Media Release
Bengaluru, Mar 5: Jamaat-e-Islami Hind’s Iftar get-together with journalists in Bengaluru on February 27 doubled as a pointed intervention in an increasingly polarised media climate, where Muslims say they are being vilified on screen and on air, even as they break bread with those who shape public opinion.
At the 'Iftar get-together with journalists and media persons' organised by Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Karnataka, speakers repeatedly linked the spiritual discipline of fasting with a civic ethic of truth-telling, constitutional fidelity and more precisely resisting what they called a 'fascist narrative' targeting Muslims and other minorities. The event also recalled films like 'The Kerala Story' sequels, which participants described as part of a pattern of hate-filled storytelling which is entering the mainstream.
“The hot potato of this recent time is ‘The Kerala Story 2', which is really sowing seeds of hatred, especially in the hearts of youngsters,” said a journalism student from St Joseph’s University, during the Q&A session. “It is very difficult to analyse what is truth when it is brought out in big media or screen.” The student’s question captured a central anxiety in the room, when allegations are 'maybe false' or selectively true due to fictionalised narratives which are amplified by powerful platforms.
Dr Belgami Mohammed Saad, president of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, Karnataka, framed his response in explicitly moral and constitutional terms. “We see hatred spread all over, and the media, especially in ‘The Kashmir Files’ and ‘The Kerala Story', now again the atmosphere is very sad and highly disturbing,” he said. “We should employ all possible means to bring the truth out instead of being silent spectators. We should not get carried away by theses false documentation, and you should not become reactionary.”
For Saad, fasting in Ramadan is not a retreat from public life but a training ground for it. “Fasting has been prescribed so that we develop self-control on our desires,” he said, calling it 'an institution' that disciplines material cravings and ego while cultivating a sense of accountability to a higher ethical law. “Whilst we observe fast and we recite Quran during this month, that should give us the strength and courage to face the situation and to do what is our duty in eradicating evil from the society.”
He warned that complacency among well-meaning citizens is the deeper danger, than those who spread hate, “The problem of today, the misfortune, is not that evil is just rampant in the society,” Saad said. “Rather, the bigger misfortune is people who mean good, people who certainly have a good nature, they don’t seem to be as active as they should be.” “Whilst evil is organised, the good should also be organised, and if we do collective efforts, God willing, we will certainly be in a position to change the situation.”
That call for organised “good” ran through the evening’s remarks, including a sharp critique of corporate capture of mainstream media. “We want journalists to tell the truth, write the truth, and not take anyone’s side,” said Akbar Ali Udupi, state secretary of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. “They should not be in favour of any religion, caste, party, or organisation.”
Public trust in news, he argued, has been corroded less by individual reporters than by owners’ proximity to big business. “I won’t say it’s just the journalists, but those who run newspapers have friendships with capitalists,” Udupi said. “The respect the press once had should return.” Yet he rejected communal defensiveness as a response, insisting that ethical consistency must cut across identities. “We should not support someone just because they are from our religion,” he said. “We should call a lie a lie in a civilized language.”
Udupi’s answer to toxic narratives about Muslims in films and newsrooms was not withdrawal but participation. “Muslim youth should enter this media field,” he said. “Then it will be possible to say what is false and what is true.” For him, injustice “cannot be removed through injustice” and “should be removed through supreme goodness,” a line that tied the evening’s media critique back to the ethics of Ramadan.
If the Jamaat leaders spoke from within the community, journalist Shivananda Tagadur, state secretary and senior editor at Vijayavani, turned the lens onto Muslims’ own internal challenges. “Because this is a community that has stayed far away from education, it has become a target for immediate allegations,” Tagadur said. “My personal opinion is that education is the only way to put an end to this.”
He urged a 'more organised, collective effort' from community leaders to mainstream Muslim youth instead of undermining those trying to create awareness. Integrating into the wider public sphere, he argued, also means embracing the state language. “Have love and respect for your language, but when entering the mainstream world, this language (Kannada) is also most important,” Tagadur said.
For Saad, Udupi and others, Ramadan’s call for self-control, empathy for the hungry and accountability to God demands that media and citizens fight injustice, refusing to stay 'silent spectators' to hate in debates or movie theatres.