Can ordinary women who have occupied ‘public’ space ever be the same again?

From March 8, I have started writing a fortnightly column in Mathrubhumi.  It is translated into Malayalam and appears in the print edition and in English online. Here's the first one and the link: https://english.mathrubhumi.com/features/specials/can-ordinary-women-who-have-occupied-public-space-ever-be-the-same-again--1.4599035

Rituals lose meaning when we follow them blindly. And so it is today, International Women's Day.  Few will know when March 8 was designated thus, or even why.

Instead, each year we hear platitudes from politicians about "empowering" women, and respecting them. Even as they mouth these words, millions of women in this country continue to barely survive burdened as they are by poverty and by deprivation of basic services.  They are treated as second class citizens and suffer unspeakable violence.  One day of celebrations will make no difference to the grim realities of their daily lives.

Businesses and industry are not far behind in their fake concern for Indian women.  For them, the woman is ultimately a consumer. So she must be offered special deals on this day.  The more she spends, the more "empowered" she will be, they believe.

Getting away from these fake sentiments, how should we mark this day, if indeed there is any need to do so?

I would suggest we celebrate the emerging image of the Indian woman-- as that of the protestor.  If anything stands out in these last months, especially after December 15 and the unjustifiable and brutal attack by the Delhi police on the students of the Jamia Milia Islamia university, it is the leadership that women of all ages have provided.  They are at the forefront of the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens (NRC).  We have seen them on social media, on television screens, in photographs, fearlessly leading protests, shouting slogans, confronting the hostile police, lustily singing songs about freedom, about ending patriarchy and about citizenship.

We have seen them at Shaheen Bagh in Delhi and at multiple other similar protests around the country.  They have established a new norm for protest -- one that is peaceful, creative and determined.

Also, by occupying a public space, these women have asserted another right -- apart from their right to citizenship which anchors their protests.  It is the right of women to occupy public space, something that is constantly denied to them.  Most public spaces in India are dominated by men. They can hang about, gossip, drink tea, smoke cigarettes, relax, occupy benches, straddle the pavement. You rarely, if ever, see Indian women doing this. They use public spaces for transit, not for pleasure. Now they are using the "public" space, so called because it should be accessible to everyone, to protest.

Another difference that should be noted is that the protests are not centered on their rights as women, but the rights of every person to equality as citizens of a free nation. These women have established that while insensitive and unequal laws and policies, such as the CAA, disproportionately impact women, they also affect anyone who is marginalised.

We don't know whether these protests will shift the policy of a government that appears tone deaf. But there is another aspect to consider. Have the women who are protesting, tutored as they are to accept a limited role in public life and in public spaces, changed? Can they ever revert to the way things were before they stepped out on the street? Once you have shed inhibition and come out to protest, can you go back to being the person you were? Or does something shift in you radically, change your perception of yourself, and also alter the way others see you?

The answers to these questions are not evident today. But it is possible that the anti-CAA protests have triggered another women's revolution, one that asserts their rights as equal citizens. That is surely something we can celebrate today.

Is this the beginning of the irrelevance of Big Media?

Broken News

(Here's the link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/12/31/kalpana-sharma-broken-news-is-this-the-beginning-of-the-irrelevance-of-big-media)

Perhaps I should rename this column "Heart-breaking News".  For as 2019 winds down, we are inundated with stories from Uttar Pradesh that are not just heart-breaking, but are also a frightening illustration of a state gone rogue. 

The videos, the news reports in newspapers and on digital news websites, have made it amply clear that the UP government and its police force are going full tilt to implement the order of "badla" or revenge against Muslims protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). And not just those protesting. Even those passing by, or hiding from the police in their homes, or well-known social workers, have been arrested, beaten up, harassed, shot at or had their homes vandalized.

As 2019 ends, there is human tragedy in abundance, but also hope in the way ordinary people in so many parts of the country are coming out on the streets to protest and demand a repeal of the CAA.

This is no ordinary moment in this country's history. Those of us who have lived through the years of the Emergency, from 1975-77, cannot remember another time when such a cross-section of people have come out on the streets. In 1977, people demanded the restoration of democracy. Today, they are asking the government to adhere to the fundamental values enshrined in the Indian Constitution, especially secularism and equality.

The full extent of this resistance and protest has, perhaps, not been fully communicated by the media. For one, mainstream media feels compelled to give space to official pronouncements.  So even as people raise their voices and question the CAA, space and time is given to interviews and statements by different members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, including union ministers who go to great lengths to explain the harmlessness of the CAA. Even though they contradict each other, the purpose is served: to create confusion and doubt in the minds of those sitting on the fence. Despite this, however, the thousands opposing the law are not convinced, as is evident from the continuing protest marches and meetings.

Although at least some of mainstream media, and practically all the digital news media, has reported the anti-CAA demonstrations around the country, the mood on the ground has not been fully captured.  What motivates those who are walking on the streets, holding placards that they have made themselves?  We hear the voices of celebrities, but not enough of ordinary people. Yet, their voices are extraordinary. Talk to anyone. You will hear a cogent and reasoned explanation about why they oppose the CAA. 

I went to Mumbai's August Kranti Maidan on December 19 and to Azad Maidan on December 27 to judge for myself why people from all walks of life felt compelled to step out of their comfort zones to protest.

I spoke to students and young professionals. A student doing his PhD at the Indian Institute of Technology explained how many of them had been disturbed in 2016, after the suicide of Rohith Vemula in the University of Hyderabad. That is when students from different universities came together. And what began then has continued.

This year, after the curtailment of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir, they sensed that steps to alienate the Muslim minority would accelerate.  But although they protested, they did not come out of their campuses. The CAA, he said, was literally the last straw, and many students felt they just could not hold back.

For a Muslim student from Jawaharlal Nehru University, who also attended the Azad Maidan rally, the Supreme Court's ruling on the Babri Masjid case was the inflection point. She said till then, she still had faith in the judiciary.  After the judgment, she and others like her felt there was no institution left that understood their fears. And the CAA just confirmed this, she said.

Many young professionals from different fields, people who had never participated in any public demonstration also turned up.  Design professionals used their skills to make posters, a standup comic held a placard that read: "I am from Gujarat. My documents burned in 2002". Another poster stated: "BJP is great at maths as they can divide 1.3 bn in no time". Such irony and humour has rarely been seen during protests in recent times.

I thought the point made by the IIT student, that the process of mobilising had already begun in 2016, was particularly significant.

For instance, many people have commented on the prominence of women students in the protests, particularly in Delhi, suggesting that this was something new and unusual.  There is a hidden assumption that women only come out to protest when the issue affects them directly. It is as if women are not 'citizens'!

The strong participation of women in the anti-CAA protests did not come about overnight. It has been part of several processes, such as the one initiated by a group called Pinjra Tod in 2015, coincidentally in the same Jamia Millia Islamia that is in the news today.  Then they fought against curfew hours imposed by their colleges on women students living in the hostel.  Since then they have intervened on many other issues on college campuses. 

Today, you see these women leading the protests with calm determination, and infectious innovation. For instance, there is a video clip of women students taking out a march after protesting outside the RSS Bhawan in New Delhi on December 25. When a police officer comes up to stop them, they break into song holding a banner stating that women will destroy Hindu Rashtra!  The expression on the face of the police officer is priceless.

So the participation of women, without any political affiliation, is not an overnight phenomenon.  It began some time back but because we in the media are so fixated on events, we often miss out on the process.  This article by Neha Dixit explains this clearly.

It is not just the process that the media is failing to follow.  In the case of the anti-CAA protests, much of mainstream media is either distorting the nature of the protests, by constantly highlighting incidents of violence, or simply ignoring them.  Or delegitimizing them, as this report illustrates.

This has led to considerable resentment in the people who are participating in the protests towards the media.  It manifests itself in derision and comments about "godi" media.  In Azad Maidan, a young woman stood steadfastly near the stage with a placard that read: "Arre yeh bikk gayi hai Media" and below these words the symbols of Republic TV, Z News, ABP, Aaj Tak and TOI (Times of India). Although there have been some incidents of journalists being attacked, as reported on this website, I felt that there was more disdain than anger towards the media in general.

We must remember that both in 2012, after the Delhi gang rape case, and in 2013, during the India Against Corruption campaigns in Delhi and other cities, news channels played an active role in amplifying the protests.  In both cases, this worked.  The government of the day had to pay heed.

This time, the majority of news channels have not obliged.  Yet, despite this, it is remarkable that the protests continue and clearly, this government is unable to ignore them. 

Perhaps, this is the beginning of the irrelevance of Big Media and of those in it who think they can ultimately control and even dictate the national narrative.

What if India's media believed the disempowered as much as it does those in power

My column in Newslaundry.com

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2019/12/18/what-if-indias-media-believed-the-disempowered-as-much-as-it-does-those-in-power

Broken News

If the unjustifiable violence unleashed by the Delhi police at Jamia Millia Islamia University on December 15 had happened elsewhere, say on a campus in northeastern India, or in a state some distance from Delhi, we would not have seen the kind of nationwide outrage that was evident in the days that followed.

By the same measure, even if this kind of violence had occurred in New Delhi at another time, when there was only state-owned television and privately run print publications, the reaction, if any, would have been muted.

The response to Sunday’s violence was no thanks to the so-called “national”, privately owned news channels located in the capital, for whom the scene of the crime, so to speak, was a stone’s throw away. There were several reasons, but mainly that the authorities could not have snapped internet services in the national capital on the pretext of maintaining law and order as they have done elsewhere in recent months. In Kashmir, the internet blackout has exceeded four and a half months; in Assam and other parts of the Northeast, it’s only now being restored. Thus, what was happening on the ground became known primarily because of social media.

For instance, even as the police were trashing the library at Jamia, we saw what was happening because there were videos and live feeds on social media. We could see students cowering under desks, shattered glass, chairs overturned. We saw students being beaten by the police and the now viral video of two incredibly gutsy women students, Aysha Renna and Ladeeda Farzana, wagging their fingers, shouting and standing up to the police as they tried to save their male friend, Shaheen, from being beaten. None of this was seen on national television.  

Despite their huge presence in Delhi, the non-state television channels could not figure out how to get all sides of the story.  Instead, they resorted to their usual ploy of filling airtime with talking heads.

One channel, NDTV, did show a clip of the Uttar Pradesh police vandalising scooters and motorbikes parked outside Aligarh Muslim University, where protests in support of their peers at Jamia had broken out, but only because, the anchor emphasised, the act had been filmed by their own cameraman. She went to considerable lengths to explain that even though they had access to the videos by students inside Jamia, they could not show them because they could not be “independently verified”.

Yet, despite no “independent” verification, police officials got plenty of airtime to give their version of the story, defending their actions as essential to maintaining law and order in the face of a “mob”. There was no pushback from the reporters who spoke to these officials, leaving them to have the final word.

Worse still, the next morning, some in the print media – who ought to have known better as they are not expected to churn out instant copy the way TV reporters and anchors are – used the words “mob” and “protesters” interchangeably.  The Indian Express had a front page headline that read, “CAB protests: Mob hits the street.”

At a time when we have a government that regards all protest against its policies as “anti-national” and instigated by “jihadists” or “Naxals”, or as the prime minister said at an election rally in Jharkhand, by people who can be “identified by their clothes”, it is incumbent upon the press to make a necessary distinction between a “mob” and “protestors”.  The latter could turn into a “mob” if provoked, or if some amongst them are determined to provoke the police. But it is not inevitable.

If it happens, surely due diligence on the part of the media requires caution. Why repeat police terminology without first finding out how and why the confrontation began? There is a history of peaceful protests deteriorating into violence because of the actions of some people who join them to provoke and, thereby, undermine the reasons for the protest. 

Even if there was no time to establish who was responsible for the violence or the vandalism, at least an element of doubt could have been injected into the headline, so that “mob” and “protesters” were not seen as being coterminous. 

The media does a disservice to the rights of citizens to protest peacefully by drawing this kind of equivalence. It also does a disservice by disbelieving the disempowered, in this case the students, while giving plenty of airtime to those in power.

As it turns out, none of the 10 arrested after the Sunday violence in Jamia are students, according to the police. Who are these people?  Why are crime reporters not digging out these details? And why is the police, always so ready to give out names of people accused of a crime, being so reticent?

A day after the Sunday events, some in the media did make an effort to give the other side, especially Rajdeep Sardesai of India Today who stepped out of his studio and spent time walking around Jamia talking to the students. The visuals in his show mirrored those of the videos on social media by Jamia students of the attack on their library. A shining exception to the rule, as always, remains Ravish Kumar of NDTV India. He has always strived to show the truth, and he did so in this instance as well.

My limited point is that in such a situation, when the dice is so heavily loaded in favour of the authorities, a media which claims it is trying to be “balanced” needs to make a greater effort to get access to the other side. And if the only way of doing that is by “verifying” the content put out by those under siege, as these students were, then it could have been done. Digital platforms like Scroll did much better by running a live blog for 13 hours and including some of the videos.

By directly, or indirectly, endorsing the official version, the media is reinforcing the narrative the government would like it to perpetuate.

The protests in Jamia were covered because they were in Delhi. But people in the Northeast have not been so fortunate. When the Guwahati-based TV news channel Prag News was attacked by security personnel, who entered its offices and beat up some of the journalists, one of its senior editors was heard on one channel literally begging the national media to pay heed to what was happening in Assam.

Senior journalists from the Northeast have also been appealing to the “mainland” media, as they call it, to try and understand the varying reasons for opposition to the citizenship law in the region. The Northeast comprises eight states with distinct cultures and languages, and more importantly, different histories. Yet, for us in the “mainland” it is just a region that is either seen as colourful, because of the exotic tribal cultures, or troublesome, because of the history of insurgencies. 

Pradip Phanjoubam, editor of the Imphal Free Press, points out in his article in The Hindu, “This inability of those outside the Northeast to see what the Northeast sees betrays to an extent an ignorance and an insensitivity to a stark reality small marginalised communities there face.” Patricia Mukhim, editor of the Shillong Times, has also explained, in an article in Mint, the complexities of the diverse reactions in the Northeast to the Citizenship Amendment Act.

Even at a time like this, when so many parts of that region are deeply disturbed by the passing of the citizenship law, and before that by the way the enumeration for the National Register of Citizens was conducted in Assam, precious little effort is being made to educate viewers and readers, or even the journalists who work with mainstream media, on these distinctions within the Northeast. 

Mainstream media reinforces and exacerbates the alienation felt by people who live on the margins, either in geographical terms or in social terms, by either ignoring them, or reporting on their problems through lenses that are blurred with ignorance and prejudice.