Posted by Indian Muslim Observer | 19 May 2010 |
Posted in
Media
Muslims
and Media Images: Where Things Went Wrong
By
Vinod Mehta
Before
I come to the subject matter of this essay, I must make a disclaimer,
namely, that I do not bring to the issue an academic’s or a
specialist’s perspective. All I can say is that I have been an
English language editor for more than twenty-five years, and in that
period I certainly have a working experience and knowledge of some of
the problems and some of the complaints of Muslims in this country in
terms of their media representation, especially in the
English-language section of the press.
We
need to spend more time debating from the Muslim point of view the
reasons why things have gone wrong for the Muslims with regard to the
Indian media, particularly the relationship between the north Indian
media and north Indian Muslims. I refer to north India and north
Indian Muslims because in the arena of Indian politics this area and
this community are thought to be representative of the entire Indian
Muslim community.
Without
seeking to apportion blame, we will begin by sketching one of the
reasons for things having gone wrong. This reason is the lack of
understanding among Muslims of the nature of the media in India, and
where Muslims stand in the common civic space of India in 2006. This,
again, is more important and relevant in the context of north Indian
Muslims.
The
next question is what the mandate and compulsions—or, rather, the
challenges—of the Indian media are and what the role of the media
is in society at large. Much of the problem begins because there is a
lack of understanding on the part of common Muslims of the
compulsions of Indian society. For a number of reasons, there is no
forward movement in general amongst Muslims, again especially in
north India, towards social transformation and modernization. Most
north Indian Muslims, even educated ones, are unable to understand
what the Indian media in the twenty first century is, and should be.
They are not ready to realize that life goes on and that time cannot
be reversed.
Against
this backdrop, let us examine the hypothesis that the media has a
special responsibility to portray Muslims sensitively, to be balanced
and fair, since Muslims are in a minority and are the most backward
community of India. Theoretically this may be true, but in the
contemporary world, cut-throat competition is the driving force as
much for the media as for any other business. However, it is argued
that the Indian media should be more sympathetic and objective
towards Muslims in comparison to other smaller minorities who are
much better off, more educated, and modern in their outlook simply
because of their economic condition. The media is, therefore, seen in
very idealistic terms. It is also seen as almost having a special
responsibility because Muslims are the largest religious minority in
the country.
There
is a politico-psychological angle to this. The impression and
assurance given to Muslims at the time of Partition was that their
interests and identity would be safeguarded in a democratic country,
irrespective of the fact that India is a Hindu-majority nation.
However, the harsh fact is that even for the majority of Hindus there
are many constraints in life, and they will have to exert themselves
to overcome them. I am not debunking the expectation, but we must
also remember that the media is a business. The media would not
exist, it would go bankrupt very quickly, if it did not take its
business responsibilities seriously. While being a business does not
mean it should be exclusively devoted to making money, it is not
feasible for any such venture to be purely idealistic.
Another
aspect to remember is that most media in this country are run by
businessmen and business families who have little understanding of
what the media’s role vis-à-vis the Muslim community should be.
They are interested only in making profits. When people talk of the
commercialization of the media, which is a kind of catchphrase for
all evils, what they are getting at is that the media are only
interested in making profits and that their social responsibility has
been diluted.
This
is somewhat of a facile view of the media, and a facile view of our
responsibility. It is the job, within these challenges and
constraints, of the editors and editorial teams to maintain a balance
between editorial integrity and the reasonable assumption of making a
profit, so as to ensure that these two things are not necessarily
incompatible and inconsistent. It is possible at one and the same
time to be a media house interested in making profits (though not
solely dedicated to this) yet also fulfilling its social
responsibilities. When people talk about commercialization of the
media, it is accompanied by the assumption that commercialization
necessarily means an erosion and downgrading of media standards.
As
a working editor, I submit that there is, in the media, sometimes
even more cut-throat competition than there is in other, more
honestly commercial, ventures like selling soap and ice cream. The
media operate today in one of the most competitive environments as
far as the marketplace is concerned. In this country, besides, we
have a problem of too much media. In New York or Washington, you will
probably find one major English-language daily. Delhi has twelve
broadsheets, without even counting the small ones. This is a good
thing and I am not deriding it, but we have to understand that in
India a great deal of media rivalry and competition exist. This
marketplace competition has its own compulsions, and an editor or
editorial team that pretends otherwise does so at its own peril.
This
must be the basic premise and everything else, including the media’s
presumed social responsibility towards Muslims or any other issue,
must be seen in this context. If you remove this context and see the
media purely in terms of having a social responsibility, of not
measuring up to the standards of the press during Gandhi and Nehru’s
time and of the National Herald and all those editors, you are
looking at only half the picture. I think we had very eminent people
and great newspapers in the times of Gandhi and Nehru. They did not,
however, live in the current environment, with its competition, nor
did they, as most editors do today, have to be constantly worried
about the bottom-line. In these competitive times, if you are not
worried about how well your paper is doing, you are held in low
esteem as an editor, and your editorial policy is circumscribed in
some ways by this constraint. There is, however, no fundamental
incompatibility between making profits and social responsibility. Of
course, standards can be lowered, some papers can sell out—as has
indeed happened. But if you have a paper that is commercially
successful you cannot assume that it automatically has poor editorial
standards, nor does it automatically mean that a paper is going to
lose money if a paper has very high editorial standards.
The
question of whether the media has been fair to Muslims and where it
has gone wrong has to be seen in his context. Keeping this in mind,
we can now pose our questions. Has the Indian media been fair to
Indian Muslims? Have we portrayed them with sensitivity and
objectivity, keeping in view the problems they face? Have the media
given undue prominence to the lunatic fringe? Have the media
suppressed and ignored liberal or moderate voices? Have they paid too
much attention to the maulavis and mullahs? Have they given 200
million Muslims a bad press and painted them as rabid and
fundamentalist?
These
are very relevant questions, and I do not pretend to have answers to
all of them. But from time to time, I have been confronted with some
of these questions and complaints, and I must say that some of the
criticism of the media in this regard is justified. I will not
attempt an apology or defence here but will try to present some of
the problems and compulsions of the media as a backdrop against which
these complaints should be viewed. One of the things that we should
remember is that journalists are fundamentally extremely lazy people.
The assumption that we are very industrious and will do a lot of
groundwork for stories is an erroneous one. If a sound-byte is
readily available from the Imam of the Jama Masjid, for example, why
should the TV reporter go looking for the not-so-easily-available
moderate voice, which anyway makes for dull copy?
But
it is assumed, because of the special responsibility that has been
thrust on us (or sought to be thrust on us), that we will go looking
for that moderate voice and perhaps ignore the strident one. In a
way, much the same charge is made by secular Hindus against the
media— that too much space is given to people like Praveen Togadia.
The reason we do so brings us to the other part of the criticism—that
the rabid and fringe voice is strident and extreme, and is therefore
more saleable. It makes for better television if you have two people
shouting at and abusing each other than if you have two people having
a reasoned and moderate debate. The lazy way out is to look for the
strident voice that lends itself to a raucous debate. I think that if
there is a defining complaint against the media from progressive and
liberal Muslims, it is that we deliberately go out looking for these
voices and ignore and suppress the more moderate and enlightened
voices.
But
in all this there is a problem and I can tell you that I face exactly
this problem as an editor: where is this moderate Muslim liberal
voice and how are we going to access it? Anyway, liberal Muslims have
their own views on the issue. They argue that whenever some foolish
person makes a reactionary or extraordinarily stupid statement they
are expected to come up with a response. The same is not expected of
liberal Hindus; why then should this always be expected of the
liberal Muslim? Liberal Muslims feel that it is humiliating for them
to be constantly pressurized by the media and other people to state
what the alternate voice is. But, as some people have pointed out, do
they have a choice? Maybe they do not have the luxury of keeping
silent. So what is this image of Muslims that an unfair media has
created? According to this view, Indian Muslims are held captive by
an extremely powerful but regressive religious leadership and a
passive and backward-looking political leadership that is attuned to
this religious leadership and therefore determined to resist change
and modernity. Whether this image is correct or not, it exists. It is
also true that, right or wrong, this image matters decisively in the
contemporary world. (One encounters a state of denial here,
exemplified by the statement that this is just a perception floated
by a rather unfair media concerned with its own interests and
profits. In my opinion that is simply not true.)
What
has happened in the past is that there has been too much analysis of
why this image exists. We have got into long historical debates that
are quite irrelevant. Instead of confronting the challenge, we have
spent a great deal of time in apportioning blame. A great deal of
time has been wasted in examining the problem rather than solving it.
Rather than run away from it or over-analyse it, it would be more
useful to take up the challenge, accept the problem, and see what can
be done to resolve it.
If
the Muslim community itself introspects, this is a problem that can
be solved. We need to get away from the sterile debate on who is
responsible, and begin a new debate on correctives and a new strategy
to redress the balance. How do we improve the image? How do we
accelerate the process of modernization and social change among
Muslims? We can be sure that dwelling on historical glories or the
sense of the past will not help Muslims to face up to the challenges
of contemporary life.
Who
speaks for the Muslims in India? Of course, you can argue that there
are at least 160 million Muslims in India, and they are not a
monolith, so why should there be one or a few spokespersons?
Let
there then be a plurality of voices—the media would be delighted if
there were many voices from which they could select different voices
to interview on different days of the week. Unfortunately, that
situation does not exist. So what does the time-pressed TV reporter
or the print journalist with a deadline do when looking for a byte?
Much of the problem begins here. The conservative voice, ironically,
is the most easily available. For instance, the All-India Muslim
Personal Law Board that claims to be ‘the true protector of Indian
Muslims’ and various other clerics who perpetuate Muslim
stereotypes are the only ones easily available. These people are
extremely media-savvy — they have websites, phone numbers, press
conferences, press officers, public relations officers, and clout.
In
many ways, they understand the media much better than the Muslim
middle-class and enlightened Muslims do, and they exploit the media
much better and to the greatest possible extent. On the other hand,
there are too few liberal Muslims who can be called upon to speak. So
whenever there is a problem or debate, the media rounds up the usual
suspects amongst the liberals. Sadly, of these some use the Muslim
cause only for self-promotion. So you have to be very careful whether
they are really interested in the problem or whether they are just
interested in seeing their images on the television screen and in
newspapers. You thus have a small pool of these voices to begin with,
which is made even smaller if you try to discriminate too much
between the genuine voices and the rent-a-voice that is available for
every cause including that of Muslims.
What
has happened as a result of this is that the so-called Muslim debate
in this country has become a slanging match, a forum for abuse. You
get a television studio, you lay out a few chairs and get a
moderator—and then you get extremes, polarized views, and put them
one against the other and goad them to call each other names. It is a
dialogue of the deaf. But there is a feeling among television
producers that this is what improves television ratings. So this is
the only kind of ‘debate’ that occurs in India at the moment on
these questions. It is completely counterproductive: for 20–5
minutes you are getting TV as a kind of entertainment sport; even in
the print media, things are the same. We need more sober, more
meaningful debates that can chalk out an agenda for change. And here
the liberal moderate voice, which is reticent, which is perhaps not
sure whether it should speak out, has at the very least to meet the
media halfway. It must come out of its self-imposed restraint. It
must be accessible; it must be eager to be heard. The expectation
that the media will go searching for it is unrealistic.
Of
course the assumption here is that such voices do exist. Some time
ago, we spoke to Muslims for a cover story, ‘The Other Face of
Indian Muslims’, in Outlook (5 October 2004). We did not go to the
modern jeans-clad sort of Muslims, but those from the Jama Masjid
like areas, and we got some very interesting voices of Muslim women
and men who combined tradition and modernity so effortlessly. We
assume that there is some kind of conflict between the two, but in
the lives and professions of these ordinary Muslims they coalesce
effortlessly. The Muslim question is very much a part of their
psyche. The one thing that emerges, however, is that they want is to
get on with their lives.
But
this is only one part of the story, the pleasant part; it is not the
whole truth of Muslim society. Later on we realized from the response
of the readers that some of the families cited as examples in the
story have no roots in the community and are thus not role models for
the community. Besides, the number of such families is negligible.
Moreover, there are also professional Muslim socialites who claim to
be true representatives of the community simply because they live in
the old-city area. They also sell themselves as progressives. No
surprise then that, like other communities, there are also Muslim
‘seminarist intellectuals’ of the ‘Walled City’, who give
wrong feedback to the media about Muslims. As I have already
confessed, journalists are lazy, so the correspondent doing the story
chose only those families that are socially prominent and in touch
with professional intellectuals.
It
seems that these days many a socialite is capitalizing on the
exploitation done by the Imam of Jama Masjid and the institution of
the Jama Masjid. There is no purpose behind frequent statements and
press releases against the Imam by these socialites. I do not mean
that I approve any kind of exploitation, religious or political, by
the Imam of Jama Masjid; nor do I approve of governments in power or
political parties that have been using the Imam’s name or the
institution of the Jama Masjid for political gains. But then there is
hardly anything constructive in the approach of Muslims and various
groups who are against the Imam except a desire for self-publicity.
Muslims will have to fight both the socialites and the Imam—or, for
that matter, all religious institutions who are exploiting them.
Muslims
will have to channelize all their stamina towards social and
political empowerment. As an editor, even though I know that the Imam
is exploiting the community to the core, I have to be careful not to
give publicity to anti-Imam groups among Muslims. It would, in any
case, not solve any of the problems faced by the community but only
show it in poor light.
This
is the age of publicity and propaganda and I want to emphasize once
again that there is no point having good ideas and moderate views if
you choose not to air them in a public forum. Good ideas need to be
promoted, and you have to use all the tricks of modern media
promotion. The liberal moderate Muslim voice appears to be somewhat
uncomfortable with publicity. But they have to break out of that
trap—they have to use the media, and they have to learn how to use
it. And if these progressive voices come from Muslim institutions,
from Muslim associations and Muslim bodies, then they will carry much
greater weight. We therefore need a new partnership between the media
and the moderate forward looking Muslim voice. We need to stop
calling each other names and criticizing each other. We must forge a
partnership, and we must forge an agenda for a partnership. Most of
the media would be more than eager and willing to participate in this
partnership but the moderate Muslim voice must be prepared to meet
the media halfway.
It
is also true that the Muslim problem is not the only problem as far
as an editor’s basket is concerned; there are hundreds of other
national problems. So it must take its place, high up in the priority
list, but as one among other issues nevertheless. This must be seen
in the wider context, and the wider context is that the media is a
huge business today. However, I believe that it is the only business
today, and the only institution, through which all your complaints
are going to be aired, and in which there is great growth and which
enjoys great public credibility. Competition may foster biases and
other unethical factors but, by and large, if you ask the common man
how he knows something is true, he will say that he read it in the
newspaper. And I think that we should cherish this: that the media
does have this public credibility despite all its shortcomings. If
the media were biased from day one, it would not have this
credibility.
Let
us take up the case of the English-language media in particular. In
liberal and Muslim forums, the English-language media is often
accused of being guilty of an anti-Muslim bias; in other forums it is
often accused of just the opposite. In my understanding, the
English-language media is not biased. We try and understand the
problems of the community, but Muslims are not our only concern.
Thus
my plea to all concerned and to the Muslim liberal voice to meet us
halfway—partly in response to the fact that we are lazy, but also
because it is in the interest of all concerned. To wait for us to
change, to expect us to operate with heightened social responsibility
on the issue and to make greater efforts to find the liberal voice is
not in the self-interest of Muslims. The media and Muslims are both
engaged in the same project, both on the same side. There is no doubt
that not only are media images of Muslims generally projected in a
distorted form, but that every debate on the subject is also sought
to be derailed. The populists, among Muslims too—those who do not
want it to be discussed with sincerity—raise non-issues with
reference to the role of English as a language and by corollary the
English-language media. Their main argument is that the
English-language media has played the biggest role in this distortion
of Muslim images simply because it knows virtually nothing about
Muslims, most of whom live below the poverty line and are backward in
most spheres of life. Besides, hardly 1 per cent of Muslims know
English. Both facts may be correct, but the hypothesis rests on wrong
assumptions about a populist approach and an oversimplification of a
very complex situation.
I
would like to examine both hypotheses to the best of my ability as an
English-language editor who also belongs to north India. Of course it
must be borne in mind that I am not a sociologist. I also do not know
Persianized and hybrid Urdu—that is considered as part of the
Muslim sensibility for political purposes, mainly after Partition.
For that matter I do not even know hybrid Hindi, which has also been
used for political purposes in the name of Hindu nationalism.
The
problem is that, despite the fact that in the entire country there
would not be more than 10 per cent of people who are well versed in
English, among the Muslims they are hardly 1 per cent. The English
media is therefore only for the English-speaking people of India,
and, English being a universal language, the English-language media
of India becomes a window on India to the entire English speaking
world. Contrary to the wishes of Hindi nationalists, English is
expanding its scope in India and, hence, the Indian English language
media becomes the showcase of India for the outside world. Hindi
propagators underestimate the growing influence of English in every
sphere of life even in north India. In the southern states, English
has a sound base, yet there still is a real sense of pride for local
culture and languages. But in north India, the political elite
continue to play politics in the name of Hindi and Urdu-medium
education for the masses—while they send their children to
institutions in India and abroad where there is hardly any scope even
for Hindustani as a spoken language. However, north Indian politics
in the name of language—especially Muslim politics, in the name of
Urdu—is not the subject of discussion here; I only want to make the
point that it has remained very powerful in shaping Muslim
sensibilities over the last one hundred years. The same is true for
Hindi and Hindu politics.
To
conclude my discussion on distorted media images of Muslims and how
they can be improved, I would say that only processes of
modernization and social transformation within the Muslim society can
alter the situation. It is the community that would have to work out
a feasible strategy for this in a hostile situation of an
indifferent, hypocritical, and mediocre leadership in a
Hindu-majority, yet democratic and plural, society. In the context of
language, I shall conclude that one should know either Urdu or Hindi
to comprehend the problems of the community. What is needed is
interaction with the community and an understanding of the issues and
the sociopolitical backdrop. For that, any language of communication
would suffice, because it is frank interaction that would bring out
the hidden reality, the exact problems faced by the community. It is
true that a section of the English-language media (which is also not
one homogeneous entity, and has many variations) has very little
interaction with the members of the Muslim community. Those with whom
it interacts are the elite, especially socialites among the
community. This section of elite Muslims is itself cut off from the
community and are professional ‘contractors’ of Muslims. Hence,
they cannot in any way be the real representatives of the Muslim
community. A look at the Muslim community as a whole would also serve
some purpose here. Lately, the community has awakened from a long
slumber, and has started making some progress. The modern generation
is going in for education based on a secular curriculum and, on this
basis, they are entering the competitive market. But there is one
negative aspect here. The educated class among the Muslims at once
starts aspiring for a leadership role. The end result is that the
transformation process among the Muslims becomes sluggish. The common
educated Muslims in the common civic space have gradually
disappeared; they do not take part in addressing problems that they
face in common with the same socio-economic group among Hindus, or
other smaller religious minorities.
It
is true that, for various reasons, the government did nothing for the
overall uplift and empowerment of Muslims. The Muslim leadership,
just after Partition and till the 1980s or so, was mainly responsible
for this. It was unable to handle the situation arising out of
Partition. But my question is why Muslims remain confined to
emotional issues, especially in north India. Apart from establishing
the Aligarh Muslim University, they did nothing for the educational
empowerment of common Muslims. Surely the process of empowerment
starts with education. My question, which fortunately is subscribed
to by many, is: why do Muslims only nurture the madrasas—half a
million of them with 50 million full-time students—and not think
about providing secular education on their own? Definitely, the elite
need madrasas for their political survival. What is intriguing is
that these very people do not send their children to madrasas. The
interesting thing is that Muslims, including educated Muslims,
wholeheartedly support the madrasas, perhaps because they are not
interested in secular education for common Muslim children. The
madrasas serve their ulterior motives of aspiring to leadership,
which is only possible if the community remains backward.
[Vinod
Mehta, an eminent journalist, is the Chief Editor of popular magazine
Outlook.The above article by Vinod Mehta was included in the book
edited by Ather Farouqui titled “Muslims and the Media Images: News
versus Views” published by Oxford University Press, New Delhi.]