‘Muslims not included in mainstream narrative’

HYDERABAD: The term ‘communalism’ is a victim of perceptions. The stereotyping of Muslims – irrespective of the existence of multiple communities within them – is what has lent a negative connotation to the meaning of communalism, especially post the advent of 24x7 media.
That seemed to be the general consensus among the panelists who participated in a discussion on ‘Muslims, Communalism and Indian Media’, held at the Maulana Azad National Urdu University (Manuu) on Tuesday.“Every Punjabi is not a Sikh, every Sikh is not a terrorist and every terrorist is not a Khalistani,” former editor of the Organiser (RSS mouthpiece) Seshadri Chari stated, stressing the need to “understand that it is a heterogeneous society”.
Elaborating further, eminent journalist and columnist Ashok Malik said how our society hadn’t matured enough, over all these years, “to be able to interrogate communalism equally”.
“Muslims are only discussed when it comes to cinema or politics (primarily during elections). They are always asked the same questions. But when you talk about education or economy, Muslims aren’t ever part of the narrative. That is disturbing,” he argued.
And this generalization, panelists claimed, touched its crescendo somewhere between the 1990s and the 2000s. “It is around this time that communalism found its way into the political discourse. Prior to that, anti-Muslim sentiments didn’t exist,” well-known scribe and chief editor of Dainik Divya Marathi, Kumar Ketkar, said echoing the fears of people around him who feel that “if we continue to go on like this, we would head for another partition”.
Assistant professor at the New Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Hilal Ahmed, asked if media was doing enough to capture the diversity of the Muslims. His concern found resonance in the observations made by senior journalist Zafar Agha who reiterated how the birth of television journalism had extended increased prominence to communalism.
“But at the same time, we should remember that media is not an adversary of the Muslims. The national media, in fact, has been very fair,” Agha said, adding, “Also, it is impossible to end democratic/secular traditions in this country. Nobody can make it a ‘Hindu Pakistan’ because 90% of Hindus themselves do not want it.”
Taking the conversation forward, a self-confessed right-winger and political analyst, Ved Pratap Vaidik, insisted that even the “Hindi media has never been communal”. “A man who is spiritual or nationalistic in the true sense of those words, can never be communal, because for him, humanity is above everything else,” Vaidik said, closing the session on a rather philosophical note.
Muslims are only discussed when it comes to cinema or politics (primarily during elections). But when you talk about education or economy, Muslims aren’t ever part of the narrative. That is disturbing.