Hafiz means protector. It comes from the Arabic root of h-f-z which also produces a word we are familiar with in Urdu — hifazat, meaning to protect or secure.

What is the Hafiz protecting? The textual integrity of the Quran. In a pre-literate world, the Hafiz was the person who memorised — and therefore ‘protected’ — the exact words of Allah. The word hafiza means memory.

The Rig Veda and the Iliad, both oral and recited texts, were similarly memorised in a rhythm and passed on in pre-literate India and Greece when there was no writing or books.

When our media and our government refer to the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba as ‘Hafiz’ Saeed, they are not using his name. His name is Muhammad Saeed. They are using an honorific that acknowledges his piety and the fact or claim that Saeed is master of the Quran. (I’m quite sure our news anchors have zero idea about this).

Another Arabic word that means protector or master is Wali from the w-l-y root. It produces words like Awliya and Mawla and also Mawlana or Maulana (‘na’ is the Arabic personal pronoun for ‘our’). Television anchors who refer to the head of the Jaish-e-Muhammad as ‘Maulana’ Masood Azhar are in fact saying — “our master Masood Azhar”.

For them to attack Rahul Gandhi for using ‘ji’ — the Congress prince used this while referring to Azhar in case you were away from India and missed the news — is strange when they appear to be illiterate on a subject they feel strongly about. This is not just about semantics: on the subcontinent these things have real meaning. When we say Swami Agnivesh or Sri Sri Ravi Shankar or Yogi Adityanath, we acknowledge and recognise their elevated status and accord them respect (I say ‘we’ but I am excluding myself here). When the media says Hafiz Saeed and Maulana Masood Azhar they are doing exactly the same thing.

There is another thing that is puzzling here. It is the fury of the Hindutva-wallahs, meaning the Bharatiya Janata Party’s leaders, over the use of the word ‘ji’. There is such a thing as sanskriti and sabhyata, meaning culture and civilised behaviour. Vinayak Savarkar insisted on sanskriti as one of his three defining markers of Hindutva.

Has the BJP decided that ‘ji’ is no longer to be used while referring to an enemy or a bad person? If so, they should be told that even Ravan is accorded respect in Hindu culture.

The third thing to be discussed is less pleasant. What is the recommended manner of referring to these people, meaning extremists and terrorists and separatists (all of them being the same thing in our time)? When I came into journalism, the newspaper I was reporting for had a stylesheet which specified that everyone was to be referred to in the first mention by their title and full name and in the second instance by Mr or Ms (last name) — and so Prime Minister Narendra Modi first and then Mr Modi. This rule was only to be ignored when referring to convicts. And so former chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and then only Yadav. (The rule created a problem when Bal Thackeray was convicted for contempt of court).

Today again our media provides the lead.

When it names Kashmiri leaders, it uses the word ‘dalal’. Even the two most viewed English channels use this despicable term. My dictionary gives five synonyms for the word dalal: broker, go-between, middleman, pimp and tout. Is this the language we should use for other Indians and other human beings even if we have differences with them?

Anchors refer regularly to Mirwaiz Umar Farooq as Pakistan’s dalal. This is a man who has hundreds of thousands of devoted Indian followers (waiz = instructor) in Kashmir. This is a man whose father Muhammad Farooq, the previous Mirwaiz of Kashmir, was murdered by the Hizbul Mujahideen. To call him dalal is not only poor manners, it is not Indian in the way that many of us understand this land and its culture.

But even if we set aside culture and manners, what is to be gained by abusing people? We have to ask because ‘dalal’ has become synonymous with Kashmiri leadership. We show our contempt for the people we have strong disagreement with, but how does this help with the problem and how does it resolve the argument?

Are we such an impotent nation that abuse and disrespect are the only weapons we have available to us? If not, then what are we to make of these surreal happenings around us? A political party that buckled under the pressure of a few middle-class families and released a terrorist — whose organisation went on to kill hundreds of Indians — is today offended not by its buckling but that its opponent refers to that terrorist as ‘ji’.

If Rahul had used a word of abuse, would it have brought satisfaction to us? I hope the answer is no and that this ‘ji’ is not a political issue. But I speak only for myself: the Greek word for the common man is ‘idiotes’.