BY YOGINDER SIKAND
Based in New Delhi, Arfa Khanum Sherwani is
an experienced journalist and the newly elected senior vice-president of
the Aligarh Muslim University Old Boys’ Association. In this interview
with Yoginder Sikand, she talks about Indian Muslims and the media.
Q: Could you tell us something about your background?
A: I was born in 1980, in Khurja, a small town in western Uttar
Pradesh. I studied there till the 12th standard, did my bachelor’s degree
in science from CCS University, Meerut, and then a diploma in journalism
from the Aligarh Muslim University. Thereafter, in 2000, I came to Delhi
where I interned with The Pioneer, then worked briefly with The
Asian Age as a trainee subeditor, as a production executive with
Sahara TV and then in 2003 I joined NDTV as principal correspondent and
news anchor. I worked with NDTV for several years, covering foreign and
minority affairs. Presently I am an independent producer and freelance
journalist writing for some leading English and Hindi papers. I am also
doing a PhD from the Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, working on a
comparative study of Dalits and Muslims in the Aligarh district of Uttar
Pradesh.
Q: Muslims often allege that the media (and here they
tend to generalise) is wholly biased against them. As a Muslim woman, did
you face any sort of discrimination while working in what were
non-Muslim-owned media houses?
A: No, I was not made to feel different or uncomfortable at all
except sometimes when discussions in the office would turn to issues
related to Muslims, such as terrorism, or debates about inclusive policies
or an absurd fatwa, when suddenly I would be made to answer on behalf of
the clerics who had issued such fatwas. But that was only very
occasionally as when a maulvi had passed a fatwa insisting that all Muslim
women should cover up completely and colleagues would joke that the next
day I might come to the office fully veiled. On such occasions I was
expected to take a clear stand, to defend or to disassociate myself from
such Muslim practices. But on the whole, I must say that I was never made
to feel as the ‘other’. Rather, I felt very much included and part of the
team. Maybe I was just lucky not to have experienced much discrimination
in gaining access to work opportunities. I cannot speak for other Muslim
journalists and their experiences though, which may be different.
But I think it is safe to say that while discrimination
against Muslims in the media is not something that can be called
‘organised’ or ‘institutionalised’, there are certainly some reporting
beats where Muslim journalists have to be extremely cautious while
reporting. They are supposed to take the same line as dictated to them and
can only speak their minds at the risk of being branded or being labelled
as ‘Muslim journalists’. This is particularly so with regard to such
issues as terrorism, minority affairs or Pakistan.
I must also say that the media – and here I do not mean
that section of the media, especially the vernacular media, which is
heavily pro-Hindutva – is quite receptive to employing qualified Muslims
if they come to them seeking jobs. I have not heard of any qualified and
capable Muslim being refused employment simply because he or she was a
Muslim. I can confidently state that at least those sections of the media
that I have worked with are quite inclusive of Muslims and are not
characterised by a deep-rooted or conscious anti-Muslim bias. Muslim
employees in this section of the media are treated in almost the same way
as their non-Muslim counterparts. But there have also been cases where
Muslim job candidates have been asked weird questions about their religion
and community. And there is also the fact that in order to get the same
job and the same opportunities, a Muslim has to prove himself or herself
more capable than a non-Muslim would need to.
It is crucial to recognise that the media is not a
homogenous body so the experiences of Muslims working in different media
houses may be vastly different. It can vary from person to person. At
least as far as the section of the media in which I have worked is
concerned, I for one do not buy the argument that the media is inherently
anti-Muslim or is engaged in a ‘conspiracy’ against Islam, as some Muslims
allege. If that were true then Shah Faisal, the topper of this year’s
civil service examinations, would not have been in the headlines. Nor
would Shah Rukh Khan or Sania Mirza (before her marriage) have got such
media coverage. It is an undeniable fact that the media has actually
helped create icons out of some Muslims. It is also important to realise
that like every other industry, the media is also driven by market forces
and therefore shares both their negative as well as their positive
features. By creating icons, it becomes easier for marketing gurus to sell
products and generate revenues.
That said, there are certain unwritten lines or
ideological barriers in the media that one cannot cross. One has to
completely follow these rules if one wants to retain one’s job. So, for
instance, you cannot openly take a stand and question whether or not a
particular person, who happens to be a Muslim, is really a terrorist as
your media house alleges him to be. Or, for instance, if your channel is
vociferously anti-Pakistani, you cannot afford to plead for a rational
discussion on Indo-Pak relations. I don’t think this sort of implicit
control, including on issues related to Muslims, was that evident two
decades ago. Today things have been made much more complicated with a
sizeable number of journalists now sharing the Hindutva world view and
supporting Hindutva politics.
Q: You mentioned that you covered minority – which is,
essentially, Muslim – issues for NDTV. You also write about Muslim-related
issues. Was it the case that because you are a Muslim you were expected to
write about Muslims? Is that also not a sort of stereotyping?
A: Often Muslim journalists in mainstream media houses are given
the task of writing about Muslim issues because they are expected to know
more about these matters. Also, sometimes bosses feel that Muslim-related
matters are simply too sensitive for a non-Muslim journalist, who has
little or no knowledge of Muslim affairs, to carefully and properly
handle. I think we need to see this attitude as a positive thing.
On the other hand, it can also be somewhat stifling and
restrictive. Firstly, readers or viewers might doubt the veracity of what
a Muslim journalist writes or speaks about Muslim-related issues,
supposing her or him to be biased or emotionally involved, as a Muslim, in
these issues and hence lacking in objectivity.
Then one faces the problem of being identified as a
‘Muslim journalist’ rather than just a journalist plain and simple, whose
Muslimness is simply incidental or of no importance in his or her
professional life. In this way you tend to get bracketed, segmented and
separated from the rest of your colleagues. Your scope is then immensely
narrowed down and people begin to raise questions about your very
objectivity in covering Muslim issues just because you are a Muslim.
Q: Why is it that only bad news about Muslims – whether
real or concocted – is considered newsworthy? The media never reports
anything positive about Muslims.
A: This in part has to do with the inherent nature of what the
media considers as news. Only extremes make news. So it is largely the
fault of the media that moderates don’t excite media interest. Bad news is
good news for the media. Positivity has to scream from the fences to be
heard while negativity gets an immediate hearing in the media which then
reinforces inherited stereotypes and negative images. It’s like only if
you rave and rant that the media notices you and therefore the silent
moderate sensible Muslim majority gets no media coverage. So this tendency
to sensationalise, to highlight the dark and dramatic, is inherent in what
is considered to be newsworthy by the media. This applies to Muslims in
the same way as it applies to other communities or issues as well.
Another reason for the negative images of Muslims in the
media is lack of sufficient knowledge of the community on the part of
media professionals. When you know something properly, you can present and
project it in the right perspective. But the less you know about a
community, the more you tend towards stereotyping it. This applies to
people in general, not just journalists. Because most journalists have
little or no personal interaction with Muslims, there is a tendency to
treat them and practices associated with them stereotypically, in some
cases even as a totally different species. Often journalists who handle
Muslim issues are just fresh graduates who have not the slightest
understanding of the subject. Given the way the media is structured, they
don’t have enough time to read or study or properly investigate these
issues. And so what we get are often immature commentaries and reactions.
That said, I would also insist that obscurantist Muslim
figures who are highlighted by the media are also to blame for the media
sensationalising Muslim issues. They provide the media the fodder that it
wants, such as by issuing absurd fatwas which are almost always about
women.
Q: It is often alleged that the media is complicit in
highlighting and projecting the most obscurantist people as the ‘leaders’
of the Muslims, completely silencing saner voices. What do you have to say
about this?
A: I don’t think the fault lies entirely with the media really.
The media would highlight the most accessible people who claim to lead or
speak for the Muslims. TV channels simply do not have the time to go out
and search for saner voices if they are not accessible to the media and if
they choose to remain silent when issues related to Muslims are being
discussed. So, quite naturally, they speak to whoever comes to them or
whoever is the most easily accessed and often these are the more
conservative elements who have their organisations and who can easily be
contacted by the media for catchy, sometimes very provocative, outlandish
and obscurantist statements which make good copy or sound bites for the
media. Some of them are really media-savvy and publicity-hungry and go out
of the way to cultivate relations with the media. Because the media
routinely highlights those elements that scream the loudest, it is these
folks who are projected, inadvertently in some cases, deliberately in
others, as Muslim ‘leaders’ and ‘spokesmen’. The moderates or just
ordinary Muslims have no organisations and are not vocal. They don’t
scream or come out on the streets to protest. They are busy leading their
own lives and making a living. And so the media doesn’t know about them
and therefore they don’t contact them when it comes to discussing
Muslim-related issues.
I think this really needs to change. If you look at the
people who are projected by the media as Muslim ‘leaders’ or
spokespersons, it is either traditional, often very patriarchal, maulvis
or some very ultra-secular people with Muslim names. In the process the
moderate Muslim voice – which toes the line of neither the mullahs nor the
ultra-secularists – is completely silenced. Moderate Muslims, who
represent the views of the majority of Indian Muslims, must stand up and
start speaking out on Muslim-related as well as other issues. We can’t let
others speak for us.
Q: In addition to sensationalising Muslim issues,
another problem with media representations of Muslims is the marked
tendency to stereotype them. What do you have to say about this?
A: That’s true. But this is not necessarily intentional or
planned. Take the example of Hindi films, where the hero’s best friend is
a Muslim so he has to wear a skullcap and is shown regularly praying in
the Muslim style. In this way it becomes easier for the director to
establish this character’s identity and then move on to dwell on the real
plot of the story without wasting much time. Honestly speaking, the same
happens in the case of Christians and other non-Hindu communities who –
let’s face it – are yet to be accepted as ‘normal’ characters. Hence the
need to visually or graphically demonstrate the character’s religious
identity and its associated symbols. The same holds true in the case of TV
news as well.
So even if the intention is good – which is not always the
case – this reflects, and further contributes to, stereotyping Muslims.
Why can’t Muslims be shown as normal people, like everyone else, instead
of virtually a different species? And if they show a Muslim who does not
dress in that stereotypical way, they feel the need to establish that the
person, despite his appearance, is indeed a Muslim. This stereotyping is
not always intentional however though often it indeed is.
Q: What do you feel about how Muslim organisations that
claim to speak for all or most Indian Muslims have sought to engage with
the media? What about their media policies, if any?
A: Most of them do not seem to have any media policy at all, at
least nothing that is at all effective. Some of them do not even have a
spokesperson who can deal with media affairs. Earlier, they were content
being by themselves, restricted to their own narrow circles. They created
their own little worlds, their separate comfort zones, and did not feel
the need to go out of that restricted space. Perhaps they lacked the
confidence to do so or felt diffident or scared. Because of this, they
didn’t take the media seriously and failed to realise its importance. But
now that the media is agog with stories about Muslims, they have woken up
to how important and powerful the media really is. By keeping silent all
this while and failing to engage with the media creatively, they have in
effect allowed the image of Muslims to be sullied unchallenged and so it
may now be difficult, if not impossible, to undo that damage. Even if
these organisations try to reach out to the media, they are not very
successful or effective. Many such organisations may actually want to have
nothing to do with the media because they may not want to answer
inconvenient questions.
Essentially, the issue of the poor media image of Muslims
boils down to this: If you, as a community, have no brand value, if
you are seen as wholly hostile to modern concerns, you damage the brand
value and the public perception of yourself and your faith. If your
politics are only about protesting and making demands on others and
accusing others of being your ‘enemies’, if all you do is to ask for
things but not give others anything positive, no number of your people in
the media can salvage your image. I think that is the crux of the image
problem that Muslims face in the media, not just in India but globally.
To come back to the issue of the lack of any effective
media policy of these Muslim organisations, one reason for this is the
fact that the vast majority of them are led by maulvis or by those who
think in the same way as the maulvis. And by and large, the maulvis are
not media-friendly. Many of them will simply refuse to speak to a woman.
I, as a Muslim woman, have personally faced that problem on some
occasions. Few of them speak anything other than chaste Urdu which the
media cannot understand. Hardly any of these Muslim organisations has any
well-qualified, modern, educated staff who can speak good English or
Hindi, with whom the media can interact.
Q: Why is that the case?
A: Maybe because those who run these organisations only want to
employ people who think like them, who are not so bright or well-qualified
that they would dare question or critique them or ask what they would
consider inconvenient questions.
Q: What sort of media policy do you think Muslim
organisations ought to have?
A: They should regularly monitor the media, send out regular press
releases and invite media people to interact with them. In this way,
without sounding preachy or defensive or apologetic, they can help address
the media’s questions about their organisations or Muslims or Islam. The
intention should not be to sermonise, as is often the case, but rather to
interact.
Q: What do you feel about the fact that there are
relatively few Muslims in the so-called mainstream media? How does that
impact on the lack of positive images about Islam and Muslims in the
media? Would increasing the Muslim presence in this media make any
difference to how Muslim or Islam-related issues are covered?
A: This is not a phenomenon specific to the media alone. Muslims
are hardly visible in many other fields as well. This has largely to do
with the pathetic levels of higher education among Muslims.
Increasing the Muslim presence in the mainstream media
might in some cases help address the negative ways in which Muslims are
sometimes portrayed. But there are, as I mentioned earlier on, so many
unwritten rules in the media that one needs to abide by. So if a channel
is pro-BJP, or if its policymaking team is, you won’t be able to criticise
Hindutva politics beyond a point. In most channels, you won’t be able to
advocate a balanced position on, say reservations in jobs for Muslims.
Then there is the tendency of some Muslim journalists that
in order to be more accepted by their colleagues and bosses, they feel
they should be even more critical of Muslims or the maulvis than what is
warranted and that they should make every effort to distance themselves
from general Muslims and their issues. It is better to have a secular,
objective non-Muslim journalist cover Muslim issues than such Muslim
journalists.
But this tendency is something that is not specific to
Muslim journalists however. I know of several Muslim politicians,
bureaucrats and even ordinary middle-class Muslims whose colleagues are
largely Hindus who do precisely this in order to curry favour with their
bosses and colleagues and earn the label of a ‘moderate’, ‘liberal’, and
‘progressive’ Muslim. In this way they feel the need to prove their
‘secular’ credentials. They feel that if their Muslimness is too visible,
they will not be accepted by their peers.
Q: One often hears Muslim leaders talk about the need
for Muslims to start their own English magazines or even a daily newspaper
because, they argue, the mainstream media does not represent Muslim issues
in a proper or positive manner. What do you feel about this proposal?
A: I think this is a bad idea. Such magazines or newspapers will
inevitably be for and by Muslims alone, a mutual appreciation club where
no one questions anyone and all are happy. Such efforts can in some cases
further solidify the sense of Muslim ‘difference’ and alienation from the
rest of Indian society thereby further widening existing communal
divisions.
If you look at previous efforts to set up such magazines
and newspapers, they have by and large proved to be utter failures. Many
such magazines have been compelled to close down due to inefficiency,
nepotism, lack of professionalism, improper marketing and failure to keep
up with the times. These traits are not something particular to the Muslim
media however. Most other Muslim organisations suffer from the same
malaise. I think this has to do in some way with a deep-rooted mentality
which rests on past laurels and dreams of long-lost glory and a strong
resistance to modernity in some very fundamental ways.
Generally, these magazines are unable to generate adequate
advertising revenue. Often these magazines, which are launched without so
much as a feasibility survey, become very religious, focusing almost
wholly on religious issues understood in an extremely ritualistic manner
while giving scant attention to crucial social, economic, educational and
political problems and concerns of Muslims.
Such Muslim-owned magazines and newspapers are also rarely
able to attract well-qualified staff. I am not sure if non-Muslims simply
do not come to them for jobs or if these organisations are unwilling to
associate with them but often you will come across only Muslim males
working with them. It is difficult to find well-qualified and capable
Muslims because there are so few of them in the first place. And
well-qualified Muslims would, generally speaking, not like to work for the
Muslim media – for various reasons, including poor working conditions and
low pay. So it is by and large just mediocre Muslim men, who find it
difficult to get employed in the mainstream media, who are absorbed by the
Muslim-run media.
Q: So are you saying that Muslims should not set up
their own English-language media?
A: I am not saying that. I am just pointing out why such
initiatives in the past have failed and also the immense difficulties
involved. I do not say that Muslims should not set up English magazines
and papers but if they do so, these should not focus only on Muslim or
Islamic issues which would limit their appeal and their influence to
Muslims alone. Rather, they should also deal with general issues which
would make them interesting to non-Muslims as well. This is particularly
important if one of the basic objectives of such magazines and newspapers
is to present a more positive image of Islam and Muslims to non-Muslims or
to counter wrong images about them. Further, these magazines should not
just seek to present a rosy image of Muslims but must also criticise
Muslims if and when the need arises. They should not be propaganda organs.
But that is precisely what most Muslim-owned papers are.
Q: In recent years some Muslim organisations have, at
obviously great cost, set up TV channels that can be watched all over the
country and abroad. However, almost all these channels are devoted simply
to Islam, or rather to one or other sectarian version of Islam, while
paying little or no attention to Muslim social, economic, educational and
political problems and realities. How do you gauge these channels?
A: Again, their appeal is only to Muslims – not to all Muslims, of
course, but to those who want to see this sort of thing and who are
associated with one or other sect or school of Islamic thought that each
of these channels is linked to. Because these channels, like Muslim-run
papers and magazines in English, Urdu and other languages, cater only to
Muslims, they play no role at all in improving the media image of Islam
and Muslims among non-Muslims. I have never heard my non-Muslim friends
discussing Peace TV or Zee Salaam or ETV Urdu. The principal reason for
this is because they almost completely ignore social issues of
contemporary concern which could have been of some significance to
non-Muslims as well.
These channels focus almost only on Islam because this is
a tried and tested formula and it actually works without any risks being
involved. Also, because in this way they can affirm a certain sense of
Muslim identity. This is related to heightened identity consciousness
among many Muslims in recent years, especially after 9/11. Furthermore,
religious programmes are what also sell. But the way these channels
present Islam is often very ritualistic, focusing on the externals, not on
the social dimensions of the faith or the social application of Islam in
real life, for which you need a good understanding of empirical realities
of Muslim society. They also do not adequately address the very vital
issue of the interface between Islam and modernity, which is a major
dilemma that Muslims are faced with today.
But religion is not the only important issue for Muslims,
which is something these channels ignore. Barring a few programmes, these
channels generally ignore the social, economic, educational and political
issues, problems, challenges and realities of Muslims, their empirical
realities. In this however they are not alone. Many Muslim organisations
also focus particularly on religion and identity-related issues, ignoring
social issues and realities. Based on my own limited understanding
of Islam, I don’t think this is the right Islamic approach. Maybe simply
harping on religion and identity all the time serves the interests of
those people who want to project themselves as Muslim ‘leaders’, who
exploit the economic and educational backwardness of Muslims in order to
strengthen their own claims to lead them.
Another reason why these channels focus only on religion –
often defined, as I earlier said, in a narrow, ritualistic or sectarian
manner – is that they lack trained, well-qualified staff who could cover
other, empirical or social issues and realities. So often they hire just
mediocre people and produce mediocre stuff and because they cater to a
very narrow market, they cannot be sustained for too long and have to
close down, as has indeed happened. These channels may not also have
sufficient funds for covering empirical issues. It is a lot cheaper, and
involves much less infrastructure, simply to have two maulvis sit in a
studio and engage in endless sermonising, or a qawwali or mushaira
team performing the night through in the name of highlighting ‘Muslim
culture’, than to send a team into the field to cover social issues and
file empirically grounded reports that can actually wake up the
policymakers. And if these channels do at all cover empirical or
field-based issues and stories, it tends to take the form of sermonising
and preaching rather than objective analyses. Often – and this is also the
case with many Muslim papers – it takes the form only of complaint –
against the state or against anyone but Muslims themselves.
I would also like to add that while the mainstream media
or Bollywood can be faulted for stereotyping Muslims – as dressing in a
particular way or as being ‘extra religious’ – many of these Muslim TV
channels do precisely the same thing. So they also routinely project
Muslims as if all of them wear topis and sport beards or don face veils
and constantly think about religion day in and day out, as if religion is
their only identity and as if they don’t or can’t think of anything else.
Q: How do you assess the Urdu media in terms of its
ability to highlight and represent Muslim social, economic, educational
and political issues and concerns and also in facilitating the emergence
of a relevant Muslim leadership?
A: This media has absolutely no influence on non-Muslims and so
can play no role in addressing anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic propaganda and
stereotypes among them. I know a couple of widely circulated Urdu papers
are read and reviewed in government circles just to have a sense of what
Muslims think on a given issue but this does not really impact on
policymakers and the dominant non-Muslim-controlled media.
In terms of highlighting Muslim social issues, I don’t
think the Urdu media has done a great job although with some exceptions.
It has become a media of complaint and does not present to Muslims a
positive agenda. Large sections of it completely lack objectivity.
Q: In the Urdu media, as well as in the Muslim-run
English media, very few women are visible. Why is this?
A: I think very low levels of education among Muslim women
generally and inbuilt, deep-rooted patriarchal attitudes even in the
Muslim media are two major reasons for this. To be in the media field, you
need to be outgoing, daring, independent, an extrovert willing to mix with
all sorts of people. There would, I suppose, be very few Muslim women of
this sort.
While there are some Muslim women in non-Muslim-owned
television channels, there are fewer who appear on Muslim TV channels.
There would be hardly any Muslim women working in any senior capacity in
any Muslim-run magazine or newspaper. So in terms of gender, there is
certainly this lack of inclusiveness in the Muslim media.
Q: Negative images of Muslim women are such a prominent
theme in the general media. How, as a Muslim woman who works in this
media, do you look at this?
A: I don’t see this as an anti-Islamic ‘conspiracy’ which is how
many Muslims view it. I don’t think the objective is to mock Islam or
Muslims. Much of the generalisation that is made on the basis of some
isolated instances involving Muslim women is out of lack of knowledge and
may not be deliberate. The fact of the matter is that some ignorant
clerics do indeed pass absurd fatwas that demean women and they wrongly
seek Islamic legitimacy for their claims. Lack of knowledge about Muslims
and their issues, media biases and a certain sensationalism in discussing
the question of Muslim women makes the media go to town with such news
reports. But where they can be directly blamed is when they report such
instances in such a manner as to generalise for all Muslims and to make
the issue seem even more horrific than it is. For some strange reason in
media circles there is a sort of romanticisation associated with Muslim
women and their perceived miseries. It is almost certain that a Muslim
woman would attract more media attention than a non-Muslim woman who
shares exactly the same problems and woes.
Q: You mentioned the issue of some clerics who issue
absurd fatwas and how this negatively impacts on images about Islam and
Muslims in the media. What do you think needs to be done as far as this is
concerned?
A: I think that this problem has to do either with limited
knowledge about Islam or misinterpretation of Islamic texts. One of the
greatest problems Muslims today face is that we are as a whole completely
clueless about how to face the numerous and very complex challenges of
modernity and how to understand our religion in this light. One might have
a great deal of knowledge about Islam but what is also important is to
know how to creatively deal with contemporary issues in the light of
Islam. We Muslims are still groping our way to being able to comfortably
balance the demands of religion, modernity, democracy, liberalism, gender
justice, religious pluralism, human rights and so on. In fact, we are
still very far from having reached that stage.
I realise the community does need the ulema and that the
ulema deserve respect. However, I also feel that what we urgently need
today is a class of progressive ulema who can creatively and effectively
deal with the myriad issues and problems that modernity has forced all of
us to deal with. Unfortunately, the image that some maulvis are giving
through their fatwas, lectures, statements and writings is that Islam is
vehemently opposed to modernity as a whole. This, to my mind, is neither
Islamically legitimate nor is it good for the advancement of the community
as well as for its image in the eyes of others.
The ulema present themselves as authorities in matters of
religion but few of them are able to engage properly with the media. Some
among them make a comment or pass an absurd fatwa and the entire class of
ulema, and the entire Muslim community as well, gets a bad image. So while
it is true that to some extent the media is at fault for generalising and
sensationalising about Muslims based on some absurd fatwas delivered by
some maulvi or the other, we cannot deny the fact that many of our ulema
are also to blame, being unable or unwilling to creatively deal with a
host of issues that modernity has brought in its wake. That is why there
is such an urgent need for rethinking and reform among the ulema so that
they can help create a more positive image of Islam and interpret Islam in
order to help Muslims relate creatively and comfortably with the times
while still retaining their identity and faith as Muslims. Regrettably, I
have to say, very few of them are actually doing this work while also
engaging with the media creatively.
(Arfa Khanum Sherwani can be contacted at [email protected].
Yoginder Sikand works with the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion
and Inclusive Policy at the National Law School, Bangalore.)