Nadeem F Paracha

Early life

Nadeem F. Paracha received his early education at the Kabul American School in Afghanistan from 1970 till 1974. His father was based as a journalist in Kabul reporting for the pro-PPP Urdu daily, Musawaat.

He returned to Pakistan in 1974 and joined the prestigious Karachi Grammar School from where he completed his O Levels in 1983. He then joined Saint Patrick's College in 1984 from where he did his bachelor's degree in commerce in 1986. It was here that he actively joined student politics, first by joining the Peoples Students Federation, the student wing of the Pakistan Peoples Party and then forming the St. Pats Socialist Students Federation. He worked under the PSF leader in Karachi, Najeeb Ahmed. He was arrested a number of times for agitating against the right-wing government of General Zia and for writing and distributing pro-PPP literature.

He returned to Pakistan and joined the University of Karachi as a Masters student of Political Science in 1988. He vigorously resumed his political activities by joining the left-wing National Students Federation.

Career in Journalism

After working three years for Mag, Paracha joined The News International as editor of the paper's popular culture page, Vibes, and columnist.

He is currently associated as a regular columnist with Pakistan's leading English newspaper, Dawn (newspaper) and its website Dawn.Com. Paracha has also been writing for Indian publications such as Asian Age, The Deccan Chronicle, The Times of India and New Age Islam.

Though now in his 40s, Paracha is still known for his iconoclastic writing style.

Controversies

Throughout the nineties he was accused by some well known but conservative pop stars and their fans for promoting drug use, especially cannabis, through his articles. In 1996 Paracha was accused of being a user of cannabis by Pakistani pop star Junaid Jamshed.

This is another area Paracha had never commented upon until recently in an interview when he talked in some length about the problems he had in the nineties with hallucinogens. However, he returned in 2003 free from his habits.

Though liberal in his views, in a column of his for Dawn newspaper, he described himself as a "progressive Muslim", and in another piece for the same newspaper he sympathised with the Sufi schools of thought.

In spite of all the controversies and ambiguity that have revolved around Paracha, he continues to be hailed as a respected force and writer in the world of Pakistan's cultural and social journalism.

In May 2007, while writing his column in The Friday Times, Paracha defended the MQM and wrote that Punjabi politicians who are calling MQM fascist "have no idea about the social and political dynamics of Karachi and the MQM." The irony is that though many of his readers attacked Paracha for defending MQM's strong arm tactics in the 2007 Karachi Riots, Paracha is a Punjabi himself from his father's side.

In an interview given to Montreal's CBC Radio (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), Paracha blamed the Pakistani electronic media for being irresponsible in reporting acts of terrorism and political events and blamed it for bringing upon the 2007 Pakistani state of emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf on 3 November 2007. This left many of his critics in the media accusing Paracha's politics of gradually moving from being staunchly leftist.

In an interview with Voice of America he lambasted an Islamic Scholar who had earlier been interviewed by the same radio channel and claimed that music was not allowed in Islam because it promoted obscenity. Paracha responded by saying that at the moment there is nothing more obscene than a suicide bomber exploding himself in public. He said Islamic scholars should be more interested in condemning such kind of obscenity rather than waste time by attacking an art like music.

While talking to National Public Radio (NPR) in Washington, D.C., on 5 April 2010, Paracha came down hard on Islamic preacher and televangelist Farhat Hashmi.

On 12 October 2013, Paracha wrote a satirical piece for the website of Dawn newspaper in which he mocked conspiracy theorists who were criticizing Malala Yousafzai. However, some conservative news sites picked up the satire and presented it as factual news. The article went viral and Dawn had to put up a disclaimer reminding those who couldn't get the joke that it was a satirical piece.

Criticism of the media

Paracha has been extremely critical of the role of Pakistan's electronic media .

In a series of analysis and satirical pieces for Dawn (newspaper), Paracha has satirised various conservative TV personalities.

Defending student hooliganism

Writing in his exclusive column for Dawn.Com, Paracha defended the actions of Peoples Students Federation (PSF), the student wing of the Pakistan Peoples Party, when some of the student organisation radicals disturbed an art exhibition in Karachi in April 2009. The PSF radicals were agitating against a montage that showed late Benazir Bhutto sitting on the lap of former Pakistani military dictator Zia ulHaq. Paracha asked "how could the exhibition organizers be so insensitively stupid?" Paracha who was once a leading member of the PSF at college in the late 1980s, wrote that the reaction of the PSF men was justified and that had he still been a PSF man, "I would have made my protest a tad more creative, but equally offensive. I would have gotten drunk, unzipped my jeans, peed on the floor and called it post-modernist protest satire!"

News, Views & Confused

Though known to usually shy away from doing work on or for television, on 11 April 2007, Paracha appeared as a co-host with Fasi Zaka on a weekly political satire show, News, Views & Confused. Paracha quit writing for The News and started writing for the Daily Times Group, The Friday Times and Dawn newspaper.