The Distortionists

In his opinion piece, Mediumis the Image,(Outlook, November 1, 2004) a journalist of VinodMehta's eminence should not simplistically hold Muslims responsible for the wayHindus perceive them. Media images of Muslims the world over have an integral relationship withhow the Indian media projects Muslims. No discussion ofthe projection by the Indian media and what the Muslims see it as is possiblewithout a broader reference to Muslim societies around the world.

Clearly, Indian Muslims have two identities: one, as part of the wider Indiansociety, sharing all the good and bad as other Indians belonging to the sameeconomic group or region; and second, as the leftover of other Muslimsocieties world over as part of a pan-Islamic community. The pan-Islamic aspectis relevant only in the case of north Indian Muslims or Muslims residing in themajor cities of the country. South Indian rural Muslims and non-Bihari (readthose who falsely claim Urdu as their mother tongue) Bengali Muslims of WestBengal, for example, have little to do with the broader Islamic brotherhood.

Again, lots of social ills prevalent in rural India involve members of bothMuslim and Hindu communities. Hindus too carry a highly distorted image in themedia the world over, particularly after the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992and the Gujarat carnage in 2002.

There is a newly emergent trend (dominated by the business interests of some'number-slot-ridden' English media, which praised BJP & Co. to lofty heightsand declared it as the only alternative when the party was going to polls (readdoom). This media has a ready prescription for the Muslims: they must look likethe members of their respective class among Hindus -- the assumption that theMuslims are reluctant to do so, by implication, suggests that the principalburden of transforming Muslims lies upon themselves.

This has somehow become a standard prescription for Indian Muslims, who havethen ended up becoming a typical caricature of Hindu middle class image ofMuslims. The media has so far never bothered to study the economic conditionsand complexities of social problems faced by the Muslim society.

The Partition and its effect on Muslims is a complex problem for IndianMuslims (for that matter, for non-Muslims as well, but let's leave that aside). An economy resting on petro-dollars, and anew entity (based on a combination of Indo-Pakistani Muslims in Gulf countriesand Saudi Arabia) has given a new shape to the psyche of sections of the Muslimsin India who have been the beneficiaries of the petro-wealth. It lends supportto Muslim fundamentalism and endorses the government in not opening moderneducational institutions for educating Muslim children, and thereby lets themadrasas flourish.

The government for its own reasons is not interested inproviding modern education to Muslims. This section of petro-wealth beneficiaryMuslims detest the RSS motives for their own reasons, so it is easy to understandtheir psychology of, for example, supporting the Pakistani cricket team.

The judgment in the Shah Bano case wasindeed detested and protested by Indian Muslims with unprecedented vigour tillthe Parliament was forced to reconsider it and bypass the judgment itself. Thiskind of sociology will never let the trauma of Partition rest in peace. And, inthe given circumstances, it would never let the Hindus realize that Partitionwas, in fact, a complex historical event for which no single individual orcommunity can be blamed.

I t is true that Indian Muslims are not willing to come to terms with thefuture vis-à-vis the situation in Kashmir, which has increasingly become anissue of Muslim separatism, fuelled by pan-Islamic proclivities. This isthe hard-core reality that cannot be altered by a theoretician's rhetoric.Abusing imperialism and America will not alter the truth that Islam does notprovide any space for democracy and only a Momin (a Muslim having perfectfaith in God) can become the head of the state.

Maulana Maudoodi's famous andhistorical support to Fatima Jinnah's presidential candidature in Pakistanresulted in contradictions between the Jamaat-e Islami and other religiousorganisations of Pakistan and India. All versions of the Islamic state at besttry to make faith the vehicle to create a civil society, if not for any otherreason, at least to show that there can be no substitute for Islam, andtherefore, the first duty of every Muslim is to convert all non-Muslims to theIslamic fold.

Mainly for this reason, even today, Muslim civil life is facing allkind of problems due to the mental bankruptcy and, therefore, its media image isthe obvious result of this attitude. Those to be blamed for this are Muslimsocieties, Muslim intellectuals, and Muslim institutions whose very existencesare based on hypocrisy.

Way back after the formation of Pakistan, when the first Sunni-Qadiyani riotserupted in Punjab (Pakistan) and martial law was imposed for the first timethere, the Justice Muneer Commission was instituted to enquire into the reasonsbehind the riots. A number of leading Ulema were invited to decide whether or notQadiyanis could be called Muslims. Which in turn led to the question of how todefine Muslim. Surprisingly, there were no two Ulema who wouldsettle for one definition.

It needs to be examined seriously whether Muslim leadership -- as Mr. Mehtathinks -- is really not aware of its media image and its effect. My view is thatMuslim leadership in India is as shrewd as its counterparts in the RSS; theyknow well what their illiterate followers want or what is close to theirfaithful heart. Muslim leaders and intellectuals also know the effect of theirimage in the media in Islamic countries, but they don’t mind.

They know well thatthey are addressing their illiterate audience who understand only theirlanguage; and of course Muslim leaders have to keep their mentors and fundingagencies in good humour as well. It will be unfair to assume that the topmost Ulema’srecent outcry against family planning was based on sheer ignorance. All thiscriticism was to appease their funding fathers, who have dozens of wives and whodo not even remember the names of their children.

Even the most articulate Indian Muslim politician suchas Syed Shahabuddin, who, well aware of present-day demands of the media, wasonce considered a mostpotential threat capable of converting the Muslim masses into political humanbombs, and was in the forefront during the Shah Bano turbulence and Babri masjidmovement, but now appears to be a most sensible and cool person simply because his issuesare no more relevant in the changed political situation.

But he is stillcareful while addressing his own constituency: on the one hand he talks aboutmodernization, and on the other he categorically denies the need for ijtihad (juridicalconclusion) in civil life saying,

"…let the Muslim Indians develop their own strategy for survival, and for equality, justice and dignity….The real issue, therefore, is to find a national solution to the national problem of providing equitable space in the fields of education, information and administration to minority languages in the country as a whole as well as at the state level…. The real battle for Muslim Indians is also the battle of all religious, racial and ethnic minorities anywhere in the world…. In political terms, the essence of the problem is to find a balance between change and conservation, between rejection and assimilation, and between alienation and participation. This is imperative so that a Muslim, wherever he is, is not an alien to the nation state of which he is an inextricable part but a creative contributor to its productivity as well as its welfare.

"If the national communities accept them trust them and respect them in the world at large, Muslims will not carry the image of being the group of fanatical subversives or terrorists, ever anxious to restore Muslim rule or establish Islamic power!

"The priority for Muslim Indians should therefore be to find peace and dignity in their own motherland rather than to undertake the national project for the reconstruction of religious thought of Islam for the sake of Ummah…."

(The Pioneer, July 11, 2002)

"To me, the interpretation of the shariat--a common task for the Islamic world, as a whole--does not appear to be a top priority for Muslim Indians. . . this is nothing but an echo of our historically constructed ego. . ."

(The Pioneer, 16 Sept. 2002)

At that point of time when Syed Shahabuddin was in political demand, one couldnot help wondering as to why he wished to see Muslims as a backward-lookingcommunity.

So it is this bad image (which somehow remains close to most ofMuslim hearts whatever may be the reason) that can pay Muslim leaderspolitical dividends and provide an opportunity for wordplay to thedangerously ignorant English-speaking rankers, most of whom have got assignmentsas government servants, which, of course, has nothing to do with intellectual understandingof Muslim issues.

However, one cannot fight beyond a certain limit; and, ofcourse, the media too is always on the lookout for something to feed upon. Sincethe Muslim religious leadership, which is solely responsible for destroying theimage of Muslims in media, and the Muslim intellectuals are not directlyconcerned with votes, one cannot expect them to be as careful and shrewd asLaloo Yadav.

The reference to Manmohan Singh by Mehta is also quite out ofplace. For that matter, even APJ Abdul Kalam alsodoes not carry the baggage of his community’s negative images. The point toremember is that there is a threshold beyond which individuals are seenautonomously without the image of their community haunting them. It is somehowassumed that they are different.

This does not mean that the media images of the Sikhs are not negative. If this was the case, there would have been no 1984. Nor is itguaranteed that there cannot be another 1984, just like 2002. If the presumptionis that Manmohan Singh was chosen to be the Prime Minister by way ofcompensation against the 1984 Sikh massacre, then one would only wish that nominority should face a situation like the Sikhs faced in 1984, or Muslims had togo through in Gujarat 2002. It is just that Mahmohan Singh has crossed thebarrier of being a victim of his community’s media profile.

Obviously illiteracy and poverty may be blamed for Muslim behavior resultingin negative media images, but it is not the full truth. At places where Muslimsare educated and employed--for example the immigrant Muslims in Western Europeand in America (thanks to state policies)--they are more ghettoized.

Whereverthey have come up, they have tried to make everything Islamic, of course, evenwithout having the real knowledge of Islam. No consensual concept of civil life and civilization and even thetranslation of Islamic faith into mundane affairs seems to be available. Not even anytwo schools of thoughts can agree on one definition of any one issue of Islam. Iam not referring to different schools of thought such as Shias and Sunnis as oneentity, but there are hundreds of groups claiming even within these twoschools--and, of course, having a sizable following--that they represent true Islamicphilosophy. This diversity is lost in media projections of the Muslims.

The bitter truth is that there is something wrong basically with theprevailing perception that Islam can provide a model for civil life. Things wentwrong from day one when the Muslims murdered three out of four caliphs soon after the demise of Prophet Mohammed. Muslims from that point onwards, i.e. fromthe time of the Prophet himself, have never had peace.

In the Islamic historythere is no period, no country and even no city that can be produced as an idealfor anyone, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. Yet we do indulge in wordplay andrhetoric in the name of interpretation and re-interpretations in order to provethat Islam is the best religion in the world.

The reference to language in the process of image shaping is put forth withutmost sincerity by Mehta but what can one do about the sectarian politicsplayed in the name of Urdu by political parties, and contributed vehemently bymost sectarian third rate Urdu newspapers and political magazines?

Due to allthese reasons, and our colonial past, unfortunately a situation is emerging whereit is thought that only those who know and speak English are modern. Being abackward community, Muslims do not even fall under the category of literates,leave alone being English-speaking. In Delhi alone, the dropout percentage ofschool going Muslim children is 98 percent. The number of Muslim students ingood English medium schools whose certificate can enable them to get admissioninto excellent institutions of higher education is almost negligible.

IfEnglish is one of the most important criterion for being modern --as per theprincipal hypothesis in a recent issue of Outlook on Muslims -- The Other Faceof Muslims (October 4, '04) -- I am afraid that the Muslims in the whole ofIndia who can speak English fluently can be counted on one's fingers. I wonder ifthere is any authentic data showing Muslim students in reputed English mediumschools and English speaking Muslims in India. One can understand the SupremeCourt’s keenness to put a limit to admissions of minority students to nearlyhalf in minority institutions, but one fails to see the total lack of concern toensure that students in good schools look more and more like the rest of thesociety which includes Muslims.

In 1994, I counted the number of Muslim students enrolled in disciplinesother than Urdu, Arabic and Persian in Jawaharlal Nehru University. They wereless than 25 in social sciences, international studies and science relateddisciplines such as MCA, but the total enrolment of Muslims in the universitywas more than 10 times (mainly in Arabic, Urdu and Persian where almost all thestudents were Muslims) which gave them a decisive say in students’ union election,holding all secular students' organizations hostage. The media never took noteof these ground realities and continues to talk of the JNU as a bastion of leftpolitics. Indeed, one is as helpless before the English media as one is helplessbefore Mullahs or Marxist rhetoricians. For, they hold on to the view that only theyknow and tell the truth.

Sooner or later Indian Muslims will have to come to terms with a uniform life-style, having conformity with their economic and regionalcompulsions. Minorityrhetoric of left wing intellectuals living in Delhi to counter the madness ofthe atavist RSS is no way to educate Muslim masses properly to understand thedynamics of politics. Left parties everywhere have become victim of electoralpolitics; exercising populist policies vis-à-vis Muslim affairs and not takinga firm ideological stand against Muslim fundamentalism will not work. On thecontrary it may take an adverse turn. To abuse America will not justify 9/11 andonly encourage Muslim militancy every where, including India.

The reference by Mehta to the All India Muslim Personal Law Board is also out of place. Since itsinception, it has been no more than an exclusive club of most opportunisticmullahs and self-appointed "traders" of Muslim politics, who are shrewdenough in every respect and recognize that it is their outmoded statements thatinvite media personnel to seek out their opinion on issues concerning Muslims.It is the media that has made the Board into the monster that it is now beingportrayed as. This can be seen on TV, when their 'spokespersons' use fabulousvocabulary and jargon, in order to fool the illiterate masses and make the mostprovocative statements so that they are seen on the front pages of newspapers.Ironically, Mehta wishes to give the Board a legitimacy that it does not atall deserve.

Finally the Hindu majority will have to realize that they will have tolive with Muslims who, for various historical and social reasons, are the mostbackward and ghettoised community. The government has never taken interest ineducating them, and will not do this in near future also. Making a parallelarrangement for the education of their children is an absolutely impossible taskfor an economically backward community like the Indian Muslims.

The distortedmedia image of Muslims is dangerous not only for the Muslims of India but alsofor the majority Hindu community. One also should not forget that whether it be the demolition of Babri Masjid or the questions of a life of dignity forMuslims, these subjects remain of utmost concern for the common Hindus who havethrown out the BJP by democratic process of elections. But Muslim leadership wasand is always there to manipulate and mismanage the affairs.

So the question asto how to make the Muslims understand that they will have to come to terms andeventually adopt a civilized mode of living in the common civic space, is stilllooking for an answer. I wish Vinod Mehta could enlighten us on these issueswith greater detail.

Ather Farouqui, Ph.D. has been campaigning against governmental assistance andfinancial support to madrasas of religious education in order to get grantsreallocated for secular education of Muslim students