Insulting an entire religion shames Indian TV
India
Saba Naqvi
Journalist
Updated Mar 04, 2019 | 21:08 IST
In the recent apoplexy of rage on Indian television, against Pakistan and Kashmiris in particular, the insinuation and rage has spread to Muslims and Islam in general.
Celebrations in India after IAF air strikes in Pakistan | Photo Credit: PTI
The narrative of India, till now, has been connected to the narrative of Kashmir so far as we were distinct from Pakistan in our rejection of the Two Nation Theory, that Hindus and Muslims make separate nations. Therefore, we argued that Kashmir is part of “secular” India, where the world’s third largest Muslim population resides (the first being Indonesia, the second Pakistan that till recent years had a smaller population than that constituted by Indian Muslims).
In the recent apoplexy of rage on Indian television, against Pakistan and Kashmiris in particular, the insinuation and rage have spread to Muslims and Islam in general. This is not the first time this has happened in the hunt for issues that play into two formats that also play into each other: there is the larger Clash of Civilisations theory, into which we dovetail our Hindu vs Muslim battle, that has both electoral and geopolitical dimensions.
In recent weeks several channels have invited legitimate complaints. One English language channel, while running a story on the property details of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar, showed photos of the grand mosque at Mecca, and a mosque in Madina and Al-Aqsa. By showing pictures of the holiest sites for believing Muslims the channel clearly transgressed norms of basic decency and presumably an apology will come to the AIMPLB (All India Muslim Personal Law Board), that’s written a letter of complaint.
In an age where every affront or casual remark about Hindu Gods or historical figures such as Shivaji lead to complaints, and in some cases vandalism and mini riots, it’s remarkable that there is so much silence around such insults to a particular religion and by implication, the believing practitioners.
This is an example of what can go wrong as the visual media searches for images to fill the requirements of stories screeching enemy, traitor, anti-national. It also shows poor professional standards of an almost callous nature in the research and production teams that are tasked with sourcing images for the daily news.
We have off course come a long way from the days when the media was careful to contain violence and did not search for ratings in inflaming passions. In those days print stories were carried with lines such as the following: “One community threw stones at another community near the place of worship after which the administration called the police and paramilitary forces. The situation is now reported to be calm and under control.”
Over the years the standards of reporting have also declined and this actually precedes the TV explosion or the BJP coming to power. As head of a bureau in a national news magazine, I would come across a shocking example of ignorance in a reporter tasked with covering the intelligence agencies and defence. I was once delivered a story about the explosion of new terror groups among Indian Muslims. The story was filled with so-called intelligence inputs and no names of the so-called terror groups. I asked the reporter for the names and the list that came back was as following: Deobandi, Barelwi, Ahle-Hadees.
For those who do not know, the reporter had come back with schools of Islam and passed them off as terror groups. The story was rubbish and some low-level intelligence operative had planted it on an ignorant reporter passing off as a security expert.
Yes there is a lot of prejudice against a particular community on display on TV that is also of electoral utility to India’s pre-eminent ruling party in the upcoming general elections But lets at least get facts right and get the footage, captions, and images straight for debates that are in any case so one-sided.
We have already crossed the threshold where invited guests can at times cross a threshold and speak of a particular “quam” or community as being dangerous for the rest of India. In recent years, one panelist spoke of the rosy cheeks of Kashmiris in spite of unrest while another said that Kashmiri youth who oppose India are the illegitimate offspring of militants crossing in from Pakistan.
Again, let’s remember why India in its formation is different from Pakistan. We are not supposed to believe that an entire people form a different country on the basis of religion. So why do we sound like they do?
(Saba Naqvi is a guest contributor. Views expressed are personal)
https://www.timesnownews.com/india/...-balakot-jaish-e-mohammed-masood-azhar/376486
