Last week I was asked to moderate a discussion on the APCR-anchored fact finding report, ‘Creating the Muslim “Outsider”: Hate speech, migrant vulnerability & faltering law and order in Himachal Pradesh’. Although I flatter myself with keeping up with the news, nothing really prepared me for the broad picture that emerged from this report from five districts of the state put together by young idealistic journalist-fact finders.
Himachal Pradesh, once seen as the most progressive in terms of social indices ranging from education and health to communal harmony in northern India, is slowly but surely descending into a communal cauldron. A ferocious and ugly campaign spearheaded by Hindutva outfits, with the open support of the opposition BJP, has been unleashed on the state for the last two months. To take one instance, there have been calls for the demolition of not just the unauthorised floors of the Sanjauli mosque in Shimla, but the mosque itself (“masjid ko girana hoga”). Hindutva media like OpIndia have no compunctions about labelling the mosque illegal despite records that show that the land for it was acquired in 1940 and is today Wafq property.
The communal frenzy created over the Sanjauli mosque was just one among several incidents that took place in a coordinated manner in various regions of Himachal over September and October this year. Masjids and mazhars are always in the eye of the attackers. In Kullu, the 150-year-old Jama Masjid has been threatened with demolition, and the street on which it is situated has been renamed ‘Shree Ram Gali’. In Solan the Hanuman Chalisa was read outside the mosque on Mall Road.
It’s a mixed bag of toxic issues that are fuelling these protests, ranging from hounding Muslims seeking to earn a living in the area through tailoring or vending, to marking Muslim shops with red crosses, asking for their boycott and even vandalising them. The question that puzzled me is why is it that the rest of the country clueless about this dire situation. Why do the occasional important news reports emerging from Shimla or Mandi (‘From a Stray Incident to an Anti-Mosque Protest: How Tension Flared up in Shimla’, The Wire, September 11; ‘Truth about the Sanjauli Mosque issue: Shimla, Himachal Pradesh’, sabrangindia.in) fail to ring alarm bells?
In fact this is a story only half told by serious newspapers, completely distorted by television news channels, even as disinformation travels at lightning speed through WhastsApp groups. The APCR report provides evidence of how mediatised stigma always finds a ready audience. As one interviewee told the fact finding team, “We have never seen anything like this in Shimla before…We should stay in harmony together. But when we hear that Muslims spit in our food and pelt stones we feel bad.”
But has he seen Muslims spitting in food?
“I have seen this on television.”
Remember this spitting trope, designed to exclusively target poor Muslim vendors and food delivery agents, got its first public airing during the traumatic days of the pandemic? Well, it is still encircling around us like birds of prey.
The intention is clearly to make Himachal Pradesh another Uttarakhand, a state that has become communally vitiated ever since the Dharma Sansad held in Haridwar in December 2021 openly called for a safayi abhiyan (ethnic cleansing) of Muslims. That malign call still echoes through the state, often amplified by television coverage. As recently as last week a traders’ body in Uttarakhand’s Khansar town demanded that all 15 Muslim families, who have been living there for decades, move out by December 31. It is an eerie replay of a similar ultimatum issued by the VHP, Bajrang Dal and Dev Bhoomi Raksha Abhiyan last June in Purola town, Uttarkashi district, over a fake “love jihad” case.
The templates used in both states which wear the sobriquet of “dev bhoomi” are similar. Uttarakhand’s Uttarkashi district is still under prohibitory orders after a protest launched by Sanjukt Hindu Sanghathan against a mosque that was allegedly built on government land. It turns out that it is on Wafq property.
Such crude attempts of those filled with majoritarian arrogance to intimidate a significant section of rights-bearing Indian citizens need a vigilant and responsive media as never before. Because the ground slipping from under the feet of Muslims today will mean the ground slipping from under the country tomorrow. Across India there is evidence of such slippage (‘How Local Hate Networks Are Building Modi’s Most Faithful Votebank, October 24). Every day brings a new flood of hate bilge.
A teacher of Urdu gets set upon by a resident in a Noida highrise and told to say, ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
One Sujata Thacker X celebrates the spirit of Diwali in a unique way. She tweets: “#Halal certification is slowly and steadily destabilising the Indian economy and also funding terrorism. So we need to create awareness among all Hindus regarding a Halal mukt Bharat. Pledge to Celebrate a #Halal_Free_Diwali”.
Meanwhile, Himanta Biswa Sarma, the chief minister of Assam, now co-charge of the Jharkhand election, hopes to win the state by “driving out infiltrators”. “Infiltrators” segues nicely into “Bangladeshi “which in turn means “outsider”. Language itself becomes a tool to harangue and terrorise Muslims. Meanwhile in riot-hit Bahraich, the state PWD has issued demolition notices to 23 residents of Maharajganj village, of whom 20 happen to be Muslim. The court says it will hear the case on November 4, but there is no getting away from the demolition notice pasted on the front door calculated to radiate fear.
Innumerable mainstream media outfits are embedded in such hate campaigns with feral social media amplifying and furthering them. What then should independent, conscientious media do in the face of such viral coverage that has immediate and disastrous repercussions on the lives of ordinary people? I will confine myself to four important approaches. Much of this is intuitively understood by reporters on the ground, but it may still serve a purpose to reiterate them.
First, understanding the importance of the story and paring it down to its basics. These include triggering factors, the larger agendas of those who are creating the conflict, the changing nature of their campaigns, the geo-political backdrop, as well as the wider picture. For instance, in the present case, could the Haryana elections and the BJP’s determination to win it at all costs have motivated the riot-instigators in Himachal? Are the patterns of violence occurring in Uttarakhand being replicated in Himachal? Such aspects are generally overlooked or ignored.
Second, careful sequencing of the coverage of different aspects of the story. Often when all the focus is on disturbing real-time developments, parallel events get overlooked. A classic case of this was highlighted by Manoj Mitta in a book he co-authored with H.S. Phoolka, When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and Its Aftermath. During the assassination of Indira Gandhi, media attention was focused on that event, while the parallel development of Sikhs being murdered in huge numbers hardly received the media attention it should have. Had this happened on time, the death toll would have been far lower.
Third, more media attention requires to be paid on how communal dog whistling and riotous assaults both at the individual and mass levels affect the everyday lives of those preyed upon. This is crucial to build a broader sense of understanding and empathy which, in the final analysis, is the only way public outrage over, and resistance to, ethnically and religiously motivated violence can be created.
Finally, the media need to do more about informing readers, viewers and users, of positive aspects such as progressive court verdicts. Professor Mohsin Alam Bhat, in a recent review of the Supreme Court judgement on Section 6A of the Citizenship Act (‘With refugees at the centre SC judgement on Section 6A speaks language of statecraft’, The Indian Express, October 24), points to its “far-reaching consequences considering the CAA 2019 which remains pending in the courts”. He underlined the fact that verdict laid down that “fraternity… is about fostering ‘interconnectedness’ among citizens, not the right to ‘choose one’s neighbours.” This is an paramount principle to keep in mind when the accusation of “Outsider!” is echoing through the land.
§
Want to know a little more about Mark Zuckerberg’s pro-Israel bias?
In 2016, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta/Facebook, made news by appointing Jordana Cutler, a former Israeli government official, to manage Israel-Palestine content on the platform. The move was seen as tantamount to getting the fox to mind the henhouse. According to a news report filed by Sam Biddle of The Intercept, Cutler has personally pushed for the censorship of Instagram accounts belonging to Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group that has anchored many student protests in the US, using Meta’s Dangerous Organizations and Individuals Policy.
But for those who have raised their voices against the blatantly pro-Israel slant of Instagram and Facebook, such moves would not surprise. The digital giant has long exposed its biases that were obvious even earlier to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. In early September last year, the Facebook profile Tamer Almisshal, an Al Jazeera presenter in Arabic, mysteriously vanished after his show, ‘Tip of the Iceberg’, specifically criticised Israel’s intelligence services. It led to such international outrage that the platform had no recourse but to reinstate it.
The statement issued by the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists at that point reflected the general concern:
“Meta knows very well that journalists’ social media accounts are integral parts of their professional work, it cannot shut down journalists’ accounts because they criticised its policies or expressed other critical views, this is a severe attack on freedom of expression. We welcome the fact that Tamer’s account is back online, but neither he nor other journalists should face the same plight again.”
Shortly thereafter, Rima Najjar, a writer and retired professor from Al-Quds University, referring to this case, made a heartfelt appeal to Meta’s Oversight Board not to discriminate against Palestinians. She herself was a victim to such a policy:
“Recently, using the standard of ‘dangerous individuals and organizations’ as cover, Facebook removed one of my posts in which I shared and quoted from Khaled Barakat’s seminal article about Israel’s colonization of Palestine and the Palestinian struggle for liberation and self-determination.”
Facebook’s decision, she argued, was in keeping with documented efforts on the part of Meta to erase the Palestinian narrative and colour Palestinian resistance as terrorism.
After the October 7 attacks, the biases got far more entrenched. In a recent piece, ‘Are social media giants censoring pro-Palestine voices amid Israel’s war?’, Priyanka Shankar, Pranav Dixit and Usaid Siddiqui investigated how words like “genocide” failed to get reader engagement after initially spiking. That is when the users of various social media platforms from across the world went public with the fact that several of these digital giants were shadow-banning material that speaks for Palestine, condemns Israel’s genocide or highlights international protests against Israeli actions.
A statement issued by 48 organisations which have taken up the cause of the digital rights of Palestinian and Arab civil society puts it this way:
“We are [concerned] about significant and disproportionate censorship of Palestinian voices through content takedowns and hiding hashtags, amongst other violations…These restrictions on activists, civil society and human rights defenders represent a grave threat to freedom of expression and access to information, freedom of assembly, and political participation.”
By having Cutler manage Israel-Palestine content on Meta/Facebook, Zuckerberg has signalled that he couldn’t care less about such norms, proprieties or even a principle that Meta/Facebook regularly flogs to promote itself: free speech.
Unremitting censorship of Palestinian narratives has a brutal physical dimension with journalists and media workers in Gaza specifically targeted by the Israeli military. The death toll today includes Lebanese and Syrian journalists. But what is mind-boggling is the insatiable appetite Israel has for killing journalists who don’t mouth their story. Now it has produced fabricated dossiers that frame several journalists working for Al Jazeera from out of Gaza as “terrorists”. That makes it kosher to kill them, right? No questions asked. In any case, where are the questions?
§
Readers write in…
What the Malad incident tells us about Mumbai
Our readers are often people with great social concern. This is a mail from Sunil Khande, who expressed his outrage over the incident of road rage in Mumbai…
“I feel it is unsafe to travel nowadays. Anything can happen. Recently, in Malad, Mumbai, an elderly couple was accompanying in an autorickshaw their 28-year-old son and his wife who were on a two-wheeler. The young man allegedly overtook an autorickshaw from the wrong side and before long was set upon by a gang of goons. His mother jumped out of her rickshaw and tried to turn herself into a shield to spare her son the brutal blows and kicks raining on him but before long he was dead, killed before her eyes and that of his father and wife.
“We need to take care while traveling. If somebody crashes into your vehicle, keep calm, don’t try to sort it out. Just dial 100 and let police handle the situation. Otherwise, opt for public transport. Mumbai has become a dangerous city where the rule of law has collapsed.”
§
Saibaba won’t be forgotten
The Wire has carried several important pieces on the late G.N. Saibaba, but the recent ‘The Heart That Never Surrendered: A Mother’s Fight for G.N. Saibaba’ (October 21), was outstanding because it allowed us a glimpse of the back story of this remarkable academic, poet and prisoner of conscience who ultimately died as a result of state repression.
This is a post on Saibaba, written by Vrinda Grover, noted lawyer and human rights activist:
“Comrade Saibab did not ‘pass away’ due to ill health. Given Sai’s severe physical disability, his imprisonment for 10 years was the torture that has killed him. The state has weaponised the law against dissenters and activists; the judiciary enabled and endorsed, the state’s carceral project.
“Ten years of incarceration did not crush Comrade Saibaba’s spirit. The imprisonment of a severely disabled man by a rogue state with judicial sanction, including in the anda cell, was a form of cruel and inhuman treatment, that he could not survive. The anda cell is built on a panopticon architectural design unique to Maharashtra prisons. Enlightened judges, acquainted with disability and prisoners’ rights, have not sought the dismantling of the anda cell.
“This June, PUCL president Kavita Srivastava invited me to deliver the Neelabh Mishra memorial lecture. I spoke on “The Politics of Incarceration’.What made this event even more special was that it was chaired by Sai, who had recently been acquitted of the criminal case he was framed in for his political activism. In preparation for this programme, Kavita and I visited Sai’s and Vasantha’s residence in Delhi. Sai told us about Vasantha and his school romance; his early days of university student activism, the Focaultian features of the anda cell; their pet cat, empathetic neighbours.
“The relief and smile on Vasanth’s face was so striking. After years of relentless struggle Sai had been released. But there was an unmissable restlessness about Sai himself. He was anxious to be reinstated in his University teaching job and to return to his passion of working for the release of political prisoners.
“When Sai spoke during that programme, he referred to the urgent need for solidarity with the people of Palestine, Kashmir, adivasis and others. His convictions were as resolute as ever. The state is right, Father Stan Swamy and Comrade Saibaba were “unflinching” (Arundhati Roy’s acceptance speech at the PEN award) in their commitment to the struggles for justice.
Of course history will judge everyone. The state whisperers who framed the activists as terrorists as well as the judges and courts that enabled and endorsed the state project. They quote Ambedkar and Gandhi like scripture even while condemning and punishing citizen activists like Sai.
“People will judge, the meanderings of judicial conscience.”
