The Muslim leadership’s short-sighted campaign in
the Shah Bano case was to change the Supreme Court judgement upholding a Muslim
divorcee’s right to maintenance under the provisions of the Criminal Procedure
Code, through a legislative enactment [1] enabled the chauvinist Hindu
leadership to convince common Hindus that in matters of faith the judgement of
the court had no place. Accordingly, when the Supreme Court directed that the
structure of the Babri Masjid should not be disturbed, as no available evidence
indicated that a temple originally existed on its site, the Hindu leadership
started arguing that the ruling of the court had little validity when the people
believed that a temple actually existed there. This stand has not changed and
has recently been emphasized by the VHP.
The style and
objectives of the Muslim leadership in the Shah Bano and the Babri Masjid
campaigns were ill-conceived, as arguably was Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim
League campaign to have a separate homeland for Muslims carved out of the Muslim
majority areas of undivided India. It was sheer luck for Indian Muslims that
those running the Shah Bano and the Babri Masjid campaigns lacked Jinnah’s
mobilising skills. -- Ather
Farouqui
By Ather
Farouqui
This article is concerned with
the state of the art of Urdu journalism in contemporary India. In attempting
this analysis my purpose is to address the question whether or not Urdu
journalism has played a constructive role in shaping Muslim sensibilities in
post-independence India in the sense of enabling the community to face up to the
challenge of adjustment as a large minority group in secular India. I shall
argue that Urdu journalism during the post-independence period has very largely
failed to perform this expected role. For reasons which are partly inherent in
the nature and character of the Urdu readership, and which partly arise from the
political and economic proclivities of individual Urdu journalists as well as
from their linkages to political parties, Urdu journalism has more often than
not been prone to reinforce a sectarian and emotional outlook among readers. At
any rate, Urdu journalism has often disturbed Muslim positions on substantial
issues of concern to the community and the country at large, ignoring the
emerging social realities within the community. Accordingly, this discussion of
Urdu journalism in India is set against the changing position of Urdu and the
socio-economic changes Muslims in India have experienced during the past sixty
years.
It is significant to note that a
glance over the journey of Urdu journalism reveals that except a few minor
changes in north Indian Urdu journalism (like a few new newspapers appearing on
the scene or the emergence of electronic media) the mainstream Urdu journalism
has by and large remained static. Their ethos and subject matter has hardly
changed. With the settling of the dust of destruction of Babri Masjid, Urdu
print-media has come back to square one. There is no sign of change in the
mentality of Urdu print-media.
The electronic media has
slightly changed its attitude in respect of Urdu linguistic minority but that is
a different field of study. However an important fact in this respect is—if the
problems associated with Urdu are political, and if Urdu means the language that
is identified by its script rather than by speech, then the language used by
electronic media, irrespective of its Perso-Arabic lexical terms and words has
to be seen differently. Urdu in its spoken form is called either Hindustani or
Hindi (the classical examples are Mughal-e Azam and Razia Sultan which are
branded and even certified as Hindi Films). Constitutionally speaking, even
Hindustani is a form of Hindi along with many other major languages of the north
like Braj, Avadhi, Haryanavi, Rajasthani, Magahi and Bhojpuri etc. Earlier Maithili was also included in the
canon of Hindi but now it has its independent existence. Hence in its spoken
form, Urdu also becomes Hindi and thus even the newly sprouting Urdu TV Channels
will automatically become Hindi channels.
This unfair treatment meted out
to major and rich languages of north India by illiberal forces have penetrated
even the Constitution. For a true democratic state, this needs to be immediately
rectified. Under Article 351 of the Constitution, Hindustani is stated as a form
or Hindi. But one must not forget that Hindustani was to be declared (in two
script—Urdu and Devnagri) as the national language of free India. But before
that could happen our country was partitioned into two and Gandhiji assassinated
by reactionaries.
As far as the Urdu print media
is concerned, a small visible change has occurred in north India because caste
politics has fragmented society. As a byproduct an Urdu newspaper, Rashtriya
Sahara, has sprouted (from Monthly to Weekly to Daily) in many cities of India.
The claims of circulation made by the management are need to be verified and the
phenomenon of growth too needs a proper study in perspective. Since I could not
do that in this paper for the simple reason that this paper is not a case study
of some selective newspapers but it tries to examine broad trends so I did not
go further with Sahara story knowing well that this newspaper, with obvious
political leanings, has been pandering to the needs of a casteist protagonist
cum Muslim populist like Mulayam Singh Yadav in the same way as Urdu weeklies of
the north had been fanning fundamentalist tendencies for their petty gains. This
is a contemporary example of sectarian political clout. On the other hand,
despite tall claims, the Congress failed to address the problems of Muslims,
failed to start the process of their social cohesion and economic development.
In a worsening situation, it also lost its only link to Urdu knowing Muslim
society which is mainly based on women and madrasa graduates, with the
degeneration of Daily Qaumi Awaz and ultimately the closing down of its Lucknow
edition. Although Urdu knowing people (script-knowing) in UP are very few but
post 6 December (1992), the assertion for their Urdu based identity has been
fortified.
After Partition, Urdu was seen
by average Muslims in India as the language of their cultural identity and
religious instruction medium as it has become the sole medium of dini madaris
education and for this reason evokes a deep attachment. As far as the aspect of Muslim identity in the name [admixture] of
culture and religion is concerned, this was not always the case. Historically,
Urdu was the language of the ruling Muslim elite and elite Hindus who came in
touch with Muslim rulers. The common masses, and others, communicated in the
regional languages without feeling a tension as to whether it was Urdu or Hindi,
or some other language.
Urdu suffered a decline after
India was partitioned and was threatened by the official support extended to
Hindi by the government in free India. The Muslim leadership of post partition
India campaigned for Muslims to declare Urdu as their mother tongue and to
consider it as a symbol of their cultural identity. Also the political
compulsions of the north Indian Muslim elite to consolidate Muslims, who are
otherwise internally differentiated, strengthened this campaign. One of the
consequences of this development namely the subsidy given to Urdu publications
by the government was that it made sure that Urdu journalism would die
particularly in north India.
In India the Urdu press, by and
large, is a Muslim press although in some southern states a few good Muslim
newspapers are being published in regional languages. A large number of
representative Muslim weeklies are published from Delhi. But in this assessment
I have included only those Urdu newspapers, mainly weeklies and dailies, which
have played any role, even if negative, in the lives of India’s Muslims in
general.
The concessions granted to Urdu
newspapers by the government to appease Muslims are readily exploited by some
people, although most of them have no relation with journalism. These people get
a registration number for an Urdu paper and publish fifty to hundred copies.
However, they falsely claim that they publish greater numbers, to obtain
government advertisements and the quota of newsprint. Surprisingly, the office
of the Registrar of Newspapers plays a passive role and does not try to find out
if the figures submitted to it by the respective newspapers are authentic. Most
of the owners of these newspapers (who also happen to be their editors) indulge
in blackmailing one or other political party in the name of their
newspaper.
Out of the 347 registered
publications, there may be hardly forty to fifty which in fact reach public
hands. Most of these publish file-copies only for the government’s record.
However, in this assessment I have included only those newspapers which really
reach the public, and are published regularly. These papers possess the
capability of motivating public opinion.
Without doubt, the Muslims of
south India, particularly Karnataka are recognising Urdu as their language and a
symbol of their religious identity in the changed political milieu, even if Urdu
was never their language and in the past they were greatly distanced from the
Muslims of north India. Culturally, north Indian Muslims always considered
themselves different from Muslims in the rest of the country. They were also
victims of a pronounced sense of superiority. This cultural distance and the
strong sense of superiority on the part of north Indian Muslims became a great
hurdle in linking them with south Indian Muslims.
This factor also prevented the
movement for Pakistan from reaching south India. Except for a few big cities,
migration to Pakistan from the south was limited (Precisely because of the hold
of north Indian Muslims over the Muslim League, particularly by the ashraf
(gentry) and the middle class, linguistic and cultural conflicts have arisen
there even after the formation of Pakistan). The subsequent establishment of
Bangladesh and the remarkable rise of the Muhajir Quami Movement (MQM) in the
refugee-dominated urban areas of Sindh province are ample proof of
this.
Muslim politics in contemporary
India is not particularly different from what they were in the past. The hold of
north Indian Muslims on Muslim political campaigns even after independence has
been strong. This prompted the presumption that the north Indian Muslim
leadership would also be successful in the south. However, the defeat of Syed
Shahabuddin in Bangalore during the 1989 general elections made the north Indian
Muslim leadership acutely aware of its real standing in the
south.
Over the recent past Muslims in
India has been the centre of two public controversies. The first controversy
centred on whether a divorced Muslim woman was entitled to maintenance from her
husband under certain provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act, entitling women
to claim such maintenance to avert their taking to vagrancy or prostitution,
when a husband’s liability towards his wife after divorce ceased under Muslim
Personal law. The second controversy concerned the claim of a section of
chauvinist Hindus to build a Ram Temple on the site of the Babri Masjid,
allegedly built by Mughal emperor Babar after bringing down a temple in the
sixteenth century. Muslims waged fierce struggles for the enactment of a law to
annul the Supreme Court judgement[1] in the Shah Bano case, and for the
protection of the Babri Masjid (which was, eventually, forcefully demolished by
fanatical Hindus on 6 December 1992, plunging India into serious Hindu-Muslim
strife).
The Muslim leadership’s
short-sighted campaign in the Shah Bano case was to change the Supreme Court
judgement upholding a Muslim divorcee’s right to maintenance under the
provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code, through a legislative enactment [1]
enabled the chauvinist Hindu leadership to convince common Hindus that in
matters of faith the judgement of the court had no place. Accordingly, when the
Supreme Court directed that the structure of the Babri Masjid should not be
disturbed, as no available evidence indicated that a temple originally existed
on its site, the Hindu leadership started arguing that the ruling of the court
had little validity when the people believed that a temple actually existed
there. This stand has not changed and has recently been emphasized by the
VHP.
The style and objectives of the
Muslim leadership in the Shah Bano and the Babri Masjid campaigns were
ill-conceived, as arguably was Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s Muslim League campaign to
have a separate homeland for Muslims carved out of the Muslim majority areas of
undivided India. It was sheer luck for Indian Muslims that those running the
Shah Bano and the Babri Masjid campaigns lacked Jinnah’s mobilising
skills.
To be able to appreciate the
role of the Urdu press in the lives of Indian Muslims, we need to divide Urdu
publications between Urdu weeklies, fortnightlies and monthlies on the one hand
and Urdu dailies on the other. Urdu weeklies, fortnightlies and monthlies
published on a regular basis enjoy the patronage of the Muslim leadership of
Delhi in particular, and north India in general, and it is widely known that
they receive their funding from the same sources which finance the activities of
fundamentalist Muslim leaders. These publications can, therefore, be regarded as
truly reflecting the mentality of north Indian Muslims. Nonetheless, among the
publications belonging to this category, the number of those published on a
regular basis is limited to one or two. Most of them are open advocates or
official organs of political parties or ideological organisations. Therefore,
their circulation and their area of influence are greatly
restricted.
The weeklies published from
Delhi command a comparatively larger circle of readers among Muslims. Their role
in the formation of Urdu journalistic thinking is substantial and a true
reflection of the sentiments of north Indian Muslims and their social situation.
Muslim readers in the north are educationally backward. Muslim readers from
organisations, which in fact are unconcerned with the real problems facing
Muslims, particularly those relating to their educational backwardness and
under-representation in public employment or even their general poverty, find
the north Indian soil extremely fertile for their campaigns. Therefore, most
Delhi-based Urdu weeklies keep giving currency to self-created stereotypes and
misconceptions which place severe limits upon their potential for
growth.
The sources of such stereotypes
and misconceptions are varied. There are some stereotypes and misconceptions
which anti-Muslim forces have deliberately given currency to, in an organised
fashion. Even so, a good many of the stereotypes and misconceptions have been
popularised by Delhi-based Urdu weeklies too. For instance, Urdu publications
have all along harped on the discriminatory treatment meted out to Muslims in
India, often explaining the social and economic backwardness which characterises
this community entirely and exclusively in terms of the failure of the
Government to protect Muslim interests or to secure economic advantages for
them. One is not suggesting that there is no discrimination against Muslims in
contemporary India. What one is suggesting is that discrimination is only a part
of the story. Equally a number of internal factors as well as their
post-partition psychological orientations can be a factor in the continued
backwardness of the community. However, the Urdu press has never even raised the
question that there might be other factors which might have contributed to their
continued backwardness. Even if proved wrong on subsequent scrutiny, such
searching analyses would have broadened Muslim horizons to their predicament in
post-independence India and enabled Muslims to come to terms with their
existential realities. Unfortunately, Urdu journalism has been content with
reiterating the common clichés.
For a while in the 1980s a
slight change in Urdu journalism was discernible. At that time some new
newspapers started appearing and several of the old publications re-oriented
their outlook in order to reflect emerging realities.The National Herald, an
organ of the Congress, started its sister publication in Urdu known as Quami
Awaz from Delhi. The Quami Awaz set a new trend of healthy journalism in
comparison with other Urdu dailies of north India, and despite being an organ of
the Congress; it became a necessary reading for enlightened and sober Muslims in
some parts of northern India, particularly in western Uttar Pradesh in 1980s.
The Nai Duniya which had resumed its publication in 1973 as a weekly newspaper,
assumed extraordinary popularity in 1980 when communalism and extremism were at
a peak. Another weekly newspaper, Akhbar-e Nau appeared on the scene in the mid
1980s. Akhbar-e Nau indulged in blindly backing Imam Bukhari. During the Muslim
Personal Law movement and later on the Babri Masjid movement, it assumed great
importance, and by 1990 it was among the leading Urdu weeklies of the country.
When Janata Dal came to power, the then Prime Minister VP Singh, on the
recommendation of Imam of Jama Masjid of Delhi, Abdullah Bukhari, granted a
Rajya Sabha seat to its editor Muhammad Afzal who was consequently elected as
the Rajya Sabha MP as Janata Dal candidate. After stepping into the political
arena, Muhammad Afzal’s interest in the newspaper, and simultaneously the
influence of the paper on the common Muslim, also started fading. During the
period of the Babri Masjid movement two more papers, the daily Faisal Jadeed and
weekly Hamara Qadam, were launched. The daily Faisal Jadeed was a newspaper
without news.[1] It was more a ‘views-paper’ of people who were extremely
narrow-minded. Instead of bringing about an awareness among the Muslim masses of
the issues involved it worked towards inciting Muslims to fever pitch. It
remained very popular during the heyday of the Babri Masjid
Movement.
After the demolition of the
Babri Masjid, which resulted in the virtual collapse of the movement for its
protection, Hamara Qadam and Faisal Jadeed almost ceased publication. Nai
Duniya, a publication brought out by another member of the Urdu press magnate
family which has dominated the Urdu journalistic scene, played a vital role in
orienting Muslims towards political aggressiveness in northern India. Akhbar-e
Nau’s editorial comment on the eve of the launching of Hamara Qadam gives an
idea of the opportunist attitude of this as well as other newspapers, including
Nai Duniya. It reads:
In the journalistic brotherhood
of Delhi, the name of Siddiqui brothers is worth mentioning. Maulana Abdul
Waheed Siddiqui, the founding father of Nai Duniya (weekly), Huma and Huda
(monthly digests) had four sons who were publishing separate newspapers and
magazines. Nai Duniya is edited by his youngest son Shahid Siddiqui whereas his
eldest son Ahmad Mustafa Siddiqui Rahi brings out the magazine Huda. As compared
to Nai Duniya, Rahi had brought out a more bulky weekly Humara Qadam
…
What is interesting is that the
political experience and outlook of Shahid Siddiqui and Ahmad Mustafa Siddiqui
are sharply contrasting. Shahid Siddiqui a staunch communist from his very early
stages was an atheist whereas Ahmad Mustafa Siddiqui was pro-religion,
anti-Communist and a staunch Congressman from the political point of view.
However, after the starting of their respective newspapers, the outlook and
ideology of both of them has entirely changed. [1]
Elsewhere the editor of Akhbar-e Nau openly conceded the sub-standard
level of Urdu journalism. His contention is that Urdu journalism acts as a
mouthpiece of the communal Muslim leadership. But he holds the government
responsible for these problems. He feels that if communal riots did not occur
and if the government took an interest in solving Muslims’ problems, then Urdu
newspapers would not be able to misguide and exploit innocent
Muslims.[1]
Similar sentiments had been
echoed by Masoom Moradabadi when he launched Khabardar Jadid in 1991. Indeed,
the Khabardar Jadid was explicitly launched with the objective of rooting out
the destructive orientation of Urdu journalism. However after some time he
himself drifted towards the same kind of provocative and destructive journalism.
His views on Urdu journalism based on his association with the profession over
several years are nonetheless pertinent:
The majority of Urdu newspapers
wishes to keep their readers buried under grief and pessimism and also wants to
keep them mentally retarded so that they may be rendered inactive in practical
life. Since independence the majority of Urdu newspapers have done nothing
except lamentation. They deliberately search and compile such material which
would push Muslims into pessimism and hopelessness. These newspapers have
published stories of this tyranny on the community with renewed vigour, but they
never care to educate them and tell them that there are ways and means to come
out from these circumstances and live a respectable life. These newspapers are
sacred that they will educate and adequately guide the readers, that no one will
buy their blood-drenched newspapers. [1]
Another tragedy of the
Delhi-based Urdu publications is that despite a sea-change having taken place in
the political situation of Muslims in India, their orientation remains what it
was around the seventies. They openly arouse Muslims to high pitch, almost
trying to build mass Muslim hysteria over the Babri Masjid issue, and prompting
Muslims to take to militancy during the movement. This orientation was reflected
by several newspapers between September to December 1990.[1]
Today their circle of readers
comprises the lowly educated and politically ill-informed poor Muslims. Among
the stable readership of Urdu journalism and particularly Delhi-based weeklies,
one section is of those persons whose political temperament has been shaped by
those papers which have, by creating misconceptions about Muslims and about Urdu
journalism, rendered the situation extremely complex and perhaps beyond
redemption. They carry an image of themselves as a backward, discriminated
against and culturally threatened community.
The trouble is that the
Delhi-based weeklies and other Urdu papers and magazines have not familiarised
themselves with the changing situation of Muslims. Nor have they thought of
giving space to the problems of the newly educated and emerging middle class
(whose size is nevertheless quite small) among north Indian Muslims. Precisely
because of this, journalism continually harps back to the image of Muslims as
backward and discriminated against, a perception that is not universal to Indian
Muslims in view of distinctive regional variations in the standing of Muslims in
different parts of the country, and because it does not reflect issues of
concern to the emerging Muslim middle class, it has failed to establish
all-India credentials for itself at any time. It is only in situations of
extreme emergency, when an issue that seems to threaten Muslim cultural identity
comes to the fore that the reach of such papers extends beyond north
India.
Since the 1970s a new generation
of Urdu journalists has come up in North India. Even so, neither the tenor and
temperament of Urdu journalists nor their attitude, which compels them to
analyse things from the perspective of the 1970s, has changed. Urdu journalism
is entirely indifferent to the importance of the mass media in the changed
circumstances and new printing technologies. Among the over-simplified
explanations offered by Urdu journalists for the sad state of their affair are
the reluctance of average Muslims to buy newspapers and the inability of Urdu
newspapers to secure advertisements as readily as English, Hindi and some other
regional newspapers does.
Around the early seventies the
educated stratum among north Indian Muslims was almost non-existent, and the
Muslim middle class had become greatly diminished through migration to Pakistan.
Yet at that time a good many Urdu magazines and newspapers were published in
large numbers. But today, when the Muslim middle class has expanded, education
among south Indian Muslims has become common and the economic situation of even
north Indian Muslims has improved, it is surprising that the print orders of
Urdu newspapers and magazines have declined substantially, and several such
papers and magazines have ceased, or are about to cease, publication. This
exactly illustrates the predicament which confronts Urdu journalism
today.
Leading Urdu weeklies which
today focus on north Indian Muslim problems and politics are no longer relevant
outside north India. The pattern of Muslim politics in south India is quite
different from that of north India. North Indian Muslim politicians have never
thought of undertaking measures to truly improve the lot of their constituents
and their empty and meaningless political rhetoric does not echo a sympathetic
chord in south India.
After the collapse of the highly
emotionally charged Muslim Personal Law and the Babri Masjid issues, the scope
for Urdu newspapers to carry on those polemics has virtually ended. Muslim youth
is also gradually realising that the solution to the frequent outbreak of
communal riots does not really lie in reinforcing a ghetto mentality or
promoting the idea that all Muslims constitute a well-knit and unified
community, which north Indian Muslim politics has traditionally recommended. It
is also beginning to see that Urdu newspapers have been using Muslim youth as
fuel to feed the fire of Muslim fears, to see themselves as a well-knit
community threatened by conscious efforts to erode their distinctive identity
under the patronage of the state, through presentation of extremely emotional
analyses of the communal scenario.
Another factor responsible for
the decline of influential Urdu newspapers published from Delhi is the eclipse
of Urdu in this region. The new generation of Muslims, in some north Indian
states, particularly Uttar Pradesh, is hardly conversant with Urdu, as Urdu
ceased to be taught as a language in schools except those run by Muslims.
Historically, Urdu was culturally refined in Uttar Pradesh and became a popular
lingua franca in this region under the patronage of Awadh rulers during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thus, Urdu was learned by Muslims as well
as by non-Muslims as a matter of course and facilities for teaching of Urdu
existed in all schools. During the Congress Raj in 1937-9 and after
independence, the state policy in respect of teaching Urdu was dramatically
changed with the Urdu script replaced by the Devanagari. Today the result is
those young Muslims who are unable to go beyond primary education, are modestly
conversant with Hindi but know no Urdu.
It is the educationally backward
Muslims who stayed on after partition in north Indian provinces and who had at
least a smattering of Urdu constitutes the regular readership of Urdu
newspapers. Indeed, the Urdu newspapers and Muslim politicians evolved their
political strategy of reinforcing a ghetto mentality by playing on the
sensibilities of this very section of north Indian Muslims. But the reality is
that poor and ill-educated Muslims have little choice other than to read
regional Hindi newspapers, despite their anti-Muslim, communal
biases.
After Partition, such Muslims
demonstrated a very emotional attitude towards Urdu. They also lent a degree of
support to campaigns for Urdu and whenever necessary they made sacrifices for
it. However, because of the short-sighted and self-serving politics of the
Muslim leadership, Urdu has become merely a part of their past cultural
heritage. Urdu's decline has rendered the existence of a prestigious Urdu
newspaper virtually impossible. Urdu magazines get a larger quota of government
sponsored advertisements than some of the regional language magazines, the size
and standard of which far exceeds that of Urdu magazines. As the figures in the
table below show, Urdu newspapers are the fifth largest recipients of state
sponsored advertisements.
As far as advertisements of
corporate and private firms are concerned, it stands to reason that they should
be reluctant to put advertisements in Urdu magazines whose readers represents
the most backward section of Muslims. One is not here talking of Hindu-Muslim
differentiation. Even Muslim business firms give very few advertisements to Urdu
publications compared with English and Hindi periodicals. It is the middle class
that by and large constitutes the consumer class in India and the purpose of
advertising is to influence it. If Urdu periodicals do not reach the consumer
class, why should any firm give them advertisements?
S. No.
|
Language
|
Total Amount (in Rs.)of govt. sponsored
advertisements
|
1.
|
English
|
8,82,84,356.00
|
2.
|
Hindi
|
6,65,08,844.00
|
3.
|
Urdu
|
97,78,363.00
|
4.
|
Punjabi
|
60,73,918.00
|
5.
|
Marathi
|
1,33,88,180.00
|
6.
|
Gujarati
|
80,76,155.00
|
7.
|
Sindhi
|
5,18,244.00
|
8.
|
Assamese
|
17,68,736.00
|
9.
|
Bengali
|
1,16,72,781.00
|
10.
|
Oriya
|
34,59,288.00
|
11.
|
Tamil
|
66,73,358.00
|
12.
|
Telugu
|
28,40,188.00
|
13.
|
Malayalam
|
87,49,789.00
|
14.
|
Kannada
|
32,46,885.00
|
15.
|
Sanskrit
|
27,373.00
|
16.
|
Nepali
|
2,88,020.00
|
17.
|
Mizo
|
82,570.0
|
18.
|
Khasi
|
36,248.00
|
19.
|
Konkani
|
34,528.00
|
Source: Annexure referred to in reply to Rajya Sabha
Un-starred Question No. 4305 for reply on 22 December
1992
The state of Urdu journalism is
far more favourable in those linguistic regions of India where Muslims are proud
of their religious identity and are actively sharing the region'’ cultural
ethos. In all such regions the percentage of the population that knows Urdu is
much smaller than in north India. Even in those regions where Urdu is not the
mother-tongue of Muslims, the situation of Urdu is much better than in north
India, and the attitude of Muslims towards Urdu is pragmatic, not emotional.
From the organisation of education to other spheres of practical life the
position occupied by Urdu has neither become a hurdle to development nor come in
conflict with their regional identity.
Let us undertake a brief
evaluation of Urdu journalism in the Urdu speaking and non-Urdu speaking
linguistic regions. The Congress Party’s Urdu daily, Qaumi Awaz, published from
Delhi whose circle of readers until 1995 was extremely wide, includes Muslims of
Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. Even the hostile Muslim reaction against the Congress
after the demolition of Babri Masjid could not erode the popularity of this
daily. The print order of Urdu dailies published from other cities and towns of
Uttar Pradesh and Delhi would number not more than a few hundred. As stated,
most of these dailies publish only file copies for securing newsprint quotas and
other facilities. This number also includes Urdu dailies like Pratap which is
owned by a refugee Punjabi establishment, and whose readership by and large
comprises that section of Punjabi and Sindhi Hindus and Sikhs who had learnt
Urdu as a second language in pre-partition days. They represent the last
generation of Urdu-knowing Hindus and Sikhs. The succeeding generation of
Punjabi Hindus and Sikhs is unfamiliar with Urdu and Hindus form the hardcore of
fanatics. Therefore, the attitude of this group, as well as Hind Samachar
(51264), which was the largest circulation in this part of the country, is
openly hostile towards Islam and Muslims.
In Bangalore, a city in the
Kannada-speaking region, one popular Urdu daily, Salar (11871), is doing well
even though the size of the Urdu speaking population of Bangalore is
substantially lower than in the main cities of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.The
picture is not vastly different in Calcutta. The attachment of Bengali Muslims
for their language is proverbial. Throughout the struggle of the Bengali Muslims
to carve East Pakistan out as a distinct country the issue of Urdu verses
Bengali remained at the core. The protagonists of Pakistan, an eminent Muslim
scholar Maulana Syed Sulaiman Nadvi and the Maulvi Abdul Haq, who earned the
title of the grand old man of Urdu, argued that Bengali Muslims should not
express hostility towards Urdu as the national language of unified Pakistan.
They asserted that Urdu contained many Arabic words and is written in the Arabic
script, the language of the Quran. The East Bengali Muslims rejected this logic
and established Bangladesh with Bengali as the national language. By contrast,
two popular Urdu dailies: Azad Hind (15351), Akhbar-e Mashriq (12882) are
published in Calcutta.
Urdu is not widely spoken in
Maharashtra or Andhra Pradesh. Muslims constitute a relatively small section of
both these states. Moreover, education in both states is conducted predominantly
in the regional language. Over the years, in a bid to support the campaign of
north Indian Muslims to have Urdu declared as the second official language,
Muslims of both states have started Urdu schools and claimed Urdu to be their
mother tongue. However, Marathi in Maharashtra and Telugu in Andhra Pradesh
remain the languages of everyday communications. Even so, three prominent
dailies: Inquilab (23531), Urdu Times (19746), and Hindustan (8612) are
published in Bombay. Three Urdu dailies: Siyasat (39949), Rehnuma-e Deccan
(20982), and Munsif (9390) are published from Hyderabad.
In Bihar where a substantial
number of Muslims are concentrated and Urdu is the recognised second official
language, the state of Urdu journalism is discouraging. In Patna alone, nearly
fifty dailies or weeklies are published, but the real print order in a majority
of cases is limited to fewer than a hundred copies.
It is being recognised belatedly
that Urdu journalistic establishments in Delhi and other north Indian states
will have to change their linguistic policy, in view of the emerging reality
that the new generation of north Indian Muslims is unfamiliar with Urdu. It will
also be necessary that rather than exclusively focusing on the issues of north
Indian Muslims, they will have to give greater space to Muslims in the rest of
India, particularly south Indian Muslims. The Hindi weekly Nai Zameen (47901) is
largely a response to this emerging reality. It will provide an alternative to
the highly communal anti-Muslim local dailies to which the Hindi-knowing Muslim
youth are willy-nilly forced to be exposed. Other newspapers that wish to
restrict themselves to north India will also have to increasingly publish their
Hindi editions like Nai Duniya. As they do so, they will have to shift emotional
and provocative issues that have traditionally appealed to Muslims in north
India, and accord greater space to serious socio-economic and employment-related
issues which educated Muslim youth are increasingly facing in contemporary
India.
Conclusion
The system of most of the Urdu
newspapers is at least one century old. In today’s modern world one would be at
a loss to understand how these newspapers, which are printed so carelessly and
frivolously, survive and serve as vehicles of Muslim journalism in India. The
office of most of the newspapers consists of one room. In the name of the
working staff, there are one or two Urdu DTP operators or calligraphers and one
or two sub-editors. The job of the sub-editors is to select the already
published stories from various newspapers and mould them according to their own
policy and ideology so that they appear provocative and anti-Muslim.
Proof-readers and copy-editors have no role in Urdu newspapers in India.
Sub-editors are generally not very well educated people. The only quality they
have is that they have a working knowledge of Urdu and Hindi. Normally they do
not know English, the reason being that they are products of orthodox dini
madaris (religious educational institutions). The salary of a sub-editor in most
of the cases is a third of an orderly in a national daily. They are usually paid
as little as Rs. 2000.
These Urdu newspapers generally
have no column for intellectuals or for commissioned articles. Therefore, there
is no question of paying an honorarium to writers. Thus, it is the owners of the
papers who generally occupy the seat of editor who become wealthy, as their
publications, despite being sub-standard, are quite popular among the Muslim
masses.
This picture is gradually
changing with the slow increase in the size of the Muslim middle class. Educated
Muslims who have some familiarity with the English language, and are interested
in national problems, are turning to Hindi and English newspapers. English
newspapers, unlike Urdu ones, are more beneficial to them personally because
they provide information about jobs, and admissions to universities. The
management of weekly, India Today, and also some other newspaper houses on
several occasions decided to start publication of Urdu versions. However, each
time the Urdu editors discouraged them by presenting to them distorted facts
about the Urdu readership. They were told that Muslims do not trust the national
press and by nature they tend to be ‘anti-establishment’. As a result such
proposals have been shelved. However, it is almost certain that if some
prominent newspapers or magazine would publish an Urdu version, it would be a
sure success because Urdu is a symbol of the culture and identity of the Muslims
throughout the country. Until this happens, the prospects remain that Urdu
journalism will continue the traditional game of arousing Muslim sentiments
through provocative writing, and render them susceptible to the influence of the
communal leadership with which a good many Urdu journalists are themselves
aligned due to their own ambitions for political prominence and professional
clout.
(This article was included in
the book edited by Ather Farouqui titled “Muslims and the Media Images: News
versus Views” published by the Oxford University Press, India. He can be
contacted at farouqui@yahoo.com)
9:45 PM
Sultan Shahin
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