Syed Ali Mujtaba
Indian Muslims always get a bad press and the blame is put on
the community for not doing anything spectacular that may give them positive coverage.
This is a hackneyed narrative that is going on since independence against the largest
minority of the country. Muslims has been on the receiving end, searching
souls, looking for faults within themselves which aren’t there because the
fault lines are the media that has tarred the entire community with a black
brush.
Why do Indian media
detest Muslims so much? Before getting into the media coverage of the Muslims,
one need to understand the nature and character of Indian media and the role it
plays in shaping the society.
One needs to begin the story from 1990s when the media got
out of government control and the corporate cartels started controlling this
communication network. There was a plethora of media outlets that sprung up in
no time and all were controlled by the business establishments.
These corporates media establishments had twin objectives,
one to make profit and second to be on the government side to protect their own
larger business interests. On the profit side, media has two sources of revenue, one
subscription and other advertisement. The advertisement is dependent on the
subscription and subscription is the readership or the viewership. So if the
profit has to be made, advertisement has to be solicited and this can be only done
if the subscription based is increased phenomenally.
And that’s where the content became the king in this
business. The content is decided on the impact factor of the news that can
fetch large subscription and as a result the corresponding revenue through the advertisement.
It’s here the negative news contents has a huge role to play because
of its impact factor to enlist huge subscription and huge advertisement. In this paradigm negative content related to
Islam, Muslims, Islamic Jihad Kashmir and Pakistan are the most selling news
items. This is because it generates a large number of subscriptions among the
Hindu majority community and since it pertains to Muslims, they willy-nilly get
sucked into this vortex.
The basic criterion of the media is to search stories that can
have an impact factor to get large readership/viewership and that can translate
into revenue generation. Such malpractice in the media is now going on for some
time and has become a widespread phenomenon across the media platforms and all
kind of media outlets subscribe to this journalistic model to get good financial
returns.
The negative profiling of the Muslims in media normally runs stories
on; Islamic Jihad, love-jihad, nikah halala, triple talaq, Muslim personal law,
beef eating, Tablighi jamaat, besides usual stuff like anti- Kashmir, anti-
Pakistan to fetch huge subscription and advertisements.
There are other reasons why Muslims get a bad press in India.
Ever since the incumbent government has come to power in 2014, there is a
well-planned and finely crafted political project to increase anti-Muslim
environment in the country. This is to gain political benefit and here media’s
help is sought to execute such game plan.
As a result, Indian media is now reduced to government
propaganda machinery. Anything that a devious mind can conjure against Muslims
is fabricated and blown up out of proportion by the Indian media. This is to
create a panic among majority community that may lead them to hate Muslims, and
at the same time instill fear among the Muslim community for being targeted
through communal violence. This serves
well the government’s narrative that Muslim bashing by the media will
consolidate the Hindu vote bank.
Since anti-Muslim narrative has all the juice and pulp
fiction to regiment the majority community, majority of the media outlets have
teamed up together with an open display of bigotry abuse and hatred against the
Indian Muslims. This also keeps them in the good books of the government as it
helps in promoting the Hindutva agenda which is essential for the political
survival of the ruling dispensation.
The Cobrapost.com expose in 2018, brings true picture of media-
Hinduvta collaboration to communalize the society for political gains. The undercover
agents of the cobra-post website approached the top media houses and offered
them huge sum of money to publish/ broadcast Hindutva contents for communalize
the society to gain political mileage for the ruling party. The expose revealed
that all the media houses agreed to engage in campaigns to induce communal
discord in the society and were willing to polarize the society on communal
lines, so that it can fetch political dividends.
The media coverage of Tablighi Jamaat members stuck at
Delhi’s Nizamuddin Markaz in the last week of the March is a classic example of
media government collaboration in building hate Muslim campaign. Instead of
lambasting the government for not testing the foreign Tablighi members at the
airport, the media went hammer and tongs attacking the Tablighi Jamaat and the Muslims
holding them responsible for bringing the corona virus in the country.
What could have been a story directed against government’s
inefficiency to make efforts to contain the virus at the entry point, a slander
campaign against a particular community was started in the media. The media instead
of showing any sympathy towards the Tablighi Jamaat members’ ignorance of the
presence of Corona virus i8n their midst attacked them of hiding as terrorists
inside the Tablighi Jamaat Markaz in New Delhi.
The media did not question the government why it did not
evacuate the Markaz members when it knew its Corona linkage as early as March
18? Why it prolonged the evacuation to March 29? The media did not asked the
government why it allowed congregation at the Hindu temples as late as March 20
and has been questioning the Markaz for organizing the congregation on earlier
dates.
Instead of standing by the side of journalistic ethics, the
media chose to demonize the Muslim community for the congregation organized by the
Tablighi Jamat. It was a well thought out plan, where subscription, advertisements
and building of government’s vote bank were all involved.
There was a pathological preoccupation and obsession with
bigotry against Islam and Muslims in the India media in coverage of Tablighi
Jamat news. This vociferous tirade against Muslims by the media made the Tablighi
Markaz, synonym to Akal Thakat and some equated Maulana Saad with Sant Jarnail Singh
Bhindranwale.
Such media bashing of the Muslims lead to a huge fall out at the
societal level. It is for the acts of the Tablighi Jamat in Delhi, Muslims all
over the country were targeted, abused assaulted on streets at several places
in India. Many BJP legislators openly asked Hindus to boycott Muslim vegetable
vendors and not allow them to enter their locality. Such blatant stoking of communal polarization
was condoned by the media attacks that conveniently ignored reporting the
injustices being done to the Muslims.
The negative profiling of the Muslims is assiduously done to
create a sense of unity within the Hindu community for political millage. It is
being done to create maximum impact on the readers and viewers mind. These were
done with an eye on ‘us vs them’ elixir, the magical political formula that
wins election.
The media is a party to the execution to such well thought
out political plan. The strategy is to develop a common enemy in name of Muslims
and to foment a feeling of insecurity among the Hindu elements so that the ruling
party’s becomes their savior and their vote bank is protected.
In doing so, the media knew it well the impact factor of the
anti-Muslim news story and the value of such negative reportage can make them
rich. While doing so media also very
well knows that Muslim side do not have any wherewithal to resist such attack
against them. This is because the organs of government that can come to the
Muslims rescue are pro government and since the anti-Muslim propaganda will
give political benefit to the ruling government, they watch the media’s blatant
display of hatred against the Muslims.
This is a wake-up call for the Muslims in India to rise up
against the media and government’s collaborative efforts to give them bad
press. In the battle against the ‘Godi media,’
Muslims have to stand up, unite and forge alliances to launch media projects in
the country. In the age of TV media, social media, and whatsapp networking
groups any such fight cannot take place till the Muslim community do not have
their own media.
But so far, Muslims have miserably have failed to set up any
strong media platform to counter such humiliation by the so called ‘Godi media.’
It is high time for the Indian Muslims to come forward to create elite group of
like minded people who can respond to the anti-Muslim propaganda done by so
called ‘Godi media.’
The Muslim elite group and the like minded non-Muslims may sit
in conjugation, and confabulate and chalk out plans how to increase their share
in the media market of India.
There is need Muslims with resources can join hand to set up
a major media house and respond to the anti-Muslim hate mongers media outlets. There
are problems in doing so, but there is a space in which Muslim-owed media can
still operate in the country. If such media outlet is professionally run by the trailblazers
of truth and investigative journalists, such a media platform will definitely make
an honest and meaningful impact on the Indian society.
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Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be
contacted at syedalimujtaba2007@gmail.com
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