What Is Fact

Student

ENGL 4984

May 7, 2001

Assignment 2 Revised

In The Eye of The Beholder:

Expressing Truth Through Appearance

Articles can be found at:

The Pakistani Government Site --

The Indian Army Site --

Introduction

What is truth? A common proverb states that beauty exists only in the eye of the holder and another states that that truth is beauty – if this is true, then perhaps truth must also be seen similarly and so it is – truth depends on perspective. When I began searching for information about the conflict over Kashmir, I found many different viewpoints, and yes I expected varying opinions. What I did not really expect – though I should have – were different expressions of truth and fact. At first, this frustrated me – I wanted to get to the bottom of the matter – I expected to see it starkly evident, black on white, truth rising above opinion, but instead I found myself in a world of shifting grays.

Jammu Kashmir rests between the countries of India and Pakistan, and is considered to be a disputed territory – disputed by those two countries that feel that Kashmir should be part of their own nation. Conflicts over the affiliation of the state have raged since the country once known as India was split into two countries – India and Pakistan during Partition in 1947, once India gained independence and self-rule from the British. Although Kashmir is legally a part of India, the majority of the state’s population is Muslim and therefore many wish to join Pakistan. Several wars have been fought in the past between India and Pakistan, for reasons that have in part to do with Kashmir, and the issue is still very much alive today.

In an effort to sort things out about the conflict over Kashmir, I decided to find the “official” views of both parties in conflict, and I managed to find brief histories of the affair on the Pakistani government’s website and a website created by the Indian army. Here I found opinion hidden behind the illusion of fact, contrasting views again. But I looked deeper, this time, and found that these facts were not as different as I originally had thought they were – it was only through the manipulation of images and phrases that different interpretations could be created. How then -- through the use of ethos, pathos, and logos -- are these two histories conceived as so starkly different only through their appearance?

Summary of Texts

In order to investigate the conflict over Kashmir between the countries of India and Pakistan over the affiliation of the state, I have chosen two texts, one from the Pakistan government website and titled ““Fact Sheet on Kashmir,” and one text housed on an Indian army website and titled “The Truth About Kashmir.” Both texts are brief histories of the conflict between Pakistan and India over the disputed territory of Jammu and Kashmir. They do not focus on particularly the same events, but their intent through different turns of phrase is the same – to have the reader believe that this history is indeed fact.

The Pakistan Government Text

The text found on Pakistan’s government website is titled “Fact Sheet on Kashmir” in bold letters; it begins with brief descriptions of the location, area, and population, a small color map of the disputed area and a photograph of a beautiful aquamarine lake – caption indicating that it is Wular Lake, and one of the largest lakes in Asia. The body text follows after the bold heading and, , and the names of three main sections entitled “World’s oldest dispute,” “Settling the Kashmir issue,” and “Averting the nuclear disaster.” Under the first heading are five sub-headings: “Cause of the Kashmir dispute,” “History of the dispute,” “Nehru’s betrayal,” “Popular uprising since 1989,” and “Most densely-soldiered territory.”

The text is arranged chronologically, the first part of the essay discussing the history of the area. The second section describes what could and possibly should be done to solve the issue, and the last section discusses what could and possibly will happen if their favored possibilities of action are not carried out. The text is blue on white, and the primary colors of the page are blue, green, and white.

The Indian Army Text

The website is entitled, here – “The Truth About Kashmir” with a subtitle “Articles.” The site is setup with a navigation bar on the left side providing access to other side sections: “Daily Updates,” “Weapons Recovery,” “Historical Perspective,” Foreign Militants Killed,” “About Us,” “Feedback,” and “Home.” The title of this particular article a subheading below the title is “J&K: A Backgrounder & Chronology of Important Events,” below this heading is the text of the article enclosed in a table.

There are two main parts to the text itself. The first is a two-page history in an essay-type of format. This is again a linear description of the conflict between India and Pakistan, but one that focuses more on the conflict in later years. The second part is entitled “Chronology of major events in J&K” and consists of a four-page timeline covering the history of the conflict from 1846 to 1999. The main colors of this page include white, blue, and red along with black. There are no images on this page, and the main text is black against a periwinkle blue (in table cell) background.

Audience of Texts

Both texts use strategies to convince a fairly general audience. However, in both cases the audience will probably have a tendency to support the particular beliefs of each website. The location of the articles somewhat indicates the audience as well. While one is a piece on the Pakistani government’s website – a website dedicated to who the government is made up of and the government’s official stance on many matters, the other is on a website focusing on Kargil, a particular area in disputed Kashmir on the borders of both countries, and the conflict taking place there. Because of this, the audience to the first is probably looking for information principally dealing with Pakistan in general, and the audience of the latter is principally looking for information about Kargil in particular. The second page – though associated with the Indian Army – is not as official as the first because of its location on “.org” site. Because of this the audience for that page may be more casual seekers of information, and perhaps more neutral in opinion.

Strategies

The strategies employed in each text are remarkably similar in some places – considering the dissimilarity of view – and somewhat different in others. Both use very different strategies in manipulating images and phrases to alter the reader’s conception of truth and fact. This analysis will focus on the visual aspect of both pages – colors and images – as well as the wording of the pages – metaphors and other literary techniques.

Analysis

The analysis will focus primarily on the appearance of the texts – particularly the colors of the texts, and what greater meaning the color of the text has to the purpose of the text. The colors of a text can set a mood and pull certain responses from the viewer, by taking a look at the colors as rhetorical and persuasive strategies; the responses that the viewer might feel can be anticipated.

Both sites are fairly logically organized, however in different ways. The Indian Army site seems cleaner, with its handy navigation bar and balanced use of white space. But it does lack headings, which Pakistan’s site uses well, and the images that Pakistan’s site uses to advantage. The former does appear more organized and professional; though the latter isn’t particularly sloppy, it could be better organized in relation to the rest of the site, which it does not link back to.

Blue and white are predominant colors in both texts. While this could just be an accident of fate, it does seem that this is more then simply a happy coincidence. In the Pakistani government’s article, the colors provide a contrast to the colors used in the images and header. In the Indian army article, the block of blue contrasts nicely with the white space surrounding it. Blue is a particularly useful choice for both countries, as the color is somewhat associated with the religions of India and Pakistan.

Blue is seen in Indian religions in Hinduism, where some gods, Rama and Krishna for example, are portrayed in that color, in Buddhism and Jainism in divine radiance somehow captured in the color, in Sikhism where the traditional Sikh flag is grayish-blue in color, as well as Judaism and Christianity – blue, then, is a common color between most religions represented in India, as well as being a link to the west through color representing religion.

The relation of the color blue to Islam is a direct relation to the color blue to Pakistan an Islamic state. In Islam blue and green are the primary colors found in mosques, both colors reflecting the essence of life in the desert, and thus symbolic of the Prophet Mohammed. Blue, green, and earth tones – colors found in nature, are traditionally worn in the religion. Blue, therefore, is very much associated with Pakistan due to its relation to the religion of the state.

The use of the color blue, then, provides a religious and cultural link to both countries. Both countries have a common color in blue, although this is not the primary color associated with either India or Pakistan.The use of the color blue is a subconscious link and reminder to the reader of the country in question on both sites, and is a reinforcement of the ideas presented in the actual text itself – in India’s or Pakistan’s own triumph in Kashmir.

The use of red and green on the Pakistani website is also meaningful particularly on the map of the disputed territory. Pakistan appears in green, which is a very nationalistic color for that country – green is symbolic of Islam on both Pakistan and India’s flags. Also here the disputed territory is also green, seemingly flowing out of Pakistan and contrasting to the warmer tones of India and China. India is represented in red – a sort of aggressive color, and here a dull mottled and not particularly pleasing red – a very sharp contrast to the green of Pakistan and Kashmir. China seems to fade away from the green from yellow to orange, but India is set in sharp relief to the rest of the map.

A similar color red is also used in the heading of Pakistan’s webpage, but with a different purpose as on the map. Here it is read calling attention to the title, placing emphasis on the truth of the title as a “Fact Sheet” reporting history and fact rather then opinion. It is an effort to make the website seem more credible. In the title the color is not mottled as it is on the map, and so creates a contrast between mottled falsehood on India’s side, and implicit truth and fact-reporting on Pakistan’s side.

Conclusion

It seems odd that just color, and the general appearance of a website can have influence on how we view the content of the site, but it is true. I have, myself, passed judgment on website before even taking a look at their content, sometimes later realizing that I was wrong to do so. Garish colors, unpleasant appearance, and lack of design knowledge – to me signal that a webpage’s contents are unlikely to be true. It is through the appearance of truth and credibility that Internet hoaxes continue to be perpetuated, if a page that holds false information has a clean design and is pleasing to the eye, there is a better chance of believing the false as true.

Both of the websites speak of truth and fact – another part of the Indian Army website states “In this website, we aim to tell you the true story about J&K, and keep the world informed of the truth, as we truly believe that Truth Always Triumphs” but on Pakistan’s site that side of the story is referred to as “the Indian Lie.” Through appearance truth can be altered and fact obscured. The real story, and what really happened all depend on the perspective of the viewer and interpreter of events. It makes one wary and untrusting of the world.

It seems that fact itself might be a fiction, in a world bare of absolute truths. It could be that there is some ultimate truth -- perhaps the truth is simply obscured through Public Relation machinations, or a widespread conspiracy on both sides. But there could be a simpler explanation -- perhaps there is no “truth” as such – only shifting gray world of half-truths in an uncertain world where truth is only a distorted reflection in the eye of the beholder.