

By claiming that India was divided from Pakistan, the New York Times is distorting history and whitewashing the Islamic extremism and religious bigotry of the Islamists and the Muslim League rulers who wreaked havoc in undivided India and brought about a bloodied partition of the country. More importantly, the NYT assertion pins the blame for the partition on India, denies its civilisational continuity, and describes it as a country that came into existence only in 1947.

Source : OpIndia