THE HINDU Editorial Vocabulary- September 24, 2016- Topic 1
In what is possibly the sharpest
castigation of Pakistan on the world stage, India has asserted its right of
reply to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s
speech at the UN General Assembly
with some rather rough words. Calling Pakistan a “terrorist state” that is now training “militant proxies” with a “toxic
curriculum” at its “Ivy League of terrorism”, the First Secretary at India’s UN
mission accused Mr. Sharif of having delivered a “hypocritical” sermon to the
Assembly. India pointed out that Pakistan’s nuclear proliferation record, which
is marked by “deception and deceit”, hardly gave it the right to speak of
India’s eligibility to enter the Nuclear Suppliers Group, as Mr. Sharif had
done. Finally, India said his championing of Hizbul Mujahideen ‘commander’
Burhan Wani as a “symbol of the latest Kashmiri intifada” was further proof of
Pakistan being a state sponsor of terrorism. Mr. Sharif’s speech at the UN was
indeed full of gross inaccuracies on the subject of Jammu and Kashmir, including his reference to the
promise of a plebiscite, which in UN annals can only be considered after
Pakistan’s troops vacate the territory it currently occupies. Mr. Sharif’s
contention that Pakistan is the “principal victim of terrorism” supported,
sponsored and financed from abroad was clearly a stretch. While his sympathetic
reference to Wani was an affirmation of Pakistan’s support to the Hizbul, it
was compounded by his refusal to speak of the 18 Indian soldiers killed in the Army camp in Uri in an attack allegedly carried out by terrorists from
Pakistan. That the Prime Minister of Pakistan should devote more than half his
speech at the UN to the Kashmir issue, which Pakistan has long accepted must be
resolved bilaterally, was disappointing. However, in a signal of how little
such rhetoric matters, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made no reference to it
in his speech.
There is, unfortunately, little evidence
that India’s response, which elicited loud cheers back home, was regarded any
more by the UNGA than Mr. Sharif’s was. Despite the powerful language of
India’s retort — which will no doubt be echoed in the address External Affairs
Minister Sushma Swaraj delivers next — the world has little time for a
‘low-intensity’ conflict that has stretched on for almost 70 years. India’s
diplomats have fought and struggled for decades to keep Kashmir off the UN’s
agenda, and the Centre does no good to its case by bringing the subject back
into focus by joining issue with Pakistan in such a high-pitched manner. For
the moment, it would be advisable to keep its powder dry and rhetoric sober as
India investigates the intelligence and procedural lapses in failing to avert
the Uri attack, and weigh its strategic options.
Vocabulary
Asserted: state a fact or belief confidently and forcefully.
Example: The company asserts that the cuts will not affect development
Synonyms: declare, maintain, contend, argue, state, claim, propound, proclaim
Hypocritical: behaving in a way that suggests one has higher standards or more noble
beliefs than is the case.
Example: We don't go to church and we thought it would be hypocritical to have him
christened
Sermon: a talk on a religious or moral subject, especially one given during a
church service and based on a passage from the Bible.
Example: Whether those attending religious services understand a sermon is evidently
unimportant.
Synonyms: homily, address, speech, talk, discourse, oration, lesson
Deception: the action of deceiving someone.
Example: Obtaining property by deception
Deceit: the action or practice of deceiving someone by concealing or
misrepresenting the truth.
Example: A web of deceit
Synonyms: deception, deceitfulness, duplicity, double-dealing, fraud, cheating
Intifada: the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and
Gaza Strip, beginning in 1987.
Example: Over 350 people have died since the beginning of the intifada , or
Palestinian uprising, three months ago
Inaccuracies: the quality or state of not being accurate.
Example: A weapon of notorious inaccuracy
Synonyms: incorrectness, inexactness, imprecision, erroneousness, mistakenness
Contention: heated disagreement.
Example: The captured territory was one of the main areas of contention between the
two countries
Synonyms: disagreement, dispute, disputation, argument, discord
Affirmation: the action or process of affirming something or being affirmed.
Example: He nodded in affirmation
Synonyms: declaration, statement, assertion, proclamation, pronouncement
Rhetoric: the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing, especially the use
of figures of speech and other compositional techniques.
Example: Born into a rich provincial family, he studied philosophy as well as
rhetoric and law.
Synonyms: oratory, eloquence, command of language, way with
words
Elicited: evoke or draw out (a response, answer, or fact) from someone in reaction to
one's own actions or questions.
Example: They invariably elicit exclamations of approval from guests
Synonyms: obtain, draw out, extract, bring out, evoke, call
forth, bring forth, induce
Weigh: find out how heavy (someone or something) is, typically using scales.
Example: Weigh yourself on the day you begin the diet
Synonyms: measure the weight of, put on the scales, heft