Book Review

Muslims and Media Images—News versus Views
Edited by: Ather Farouqui
Publisher: Oxford University Press, New Delhi
Year: 2009
Pages: 340
Price: Rs. 695

That Muslims and Islam suffer from a bad press is a widely accepted fact. This book attempts to explore the projection of Muslims and Islam in the media while also seeking to account for the ways in which these images are created and sustained.

‘Muslims and Media Images: Where Things Go Wrong’ is the title of the opening essay by Vinod Mehta, editor-in-chief of the New Delhi-based Outlook magazine. He claims, somewhat tendentiously, that the principal cause for the negative image of Muslims in the non-Muslim Indian media is what he considers to be the Muslims’ own lack of understanding of the nature of the media. In turn, he says, this is related to what he claims is the absence of any ‘forward movement in general amongst Muslims especially in north India , towards social transformation and modernization.’ (p.26).

Mehta appears to argue that the bad press that Muslims enjoy is largely of their own making—a partial and limited claim that can easily be challenged. It is true that much of the blame for the slow pace of what Mehta calls ‘modernization’ among large sections of the north Indian Muslims rests on their shoulders—particularly of those who claim to be their leaders. However, Mehta misses out another undeniable fact—that the opportunities for such ‘modernization’ for many Indian Muslims are severely limited, or even denied, by pervasive discrimination at the hands of organs of the state and by the mounting challenge of Hindutva fascist groups who, as many have convincingly argued, seek to consign the Muslims of India to the status of the new ‘untouchables’.

As befits his status as a known advocate of Hindutva, Chandan Mitra, editor of the New Delhi-based The Pioneer, makes numerous dubious claims in his rather shoddy paper in this volume. At the outset, he observes that ‘the reality is that the image of Indian Muslims projected by the Indian media varies vastly’, thus seeming to acknowledge the fact that at least some sections of the media do not give Muslims a fair deal. However, instead of critiquing those sections of the media that are guilty of this, he lays down, ‘The expectations among Muslims [regarding the media] are unfair in the given circumstances’. He provides no explanation at all to back his judgment. Indeed, he even argues that Muslims are themselves mainly to blame for their bad media image, claiming that the Urdu press ‘has done more damage to the Muslim image in India than any other language media’. Given his known ideological proclivities, it is hardly surprising that Mitra makes no mention at all of the enormously influential and rabidly anti-Muslim Hindutva-oriented press—including his own The Pioneer—that continues to play a major role in magnifying and further sustaining anti-Muslim prejudices and Islamophobia.

In his article, the veteran journalist Kuldip Nayyar remarks that Urdu press today, like its counterpart in the immediate post-Partition period, has, he comments, not provided Muslims the direction and leadership that they require for living as a marginalized minority in a religiously diverse society. It gives exaggerated importance to religious issues, narrowly defined, thus ensnaring Muslims in ‘a vicious circle’. It has also, as Nayyar puts it, ‘somewhat distanced the Muslims from the Indian mainstream’ and made them even more ‘inward looking’. At the same time, Nayyar does not hesitate to critique what he terms as the ‘national press’ for not projecting Muslim-related issues in a fair and balanced manner.

Of all the papers included in this volume Siddharth Vardarajan’s is the most clearly argued and convincing. He contends that the Indian print media mirrors the biases of ‘mainstream’ political parties and generally follows their imperatives. He explains that the so-called representatives of the Muslims affiliated to these parties, whose major task is to garner the Muslim vote for their political patrons, are mostly ‘backward in their approach to the socio-economic issues’ of the country in general, and of the Muslims, in particular. This indelibly influences media discourses about Muslims. In north India, at least, where the bulk of the Indian Muslims is concentrated, these self-styled Muslim political ‘representatives’, drawn principally from the erstwhile aristocratic elite and conservative madrasa-trained ulema, share a ‘backward-looking mentality’, which is generally projected by the media to apply to all Muslims as such.

Several chapters of the book are devoted to the state of the now almost wholly Muslim-owned Urdu press in India . An incisive essay by the editor of the volume, Ather Farouqui, further highlights some of the unsavoury aspects of contemporary Urdu journalism. Right since 1947, Farouqui contends, albeit with a few stray exceptions, Urdu papers have failed to play a constructive role in shaping Muslim sensibilities to help the community face the enormous challenge of adjusting as minority in India . This, he argues, has to do with the nature of the Urdu readership and the political and economic proclivities of Urdu journalists. Urdu papers, he laments, have further reinforced a fiercely sectarian and ‘emotional’ outlook and a ‘ghetto mentality’ among Muslims. Urdu journalism has remained largely static and its ethos and subject matter have hardly changed with the times. In fact, in significant respects they have become worse, he remarks, with several Urdu papers brazenly fanning religious obscurantism for petty gains.

Instead of providing Muslim with positive role-models and inspiration, Urdu papers, Farouqui points out, constantly dwell on the fact of anti-Muslim discrimination, claiming that all the woes of the community are a result of such discrimination at the hands of the state or various other forces that are said to be engaged in a ‘conspiracy’ against them. Farouqui does not deny the obvious reality of anti-Muslim discrimination. At the same time, he remarks that this is just one part of a larger story. Muslim marginalization owes also to the unenviable post-Partition fears and insecurities and anti-Muslim violence as well as a host of other factors internal to the Muslim community, including misplaced priorities of the Muslim political leadership. However, the Urdu press conveniently ignores these internal factors. This denial, instead of helping Muslims, only further complicates and exacerbates their ‘backwardness’. In this regard, Farouqui opines that if anti-Muslim violence were to cease and if the state took a genuine interest in helping solve the manifold economic and social problems of the Muslims, it is likely that the Urdu press ‘would not be able to misguide and exploit innocent Muslims’ (p.245).

Another serious allegation that Farouqui levels against Urdu papers is that most of them enjoy patronage of conservative Muslim politicians of north India . He claims that ‘It is widely known that they receive their funding from the same sources which finance the activities of fundamentalist Muslim leaders’ (p.242). He also points out that because Urdu papers fail to get commercial advertisements they feel compelled to boost their sales by thriving on sensationalism and religious bigotry and stories about ‘conspiracies’—real, but also imaginary—against Islam and Muslims. This, in turn, also works to the advantage of Muslim religious and political elites, who rely on such issues to gain the support of the Muslim public. Not surprisingly, then, Farouqui observes, ‘modern’ educated middle class Muslims who are interested in national and international issues rarely read Urdu papers, and patronize English or vernacular papers instead.

Urdu papers also generally suffer from a high degree of un-professionalism, Farouqui observes.
A similar argument is made by the noted Delhi-based Islamic scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan. He laments what he sees as the pathetic condition of the Muslim press—not just in India but globally—an indication of which, he contentiously argues, is that this press is not even an accepted source of Muslim news. The Muslim media, he contends, reflects the alarming lack of social awareness among Muslims as a community and only further reinforces it. It actively discourages good writers and thinkers from engaging in and with it.

Winding up this long list of well-justified complaints against the Urdu media is an incisive overview of the Urdu press by Arshad Amanullah, a madrasa graduate and now a documentary film-maker based in Delhi . Among other factors, he argues, the hostility of political parties to Urdu has been responsible for blocking the emergence of a new generation of Urdu-speaking Muslims with a ‘secular’ outlook. This void in Urdu journalism, he contends, has been filled largely by graduates of conservative madrasas. In turn, this has ‘culminated the process of the transformation of Urdu journalism into Islamist journalism’ (p.264).

But there is, Amanullah tells us, at least some cause for cheer. For instance, he says, South Indian Urdu papers are not marred—at least not to the same degree—by the ‘emotionalism’ of their north Indian counterparts. One reason for this, he suggests, is that the former are generally better funded and so, unlike the latter, do not need to resort to ‘sensationalism’ in order to attract readers and their money.
A couple of pieces, in the form of general observations about portrayals of Muslims in the media, including in Bollywood movies, are also included in this volume. Most of these are in the form of broad overviews, rather than detailed analyses. Some of them are shoddy and could easily have been done without. Yet, overall, this book excels. It cannot afford to be missed by anyone interested in Indian Muslim affairs and in media projections of Muslims.