How a movie and a court judgement exemplify India’s crisis of growing Islamophobia

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on March 17, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/03/17/how-a-movie-and-a-court-judgement-exemplify-indias-crisis-of-growing-islamophobia

March 15, 2022. By coincidence, not by design, three events took place that converge in different ways.

First, the United Nations adopted a resolution (opposed by India) to declare March 15 as International Day to Combat Islamophobia.

Second, the Karnataka High Court gave the much-awaited ruling on the ban of hijab, or head covering, in government schools and pre-university colleges in Karnataka.

And third, for the first time the prime minister of India went out of his way to endorse a Bollywood film.

The connection between the three events might appear nebulous. But the way events are playing out post the Karnataka High Court ruling, and the promotion of the film The Kashmir Files fit neatly into the growing atmosphere of Islamophobia in India. Hence, the significance of a UN designated day to fight this, for whatever such days are worth.

First, let's look at the 129-page hijab judgement, as it has come to be known. Only the concerned and the affected might plough through the text of the judgement. For the ordinary person, it is the media that explains what the ruling is all about, whether it has flaws, whether it is sound, etc.

Here, the popular media’s failure is spectacular. I have argued this before, and must reiterate, that even the best of television channels (and their numbers can be counted on the fingers of one hand) that at least make an attempt to address social and political issues seriously fall short because of the format they have adopted, and which they do not want to change.

In half an hour, three or four people are invited to give their views on a ruling that requires explanation, not opinion. As a result, you have people trying to say something and just when they get to the core of their argument, anchors plead that they have completely run out of time! Why, when you know the time allotted, do these channels not come up with a format that allows for a proper presentation of facts on such a subject? The mystery remains.

Print media, which is now on the decline as shrinking advertising revenue is being swallowed by television and digital, still provides hope. You get well argued articles by legal scholars that explain this kind of judgement. It cannot be abbreviated into a few paragraphs. You also get shorter editorial comments, like this in Indian Express and this in the Hindu, that provide perspective. The latter, especially, is worth reading because it reminds us that the judgement, which has focused on religion, has missed the point entirely. “Freedom of religion is important because freedoms are important, and not because religions are important,” the editorial concludes.

And you get explainers, like this in Scroll, that provide you with more details about the judgement.

Although this is a commendable effort, print and many independent digital platforms are struggling to survive. Often many of the best articles are behind a paywall. Thus, unless you get the physical edition of the newspapers, or subscribe to the digital edition, you miss out on these explanatory articles.

The biggest problem now is that many, especially of the younger generation, are not watching news on television or reading the newspapers. They get their news through social media sites, like Facebook or Instagram, or through WhatsApp forwards, or through news aggregators like InShorts that give you headline news.

This means they just get bullet points without the substance of any development. When it comes to something like the hijab judgement, all you know is that the court dismissed the plea by the students to wear the hijab inside the classroom. How did it come to this conclusion? A headline cannot capture that. In any case, journalists who have worked in print media know that headlines often fail to accurately reflect what is reported. They are designed to attract eyeballs.

Even more insidious are the posts on social media that twist the subject to suit the belief systems of the audience. Therefore, if the aim is to demonise Indian Muslims, it is easy to distort the entire hijab controversy by either blaming the students for being rigid and unreasonable, or, as is being done by some BJP leaders in Karnataka, alleging that they are part of a “terrorist group” and have been instigated to oppose the ban. It is this kind of “news” that gains currency on certain social media platforms and is lapped up and shared widely.

Incidentally, while on the subject of social media, one of the most important investigative stories to emerge in these last weeks is by the Reporters' Collective on surrogate political advertising on Facebook. The story on the Al Jazeera website stretches into several parts. Each one is long and detailed as it draws together the connection between a big business house, Reliance, a company owned by it that paid for the political advertisements, and Facebook.

The series is a must read because it explains the ecosystem that has evolved over these last years that privileges one perspective – that of the right-wing groups and parties, over others, and the crucial role played by social media.

And finally, you have the recently released Hindi film The Kashmir Files.

Irrespective of the merits of the film, which focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the state in the early 1990s at the height of militancy, the timing of its release, the endorsements it has received, and the response of the audience have to be noted within this larger context we are discussing.

In the last week, many senior BJP ministers, including the prime minister, have gone out of their way to urge people to watch the film. It has been given tax free status in the BJP-governed states and dozens of special screenings have been organised for elected representatives.

In this article in Newslaundry, writer Asim Ali gives his views on the contents of the film, what it got right and what it did not. But more interesting is his description of the audience response at the showing he attended in a theatre in Delhi. He posted videos of people jumping up and shouting religious slogans and openly communal, anti-Muslim ones. Social media, in fact, is full of videos of this kind of response from different parts of the country.

The Kashmir Files is not just another Bollywood film. Even though it is being projected as an effort to right a historical wrong, which is the lack of acknowledgment of the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits, it is more than that. It comes at a time that suits those invested in cleaving this country on religious lines. The audience response, and the hate-filled cries for vengeance after screenings, confirms this.

Alongside the fallout of the hijab verdict, which is primarily on the future of Muslim women students, to the heightened communal atmosphere stirred up by this film, resulting in police in Delhi, for instance, being asked to be alert in mixed neighbourhoods where the film is being screened, we are in for more difficult times.

Inadequate reportage, no shortage of opinion: Where does Big Media stand on the hijab row?

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on February 17, 2022

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2022/02/17/inadequate-reportage-no-shortage-of-opinion-where-does-big-media-stand-on-the-hijab-row

 

The controversy over women students being permitted to wear a hijab in their classroom will not die down anytime soon. What began in one college in Karnataka's Udupi district is now spreading not just to other districts in the state but also to some other parts of the country.

This is still a developing story. It began on December 28, when six students of the Women's Government Pre-University College in Udupi were not allowed to enter their classroom wearing a hijab. Now, with the arguments being heard currently in the Karnataka High Court, the controversy poses several challenges to the media.

Will the media help tamp down emotions or add fuel to the fire that has already been lit? Will it, as seems inevitable in the highly polarised communal situation prevailing in Karnataka and elsewhere, ratchet up the blame game, creating false binaries such as Muslims vs Hindus, hijab vs saffron, etc? Or will it report with responsibility and context?

As with many such events, the initial news was barely reported, except in the area where it occurred – in this case Udupi. It gradually escalated and drew the attention of the national media once photographs of the girls sitting outside the classroom circulated on social media.

Soon, politics took over. The Campus Front of India, which is affiliated to the Social Democratic Party of India, spoke up on behalf of the Muslim students in Udupi. It was only a matter of time before other actors entered the fray, principally the Hindu Jagarana Vedike, which is a part of the Sangh Parivar and has been active on a number of incendiary communal issues in Udupi and nearby districts of Karnataka. This region has been in the news for years with such right-wing groups hounding Hindu-Muslim couples and raising the bogey of “love jihad”.

When such an issue flares up, independent digital news platforms are often the most reliable for more detailed background and information. The News Minute, which focuses on the south, has done some excellent reporting providing the necessary background and context. It has also investigated what led to the almost staged confrontation between the women students wearing hijabs, and groups of men, not all students, sporting flashy saffron turbans and scarves outside the gates of the MGM College in Udupi.

This report in the News Minute is particularly revelatory as it establishes that what was attempted to be portrayed as a spontaneous reaction by Hindu students to the demand of Muslim students for their rights was, in fact, stage-managed. The scarves and turbans were made available, and then collected once the media had given the demonstration coverage.

Newspapers based in Karnataka like the Deccan Herald also carried the kind of detailed and contextualised reports that helped explain why and how this issue escalated the way it has. This report, for instance, gives a useful graphic with a timeline of how the standoff developed and also how politics took over what was an issue that could have been settled at the college level.

Another report that brings out the many layers that need to be understood is this one in Newslaundry, based on what students told the reporters. The issues are certainly not black and white.

Also notable is how most media highlighted only one part of the Karnataka High Court's interim order of February 9, in response to several petitions filed by students on their right to wear the hijab, which stated:

“Pending consideration of all‬ these petitions, we restrain all the students regardless of‬ their religion or faith from wearing saffron shawls (Bhagwa),‬ and connected matters‬ scarfs, hijab, religious flags or the like within the classroom,‬ until further orders.‬”

But the next paragraph said this:

"We make it clear that this order is confined to such of the‬ institutions wherein the College Development Committees have‬ prescribed the student dress code/uniform.‬"

Between February 9, when the order was issued, and February 16, when the Karnataka chief minister clarified in the assembly that the high court's interim order only applied to pre-university colleges where a uniform was mandated and not to degree colleges, many colleges decided on the basis of the first part of the order to bar all students wearing the hijab from entering the premises.

Barring a couple of times when reporters questioned college principals of degree colleges on why they were stopping women wearing hijabs from entering college premises, no one in the media intervened. Instead, we saw videos in the media, and especially on social media, of college-going students being compelled to remove their hijab before entering college premises.

Worse still, some institutions even insisted that Muslim teachers remove their abayas in full view of the media and the police at the gate of the institution. Any media house that had taken the trouble to read the original order would have read this last paragraph that makes it clear to whom the order applies.

We, in the media, must also think of the price these minor girls have paid for the intrusive media attention. There is one particularly upsetting video of a purported reporter chasing a young schoolgirl while the school authorities do nothing to stop him.

Some of the girls chose to speak to the media, such as Muskan Khan, a second-year BCom student from a college in Mandya, who was seen walking boldly towards her college after parking her scooter despite the gang of men wearing saffron scarves taunting her. But they too have had to pay a price. For instance, soon after Muskan spoke to the media, according to Alt News, several fake accounts were created in her name. This is the kind of harassment so many young Muslim women have faced on social media in recent times.

Apart from the inadequate reporting on this issue in mainstream media, there has been no shortage of opinion, either on television, on digital platforms or in print media.

In print media, many opinion pieces have appeared giving various views. From one columnist making the rather predictable connection between “jihadi” and the hijab, to more nuanced comment that suggested that this was also an issue of choice, what comes through clearly is that there is no clear “for” and “against”, no binary that the media loves to project.

Of the many articles, these two are worth a second look. Written by Muslim women, they present different points of view and illustrate the many layers that need to be understood.

Ghazala Wahab, journalist and author of Born a Muslim: Some truths about Islam in India, argues in this piece in Mint Lounge that “the issue is not about hijab any longer. What started as a small disciplinary issue in one college has grown into a political battle in which the colleges are mere fronts and young girls, pawns. Someone with foresight in the right-wing universe laid a trap to further push Muslims to the margins, and the Muslim organisations have walked right into it, not realising that they would end up harming the weakest among their own.”

On the other side, Shayma S, a researcher at Jawaharlal Nehru University, has a different take when she writes in Indian Express:

“The urge to rescue Muslim women, often from Muslim men, who are portrayed as oppressive and violently orthodox, is dominant in Hindutva discourse. But Muslim women who enter higher education and speak for themselves are a double threat; impossible to 'rescue' and difficult to silence. So, perhaps, it is not about the hijab, or about public order. Perhaps, it is the rising anxiety over Muslims and other minorities in the public sphere, who are fighting their way into educational institutions and jobs.”

Unfortunately, in an age of shortened attention spans, where for most people news and opinion have been reduced to a few words on social media, such articulation is read only by a very few, those actually searching for answers, for some kind of middle ground between the extremes.

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