Sunday, December 06, 2009
A TALE OF TWO CITY NEWSPAPERS
As it is, to judge the pulse of the people is a hazardous venture, even with all the high degree of sophistication sold to the gullible by the discredited polling peddlers, the state of editorial confusion in the writers of Mumbai’s two main opinion maker English media, The Times of India and The Indian Express, shows how media uses its power in questionable arbitrary manner, when it comes to Muslim mind. The anniversary of December 6, which is marked by Indian Muslim all over the country as a Black Day; a day when India’s most celebrated secular Constitution was systematically subverted by the two main political parties, joining hands in collusion to demolish the 400 year old historic Babri Masjid at Ayodhya.
Those who had witnessed the event on live telecast cannot forget what role BBC and its local correspondent Mark Tally played in spreading the panic all over the country, by their minute by minute reporting. For all practical purposes, the international media with BBC practically representing western interests in Indian affairs, was seen to be hand in glove with anti-Muslim elements in the Hindutva rabble-rousers as well as the pseudo-secular Brahmins of Indian National Congress that was ruling the country.
It is therefore not surprising that Mumbai’s two English newspapers have come out with reports on the mood of Indian Muslims with two entirely divergent versions.
Times of India report headlined: Looking Beyond Babri carried the theme, paraphrasing a Leftist poet Faiz’s famous line: Aur bhi gham hain Babri ke siva. Indian Express headline: ‘Muslim leaders seek stern action’, on the other hand gave the other side where Muslims are reported as enraged as ever; more so especially after Government’s tabling in Lok Sabha of the Justice Liberhan’s Report on Babri Masjid Demolition, that took 17 years to charge 68 persons, all from the BJP and other member of Hindutva Sangh Parivar. Muslims are reportedly demanding all of them to be brought to justice.
The Times of India, in a report meticulously written by its confirmed Leftist liberal, Mohammed Wajihuddin stuck to his usual suspects in his progressive backyard, to paint a picture of ‘liberal’ Muslims, trying to monopolize the debate by burying their heads in sand, pretending Babri is dead. He should have added: Long Live Babri. For Times of India, to promote the notion that Babri is a non-issue is not only audacious, but dangerous, as it is underestimating the rage that is simmering in the Muslim milieu. Wajihuddin completely ignores the majority of Muslims in the city who by no means can be calculated as following Left liberal creed of making all religious issues irrelevant. Not a single of his quote is from mainstream Muslim citizens. His observations are therefore based on faulty and arbitrarily biased polling of the people. That does not reflect the fact. As it is when Muslim masses have spoken in united terms? Wajihuddin’s report therefore is a propaganda report. Much that liberals would like religion to be out of national debate, religion in India, in all its variations is the very soul of the people.
Times of India’s attempt to sooth the nerves of the majority of its non-Muslim readership, is understandable; but it can make people and government complacent and take them with surprise when even small matters could trigger the simmering rage to the surface. It would therefore be better to err on the side of caution.
‘The Indian Express’ has picked up its line from politicians of the two different political parties, without bothering to go deeper into the subject of how mainstream Muslim feels about the Babri Masjid demolition and what are its aspiration over justice and restitution of Babri at its original site. Congress Party spokesperson, Hussain Dalwai, again a left liberal, dutifully followed the party line. Congress by releasing the Liberhan report is into political maneuvering as how to exploit Liberahan Commission’s findings to rouse sentiments in Uttar Pradesh and regain Muslim trust to once again secure a dominant political space for Congress in the pivotal state. A sizeable percentage of Mumbai population has live links with people back home in Uttar Pradesh. As earning members contributing to the family budget, they are susceptible to maneuverings by political parties in Mumbai. In this context, Samajwadi Party leader, Abu Asim Azmi, as quoted by Indian Express, follows the Muslim mainstream sentiments and demands the whole works.
None of the two Media reports go deeper into the possibility that Babri sentiments could last for another 500 years or more than its old historical structure survived. With Muslims feeling under siege all over the globe, Babri demolition is India’s contribution to Muslim rage, that better be tackled by Congress government as soon as possible.
Ghulam Muhammed, Mumbai
Looking beyond BABRI
Sixteen years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, both the Muslim mindset and the leadership have undergone a sea change
Mohammed Wajihuddin | TNN
Zohair Afsar was all of two when a frenzied mob of kar sevaks demolished the 400-year-old Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992. Obviously, he remembers neither the denouement of that black Sunday nor the countrywide dance of death in its aftermath. Growing up in Deoband, the UP town that houses Islamic seminary Darul Uloom—which, despite its lofty history of producing a galaxy of nationalist ulema, has often been pilloried for its regressive fatwas—one would have expected the boy to catch the virus of minority victimhood. But Zohair, now 19 and a student of mass media in Mumbai’s Burhani College, has a different perspective. “Babri masjid is not an issue with me,’’ he declares. “I want to get educated and excel in my field.’’
Zohair belongs to the post-Babri generation of Muslims who have undergone a remarkable change in mindset. This generation, reaping
the opportunities of globalisation, genuinely believes that the past cannot hold it back. For its members it is career rather than an obsession with rebuilding the destroyed mosque that is paramount: the collective fury that had consumed them for years after the demolition has today given way to a desire for education and prosperity.
The indications are everywhere. At a meet at Urdu Markaz, a cultural centre in Dongri, a group discussed the three-day career festival that begins on January 8. “We will have stalls for career counselling, workshops on different career options and speeches by role models on how to excel in different professions,’’ says Aamir Edresy of the Association of Muslim Professionals, which is holding the career fest in co-ordination with Anjumane-Islam.
Alfiya Ansari, a master in marketing management and a participant in the career fest, grew up in the Muslim ghetto of Nagpada. Communal thugs burnt down her father’s cloth manufacturing unit in neighbouring Surat during the 1992-’93 riots. “My father remained missing for many days. We were so scared that we had almost planned to leave Mumbai,’’ recalls 24-yearold Alfiya. “But we decided to stay back and avenge the injustice through education.’’
The desire for education, say activists who worked among the riotaffected, became the catalyst that triggered a change in the Muslim mindset. Farid Khan, general secretary of Majlis-e-Shoora, a sociocultural body set up after the Mumbai riots, recalls how angry youth then wanted to avenge the humiliation. “Posters with the domes of the Babri mosque painted like bleeding eyes were pasted on walls in Muslim pockets. Slogans like ‘God, send us another Mehmood Ghaznavi (the 10th-century Muslim invader who destroyed the Somnath Temple several times) to rebuild the demolished mosque’ would rend the air,’’ recalls Khan. Today nobody raises such provocative slogans. Even the patriarchal and heavily patronising leadership of the All India Babri Masjid Action Committee, formed to save the mosque, is now marginalised. The leaders have prudently joined the chorus of accepting the court’s verdict on the issue.
The irrelevance of the myopic Muslim leadership is so evident that, as reformist Islamic scholar Asgar Ali Engineer says, the community feels it would have been better off without such ‘leaders’. Engineer recalls a meeting of Muslim intellectuals in Delhi a few years ago where a prominent Muslim leader came uninvited. “When hewasn’t asked to speak, he stood up demanding to know why,’’ says Engineer. “The crowd had a terse reply: ‘We have reached this stage because we allowed you to speak for so long. Now shut up.’ The leader left the venue humiliated.’’
Engineer also compares the Muslim response to the recent Sachar Committee report as against its reaction to the Gopal Singh Committee report which looked into the socio-economic and educational status of Muslims in the late 1980s. “Then the movement to rebuild the mosque was on every Muslim leader’s agenda. All other more pressing issues were relegated to the back burner,’’ he says. “But today Sachar is being debated at a different level.’’
One of the remedies even the Sachar Committee suggests is to train Muslim candidates for the prestigious civil services exams. And the Muslim and liberal leadership in Mumbai, breaking its unexplained long silence, recently took an initiative in this direction. The Haj Committee of India, headquartered at the swanky Haj House near CST, has started coaching Muslim candidates for the civils. “The response to our advertisement was overwhelming. For the 50 seats, we received over 300 applications from Muslims belonging to poor and lower-middle-class families. This is a very positive trend,’’ says
Mohammed Owais, CEO of the the Haj Committee.
Again, at a UNICEF-sponsored debate on minorities’ problems at the government’s Sahyadri guest house last week, the participants, mostly Muslim women, discussed everything but Babri. “There was not even a mention of the Liberhan report during the day-long debate. It was all about education, health and employment,’’ says Prof Farrukh Waris of Burhani College, one of the invitees at the debate. Evidently, the ghosts of Babri are being quietly laid to rest.
WAR AND PEACE Hindu fundamentalists destroyed the Babri Masjid in 1992, but Ayodhya is hardly an issue for today’s Muslim youth (left)
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Muslim leaders seek stern action
Demolition anniversary : They term government reaction eye-wash, demand immediate justice
Muslim leaders have demanded “stern action” against those named in the Liberhan Commission report besides implementation of the report of the Srikrishna Commission set up following the 1992-’93 riots in Mumbai.
“Stern action should be taken against those who have been named by the Liberhan Commission,” said Congress spokesperson and former minister Husain Dalwai on the eve of the Babri demolition anniversary.
Attacking senior BJP leaders named in the report for claiming that they were not involved in the demolition, Dalwai alleged that the Ram Janmabhoomi movement was organised to demolish the mosque.
“It is necessary to implement the Srikrishna Commission report,” said Dalwai, adding that police officers against whom strictures had been passed by the commission had been promoted later. He said the issue needed to be settled and the communal divide in the country needed to be bridged by erecting a temple and a masjid at the site in Ayodhya.
Samajwadi Party (SP) MLA Abu Asim Azmi termed the statements of the government regarding the Liberhan and Srikrishna Commission reports as an “eye wash” and said justice needed to delivered speedily.
“What action has been taken after it?” questioned Azmi, pointing to the report of the commission set up under Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan submitting its report 17 years after it had been set up. He also sought that the masjid be rebuilt at the same spot.
Accusing the government of lacking “will power,” Azmi, who was arrested for allegedly booking tickets for people involved in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts that occurred after the demolitions, but subsequently discharged by the apex court, said the masterminds behind the demolition needed to be punished.
“Those who masterminded the demolition of the Babri Masjid have not been punished,” said Azmi, pointing out that such incidents led to “outside forces” trying to brainwash youth from the minority community that they would not get justice in the country.
Former Congress minister Anis Ahmed too pointed out that the Liberhan report had held BJP leaders responsible for the demolition, and called for action against those indicted. “The guilty should be punished,” he said, ruing that people only got empty assurances in return.
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