Frontiers, Identities, Media politics

Madhuri and Zeenat

30 Comments

I recieved a mail today about the  deafening silence on the 24X7 newsbreakers regarding La affaire Madhuri and it got me thinking.

Is it not a bit strange that an OB van is not stationed permanently at the Vikaspuri residence of Ms Gupta? How is it that her milk man, her vegetable seller, the retired army major/ or a school principal or an old acquaintance who lives a few houses away have not been interviewed 200 times in the last two days?

How is it that archival shots of Ms Gupta driving away in her car, or recent shots of her being led away  in hand-cuffs, pan shots of her house from across the road, shots of authentic looking documents, of the schools she went to, of interviews with her old parents asking them how does it feel to be parents of a traitor? etc., etc. are not being run in a 24 hour loop?

How is it that there are no hot-shot investigative journalists arriving to break news and to constantly update the anchor. How is it that the director of the Indian Administrative Academy is not being asked about steps being taken  to ensure that such elements are kept at bay or weeded out in time and incidents such as these are not allowed to recur.

How is it that a special edition of We the People and Hum Log or whatever it is called are not even at this hour discussing this earth-shaking issue and how is it that the security establishment is not being dragged over coals for their rank unprofessionalism.

Is it because the lady in question was a Madhuri and not a Zeenat Begum?

Is it because it is difficult to go to town on this episode because the person caught for spying for Pakistan does not belong to a community that has officially been designated as a community of Pakistani spies?

I wonder.

30 thoughts on “Madhuri and Zeenat”

  1. This typical heads i win tails i win attitude.If media does something you dont like you will criticise. If the media does something which does not give you a chance to criticise then also you will criticise.

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    1. How is it that a criticism of the media has cut you to the quick, are you saying that the media is all above board
      that the media is objective, that it does not have its own axes to grind, that no one has any right to say anything about what the media
      is upto. If you are saying all or most of this then i guess you will have to stop wasting your time on a blog site that tries to say things
      that the big media won’t.

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  2. Sohail,

    Unfortunately, this statement gives away your mindset completely: “Is it because it is difficult to go to town on this episode because the person caught for spying for Pakistan does not belong to a community that has officially been designated as a community of Pakistani spies?”

    Individual (as also certain systemic) prejudices apart, this sort of sweeping generalisation does not stand up to any empirical or anecdotal scrutiny..

    In case the Indian “establishment” had officially designated muslims as a “community of Pak spies”, why would it have (for decades) a muslim right at the apex of the strategic weapons complex? Or almost every single elite political (and bureaucratic) position, barring that of the PM?

    about la affaire Madhuri Gupta, I dont see any “positive discrimination” in her favour at all – since the story broke, there has been a headline news on her every single day in every single major newspaper…there are no OB vans outside her Delhi house (because no one lives there!) but OB vans are perpetually stationed outside the doctor couple’s house in Jammu..I fail to see how the “big corporate media” has changed its stripes at all on this issue..

    there are enough issues to confront, creating ones out of nothing do not contribute to the debate…

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    1. @Somnath
      You say that my statement of a systemic prejudice against the Muslims is the sort of sweeping generalisation that does not stand up to any empirical or anecdotal scrutiny.

      I would like to know what kind of empirical evidence would stand up to your scrutiny?

      Nanded, Malegaon, Ajmer, Makkki Masjid, Samjhauta express and even the Mehrauli bomb explosions were followed by arrest of “terrorists”- all muslims- we had been told that all kinds of agencies, terrorists, Islamic madrasas, and terrorist networks including networks operating out of Bangladesh and Nepal, aside from the usual Pakistani agencies were involved.

      There were individuals who had their doubts and said so much. It is difficult to understand how would any organisation, terrorist or otherwise gain the sympathy of Muslims by killing them and by attacking the most venerated Sufi shrines and iconic mosques like the Makki Masjid. The doubters who suggested the possibility of a Hindutva sponsored terrorist angle were ridiculed for their naiveté. Hinduism is a peaceful religion it does not lend itself to such blood thirsty acts. This despite the Bombay riots, despite Gujarat and despite thousands of communal riots since independence, where it is always the minorities that have suffered more, many times more, both in terms of loss of life and property.

      And what is happening now, the Hindutva terror network of Col Purohit and Pragya Singh Thakur seems to be involved in all of these.

      And what about the original suspects ?

      The poor young men, who were caught in the Makki Masjid case and were tortured into giving confessions, are all out of custody because the police had no evidence. They are out, they have lost their jobs, a couple of them are physical wrecks and others are broken psychologically. No one is talking compensation. No police officer has been punished; there are no cases of perjury against police officers and others, like eyewitnesses, who lied under oath. Those arrested for all the other cases would also hopefully be released, later than sooner. No thanks to the Media or the Executive, but perhaps because of the judiciary and perhaps because of the investigation initiated by the slain Maharashtra ATS Chief Karkare had already unravelled enough leads pointing to Purohit and Pragya that it would have been difficult to bury the investigation quietly.

      Am I biased or is this merely anecdotal and not empirical enough

      The Entire Media and the Law and order establishment talks unceasingly of the Madrasas, “the training grounds of terror” this despite the fact that till today, not even a handful of terrorists caught have been traced to any madrasa.

      Do you see any evidence of preconceived positions here?

      Everyone had been told that Muslims don’t want to give modern school education to their children, they only want theological education for them. Everyone was convinced, except nobody bothered to ask the Muslims, not till the Justice Sachar Commission decided to find out. And what did the commission discover? an overwhelming majority of Muslim men and women wanted their young girls and boys to study in Govt. Schools. They do not send their children to schools because over the last 6 decade the secular state at the centre and in the states has not bothered to open schools in areas where Muslims live.

      Is there a systemic prejudice behind this or not?

      Of the scores or may be hundreds of enquiry reports on communal riots that were ordered, investigated, completed and submitted in the last 63 years, the recommendations of not even one have been implemented. In every single enquiry conducted, individuals and organisations have been named and police officers, politicians, administrators, newspapers and others have been identified for complicity and or dereliction of duty and no one has been punished.

      No Sir I am not talking of Individual Biases, I insist that the prejudices are very deep and widespread. These are as real as untouchability, caste discrimination and dowry. Though there is a difference, you can be punished if reported for and caught accepting dowry, practicing caste based discrimination or untouchability. But being a diehard communalist might actually help one in building a brilliant political carreer, ask Modi the self style CEO of Gujarat. It can help one reach where no Muslim has ever reached, you know what I am talking about, Becoming the home minister and the PM of this secular democratic state.

      I am sorry i can’t give you more empirical facts.

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  3. In the American media, you’ll notice that each time someone wants to play the race card, people are closely watching to see if the context allows for the actual topic to be derailed by such a sensitive issue.

    So it is with religion in India. Before someone uses it as a reason for anything, the facts have to be verified as to if religion is in fact the root cause of the issue. Remember when Azhar had to take back his words after he used the minority card out of turn. A time and place for everything I guess!

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    1. @ dinesh

      Do please read my response to Somnath
      If it appears to you that it is an attempt to obfuscate and derail a serious discussion on issues pertaining to national security, I can’t help it.

      If this convinces you that I have a vested interest in raising these peripheral questions, I will readily agree with you, I confess that I do have a vested interest, I don’t want to live the life of a second class citizen.

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  4. Why does it get Somnath’s goat – chor ki daadhi mein tinka? – when it is being pointed out that an Indian spying for Pakistan turned out to be Hindu not Muslim!

    But I disagree with Sohail that the media has been soft on Madhuri. The media has on the contrary bought the establishment’s version – what’s new? – that she fell into a honey trap, or, as a retired RAW chief described, “stud trap”. This was stated as fact and not as a claim by the establishment. The retired RAW chief went to the extend of describing her as “sex hungry”; her being a single woman has made her fair game. I think that this is despicable, and the media then gave out further versions obtained from interrogation. In these she has said she did it not because of love, sex or money but because she was unhappy with the way she had been treated.

    However, I agree with Sohail to the extent that there’s a tone, a tenor that is missing from news anchor voices, from the headlines and comments on Rediff. That is an unmistakable Islamophobic tone that would have started wondering if Zeenat is associated with Al Qaida. Had Madhuri been Muslim – and we are already being told she had converted! – her being a single woman would not been given out as the reason explaining away her alleged espionage. No reason would have had to be given – that she was Muslim would have been enough.

    I think Sohail is spot on to say that something is amiss in the media narrative – that something which you see in media reporting on Batla House, on Kashmir, and on Pakistan in general.

    Even without involving the media, some may ask the Sanghis: You call Muslims traitors, now what do you have to say about Hindu traitors?

    For the likes of Somnath to argue against this question is to deny that right-wing elements within and without the media see, seak and portray Indian Muslims as Pakistan’s ‘agents’.

    Indeed, one must make a list of all those who have been caught, alleged or convicted on charges of spying for Pakistan, or other countries. One must then see how many of them were Hindus and how many were Muslims. This is not a communal exercise but one that would challenge communalists. For, it will be clear what the motives of the spies were. It could be money, revenge, blackmail, sex, anything – but not religion.

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    1. “Why does it get Somnath’s goat – chor ki daadhi mein tinka? – when it is being pointed out that an Indian spying for Pakistan turned out to be Hindu not Muslim!”

      Most of what Somnath said was wrong, but this wasn’t text or subtext in his post at all. Don’t start a long post with a massive failure of perception, people won’t read the rest.

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  5. If there is a connection between the discussion on the Madhuri Gupta incident and muslim bashing in India – its really far out.

    I am sorry you feel that you are treated as a second class citizen. I hope that doesn’t clout your judgment.

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  6. Vij : “Even without involving the media, some may ask the Sanghis: You call Muslims traitors, now what do you have to say about Hindu traitors?”

    Difference is, hindus turn traitors for money or sex… muslims turn traitors because they are muslim… think about it.

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  7. Media has its biases, agreed.But the biases of Sohail Hashmis and Shivam Vijs are equally silly. Media did not spare Sunanda Pushkar. Kafila has a post on that. Tehelka had a long interview with her. She is a Kashmiri brahmin by birth but does that matter to media. Has it tried to defend her on that ground or give her any concession. In case of Madhuri she has not been spared either. Media has been writing about her. It has not given her any clean chit, it has not defended her. Perhaps that did not meet the expectation of Sohail Hasmi . One should criticise media for its biases and tendency to sensationalise. Paraphasing what Nady told once about superstitions I would say there are stereotypes about stereotypes. The ‘politically correct’ ‘left and progressive’ discourse is replete with such stereotypes about stereotypes. That is why it is sillier than the media discourse.

    Sohail should read the article in EPW on recent riots in Hyderabad before claiming that minorities are always victims.

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  8. Sohail,

    You mix up lots of disparate issues together to paint a story of “muslim discrimination” in India, some of them true, some of then only half so, and some of them plain wrong..

    Lets start with your ultimate touchstone : “Becoming the home minister and the PM of this secular democratic state”…Sir, the former has already been achieved – Mufti Mohd Sayeed was the Union Home Minister in VP Singh’s cabinet (with variable results, but thats another story)…About the latter, I am sure that too will come in time…In the meanwhile, let me give some more examples of the muslim’s “second class status” as you put it:

    Azim Premji, the Bollywood “khans”, Habil Khorakiwala, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan, Ishaat Hussain – I can name many more but they would all be “anecdotal” in nature…How about my friend S-, equity derivatives structurer in ***Bank? Maybe just a personal outlier example?

    But the real “test” of “discrimination” is when hardcore positions are being staffed arent they? You mention the PM…What about (as I said before) the head of India’s strategic weapons programme? A muslim headed that for DECADES..Or the head of India’s air force (ACM Idris Latif, in case you didnt know)?? I can go on and on really, but they are all “anecdotal”, or maybe “exceptions”…

    Lets turn to the terrorist incidents you refer to…In case those bombings were carried out by Hindu groups, is it testimony to the Indian state’s and society’s prejudice that they are being arraigned by the same state that you accuse of being prejudiced?

    Shivam, which part of the mainstream media portrays Indian Muslims as “Pak agents”? To deny that there is a growing trend of fundamentalism among muslims globally is to be in denial..At the same time, the Indian media has for very long in fact celebrated the fact that no Indian muslim has been found to be part of the Al Qaeda..And this statement captures your thought process precisely:

    “that something which you see in media reporting on Batla House, on Kashmir, and on Pakistan in general.” So commenting hawkishly on Paistan is the same as commenting about Indian muslims? There may (or may not be) good reasons for lots of people to be mighty pissed off with Pakistan (a failed state that pretty much the whole world is pissed off with), but what has that got to do with Indian muslims?

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  9. While there are people here denying that had Madhuri been a Zeenat Muslims at large would have been blamed and called Pakistani spies, in comes a Prashant to say: “Difference is, hindus turn traitors for money or sex… muslims turn traitors because they are muslim… think about it.”

    Assuming for a second he’s right, what does it tell us about Hindus?! That they can sell their Indian identity, their patriotism and nationalism, for a few bucks, for a few nights of pleasure, for some disgruntlement against their bosses?! What a pity, what a pity.

    But he’s not right. It is very possible that Madhuri could have been Zeenat and could have had the same motivations as Madhuri but Prashant and his ilk would have been blaming her religion. For the same reason one is not blaming Hindus at large, and Sohail’s point is rhetorical.

    Apart from which, will anyone please give me names of Indian Muslims caught, alleged or convicted for spying for Pakistan? Please, one name?

    So Prashant how can you say Muslims do it for religion, when there’s no evidence that they ‘do it’?

    There’s a tacit assumption in this country that it belongs to Hindus, and some Hindus do think of Muslims as second class citizens, speaking of Muslims as a community and Hindus as individuals.

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    1. I have nothing against what Sohail thinks or what your opinion is. I am just commenting on the logic that you applied — “Apart from which, will anyone please give me names of Indian Muslims caught, alleged or convicted for spying for Pakistan? Please, one name?”

      I don’t want any Indian to be caught spying against India. But if we don’t find one doesn’t suggest that there are none.

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  10. I trust Sohail’s views are based on experience and not just an intellectual response to a,”isolated act”, Any one who works in the field and at the grassroots and sees the after affects of various 11’s (26 or whatever) one of which I know as young boys being picked up to make them a number, will know where is Sohail coming from. And I am not talking about a news story I read, I am talking about brothers of people I know. it is not about if Madhuri is being covered in the media or not, it is about nuances, tones and manner of how it is covered.

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  11. @Shivam: “will anyone please give me names of Indian Muslims caught, alleged or convicted for spying for Pakistan? Please, one name?”

    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/court-awards-8-yr-prison-term-to-man-for-spying/614491/

    “A Delhi court has sentenced a man to eight years prison term for passing classified information to Pakistan High Commission officials in 2002.

    Additional Sessions Judge Shalinder Kaur awarded the prison term to Wassi Akhtar Zaidi, a Uttar Pradesh resident, after holding him guilty under various provisions of the Official Secrets Act.

    Zaidi was arrested by the Delhi police’s Special Cell on March two, 2002, from a place near Khalsa College here while passing secret information to two Pakistan High Commission officials. “

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  12. Well, Vij,some hindus in India turn traitors for the same reason white Americans or black South Africans turn traitors to their countries – for money and sex. But the forces compelling the muslims of India to turn traitors are inherent in Islam, inherent in their way of thinking. It has to do with what they are taught in their childhood, by their elders, by their maulvis and by their madrassas. Islam recognises no borders, Islam says. A Pakistani is more of a brother to a muslim in India than a hindu Indian. His loyalty is towards an Islamic nation, not towards a hindu kafeer country.

    (I know this is a highly biased pseudo-secular leftist site, so my comment is not likely to be published.)

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  13. “Apart from which, will anyone please give me names of Indian Muslims caught, alleged or convicted for spying for Pakistan? Please, one name?”

    Its funny how “liberals” quickly descend to identity-based typecasting…There have been quite a few sir..One I remember was the retired junior Air Force official (he was a sergeant) Hanif, who got sensitive documents from his son (an orderly of a staff officer, Col Raina) and passed it on..Both father and son were caught…This is failry recent – 2-3 years old, dont remember any “all muslims suspect” brouhaha over it..

    The line of thought is quite bizarre to be honest – both from Sohail as well as from Prashant…

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  14. Guess What Prashant? Your comment did get published – not that it served to edify this conversation in anyway.

    @Somnath and Prashant, first up, the conversation is primarily about how the media reports on the Hindu-Muslim-Terrorism question, rather than the relative fidelities/patriotism of a given community.

    To my utter boredom (and despair) it has become a question of “Are all/most Muslims traitors/ pakistan-lovers?” or “Would Hindus rather turn traitor for sex or money?”.

    I agree with Shivam that Madhuri has got a lot of heat for being a single woman – and so I guess what this tells us is something that is rather disturbing – that sections of the media increasingly resemble the schoolyard bully who unsparingly searches for the “marginality” in us all and strikes where it hurts the most.

    We have seen similar problems when covering caste/reservations and dalit issues where the identities of protagonists are invariably foregrounded as an explanation/cause of a particular act.

    Most recently I was amazed by a TOI report on a Rehabilitation package for Adivasis in Chhattisgarh where the well-meaning journalist described the the appropriation of adivasi lands as “destruction of habitat” – as if the Adivasis are a rare breed of antelope. According to the TOI, city dwellers have land, houses, homes and property while adivasis have “habitat”.

    http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/NEWS/India/A-healing-touch-for-Dantewada/articleshow/5882064.cms

    Graham Greene has an excellent novel on Espionage called The Human Factor : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Factor
    that I read many years ago where he writes hauntingly about what pushes seemingly harmless bureaucrats inching towards their pensions, into far more controversial acts.

    To quote from the Wikipedia entry : In his 1980 autobiography Ways of Escape, Greene wrote that his aim with this book was “to write a novel of espionage free from the conventional violence, which has not, in spite of James Bond, been a feature of the British Secret Service. “I wanted to present the Service unromantically as a way of life, men going daily to their office to earn their pensions.”

    Could we more profitably mine the motivations of Madhuri beyond sex, money and the motherland?

    For instance, newspapers reported an interesting thing about how she was IFS-B cadre rather than the more sought after IFS-A.

    For most of us, such distinctions are of little interest, but for those trapped in government service, these could mean the difference between life and death.

    The CRPF is a case in point. CRPF soldiers have neither the privileges of the IPS or the Army – but are usually entrusted far more taxing missions.
    However, they have lower payscales, pensions and benefits. Tomorrow, if a CRPF soldier refused to fight on the grounds that he was underpaid, poorly protected, mistreated and un-trained, it would have nothing to do with his gender, sexual preference, or religion. How the media would see it is a different issue.

    What worries about this current conversation is that the commentators seem more interested in closing down avenues of thought rather than opening them up

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  15. “@Somnath and Prashant, first up, the conversation is primarily about how the media reports on the Hindu-Muslim-Terrorism question, rather than the relative fidelities/patriotism of a given community”..

    Precisely, and thats why references like the one from Shivam asking for “one instance of a muslim caught spying” is completely bizarre…

    Motivations for espionage can be many – in fact ideology increasingly plays a very small part….Mitrokhin Archives, or the memoirs of Oleg Kalugin give that perspective even from that of an “ideological” counterparty…

    On the other hand, to suggest that Madhuri Gupta has been somehow been given a “different” treatment than what she would have as “Zeenat” is preposterous…In fact most “spying cases” (involving low level informants and agents) get no more than a Page 5 mention – and mind you, some of the most valuable intel comes from them…And there are tons of instances of “muslims” caught in the act that get the similar page 5 treatment…

    To somehow suggest that the Indian establishment has decided that muslims are traitors and spies is just preposterous…I have given enough instances of muslims in critical (not “showboy”) positions..At the same time, to deny the extance of a strand of pan-Islamic trend morphing into a sort of a global jihad among muslims is to be in denial…MJ Akbar’s “Shade of the Swords” is as good an exposition of the trend as any, BTW – and he is hardly a “right wing” guy…But to discuss that and its ramifications, or be critical (and even virulently jhawkish) about Pakistan does not tantamount to doubting the fidelity of Indian muslims – in fact its the people who do exactly THAT who bring in this complete non-sequitor in the discussion..

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  16. As Aman said, Prashant, surprise surprise, your comment has been published. Point is, as far as you (unbiased, truly secular rightists?) are concerned, the “highly biased, pseudo secular leftist” sites like Kafila are damned it they do and damned if they don’t. If they censor for any reason its because they are insecure and rigid and cannot tolerate dissent, and if they do its because aha! you are right and this is their sneaky way of admitting it.

    Somnath, its fascinating, the distance you want to put between yourself and commentators like Prashant, who end up sounding er…sort of rabid…compared to the cool voice of reason you imagine you represent on this site. In other words, the distance between somebody foaming at the mouth, saying all Muslims are automatically, a priori, primordially, always-already allies of Pakistan and somebody engaging in neutral, cool appraisal of statecraft, Hindu-Muslim reality, national security concerns, devoid of identity politics…

    I am curious, who/what are ‘liberals’ anyway? You have a litmus test for spotting this species? In particular, I am wondering how you would distinguish them from Prashant’s pseudo-secularists…or would you not? Tiresome definitional detours, but I ask because I am puzzled. Political theorists have a particular definition of the term ‘liberal’, but nothing in that definition includes ‘typecasting’ as a common behaviour. Further, in that definition, I would be loathe to call myself a liberal, and so would some others here I suspect. I mean if you called me a flaming communist, then we would be talking…Most importantly, when you typecast all at Kafila as ‘liberal’ and hence prone to typecasting, you are typecasting the typecasters; and you do see, Somnath, that this exercise could be potentially endless? So lets return to the facts, but before that let me state that ‘neutrality’ only makes sense when the pitch is not queered. I think Sohail’s post is both about media coverage and the actuality of Muslims in India. Thousands of Muslim men remain locked up in Indian jails for their supposed connections with ‘jehad’ (wild conjecture and often convenience on the part of the police, not a shred of evidence for thousands of undertrials); the Batla House encounter is still fresh in our memory and the police were unable to present a single piece of evidence to frame Ishrat Jehan for terrorism before shooting her in cold blood in Vadodara. If the media had done its job properly we would have been as outraged about Ishrat as in the Jessica Lal/Ruchika Rathore case. What happened rather was a quick exit of all uncomfortable truths from public/media memory, as it always happens. As for Madhuri’s motivations for espionage, there is no rule that holds that mundane, extra-ideological individual motivations cannot exist alongside virulently right-wing cultures within that state. So Madhuri and Zeenat could both have mudane motivations AND the Indian State and media could jump to conclusions about ‘Islamic’ motivations in the case of a Zeenat when its convenient to the former, and profitable to the latter.

    You say “To somehow suggest that the Indian establishment has decided that muslims are traitors and spies is just preposterous…At the same time, to deny the extance of a strand of pan-Islamic trend morphing into a sort of a global jihad among muslims is to be in denial.” One, it is not Sohail’s argument that the Indian establishment has decided this; the post was about the media. The Indian establishment is another story altogether – It is I suspect, highly aware of the range of motivations spies could have, and would use the information profitably when it sends spies to Pakistan (Oh My God! What am I doing equating the two nations here, because for all your learned discourses on statecraft here and elsewhere on Kafila, Somnath, you somehow manage to hold on to the exceptionalist idea that India is a better nation).

    Ok even if you meant media, could you please specify how the two sentences do not contradict each other? The only way you could distinguish them is to distinguish among Muslims in your second sentence. But of course, you somehow slipped up while doing that, so one could be forgiven for thinking you mean all Muslims. Oh I get it; I think what you are saying is, “All muslims are getting potentially charmed by global jehad; and the Indian state, even though it really could be forgiven for hounding Muslims to an inch of their lives, incredibly maintains neutrality amongst all communities. So rah rah for our boys in RAW and MEA.” Point is Somnath, for all your attempted gloss and sophistry, by refusing to see the horror of the Muslim condition in India today, you have put yourself in the same camp as Prashant. The difference between your positions is the difference between apparently neutral, barely tolerant majoritarianism, and out and out fascist majoritarianism.

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  17. Sohail Hashmi has raised a very thorny issue that encompasses a large part of our collective social life in a very abhorring way. And he has raised the issue in the manner in which it should have been raised. I have a lot to say on this whole humiliating thing but I get so overwhelmed by anger that I can’t maintain a necessary critical distance and can’t write any thing. Or I should not maintain any critical distance?

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  18. Sunalini,

    Given the raft of assumptions beign made in support of an ideological hypothesis, allow me to recap the same..

    Assumptions:

    1. the Indian media has treated the Madhuri affair with different gloves than it would have if the protagonost was a muslim..
    2. The Indian establishment (mind you, not “just” the media, but establishment – not my words) discriminates against muslims, to the extent of them feeling like “second class citizens”..The touchstone of course being that no muslim has ever made it as PM or home Minister..
    3. Of course, no muslim has ever been caught spying..
    4. If #3 ever happened, the Indian media would have gone to town paiting the entire community as a fifth column..

    Now for the facts:

    1. The media coverage on Madhuri has displayed the same ham handed breathlessness that the media these days is prone to – a headline every day till today..Insinuating things as disparate as sex, romance, failed career, religious conversion and a bit more..If there were kid gloves, they werent visible to most eyes..

    2. Indian muslims have occupied almost every single critical position in the Indian state apparatus, barring that of the PM (including, by the way, of the Home Minister)….Head of the strategic weapons programme, Chief of the Air Force, of course Union home Minister – a bigoted state would hardly countenance such stuff, would it?

    3. Well, this has to be the biggest “self goal” – there are lots of cases, inclduing two that have been referred to above..

    4. Drawing from #3 above, I am sure not too many people remember the names of retired Air Force Sergeant Hanif, or UP resident Wassi Akhtar Zaidi..Why? Because these cases got nothing more than page 5 mentions, and forgotten soon after….

    So you see, facts are uncomfortably contrary to convenient ideological positions..

    about typecasting, I am myself very uncomfrotable with it..That is precisely why I find it amazing how criticism of Pakistan and doubts on muslim loyalties go in the same vein….Or for that matter how a discussion on global jihadi trends is evidence of majoritarian bigotry – MJ Akbar’s “Shade of the Sword”, or Ahmad Rashid’s more topical “Taliban” are only two of many from non “right wing” (again a typecast used so liberally by some, no pun intended) authors studying the phenomenon..Surely, MJ Akbar and Ahmad Rashid are not anyone’s idea of fascists out to suspect Indian muslim loyalties, are they?

    The problems of Indian muslims are many, and complex…So too is the issue of communalism…They can be debated and analysed without painting the entire state (or non-state) edifice of India as a Pavlovian anti-muslim fascist…One just needs to remember that when in May 2004, Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh met President APJ Abdul Kalam post elections, the meeting to decide India’s next government did not have a hindu in sight…One cannot say this about pretty much any country in the world, Pakistan included..and about this, I am not “neutral”..Nor is Mj Akbar (he is coming around as a reference too often!) when he said recently that all Indian muslims should thank the almighty once every day for having left them on “this” side of the Radclife line….

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  19. Actually, there was plenty of misogyny being dished out.

    Barkha Dutt smirking and asking whether this was a case of love, sex and dhoka. And the elderly foriegn service experts talking about lonely frustrated middle aged women.

    And the whole, look at her she’s hardly ‘A Mata Hari’ line.

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  21. And another example of a biased Indian “stablishment” that discriminates against muslims..

    A kashmiri muslim tops the civil services exam

    http://www.indianexpress.com/news/from-violent-valley-childhood-to-upsc-crest/616294/0

    People referring to the Sachar report ad nauseam repeat the (media) headline items, rather than really dissecting the data..One important data point on muslim participation in govt services was that there is difference in the “success hit ratio” of muslims in these exams compared to any other group…So the problem is not that the state is discriminating against deserving muslims..The trick is to get more muslims to appear for these exams..

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  22. Somnath,

    Have been travelling so didn’t have a chance to respond earlier. In the meanwhile I see you’ve been at work marshalling ‘data points’ in favour of your earlier argument. Not surprisingly for you, I am unconvinced by the two illustrations you’ve provided, because unfortunately for data-driven analysts like you, the status of data/facts in social/human sciences is rather complicated. Indeed, I would read the illustrations you give as supporting my argument.

    Lets see…the Col. Purohit case. One explanation that comes to my mind is that a soft Hindutva (Indian) establishment that thrives on the appearance of religious neutrality, especially in its most ‘secular’ wings (army/paramilitary/bureaucracy) would be angered and embarrassed by the existence of a Col. Purohit because it exposes how increasingly fragile secularism may be within the establishment. In other words, Col. Purohit’s continued existence in the army when his connections to the Abhinav Bharat are well-known, would give the lie to the most-vaunted claim of the Indian state – its superiority vis-a-vis its ‘evil twin’ Pakistan. Alternatively, I can conjecture that actually the evidence against Purohit was damning, but the establishment has an interest in both prosecuting him (to prove its secuar credentials) and in letting it be widely known that evidence was scanty (to garner subconscious support and sympathy for Col.Purohit – the epitome of the Hindu-persecuted-in-his-own-land). If you think mainstream newspaper reporting is devoid of such biases and pressures from ‘above’, then I can say nothing except I disagree with you.

    Your second illustration – of a Kashmiri Muslim topping the UPSC exam – is even more supportive of my position that India is what I called above an ‘apparently neutral barely tolerant majoritarian state’. Its bizarre to me that a) Shah Faisal is the first Kashmiri Muslim to top the civil services exam in sixty years of independence, given how high educational statistics are in Kashmir; and b) I find it sort of pathetic and revealing that we are celebrating it. What’s the subtext here? That Kashmir is finally becoming integrated into the great Indian mainstream; that some Kashmiris have seen the light and stopped being such pesky trouble-mongers; that somehow (this is your argument) this proves the innate strength and superiority of the Indian polity – that it can include even the marginals if they really wish to be included. You would argue that Faisal’s achievement proves that there is no structural discrimination against Muslims in India; that they are themselves perhaps responsible for their backwardness (the madrassa obsession amongst India’s upper-class, upper-caste predominantly Hindu elite). To me on the other hand, it seems plain as day that while there is no law which holds that Muslims cannot be part of the national mainstream, there is structural, systemic othering of Muslims everywhere we look – culturally, politically and socially. Plus the enormous bad blood and lingering suspicion of Muslims post-Partition and the formation of Pakistan, which the Indian State exploits from time to time but does nothing about, fundamentally. So Faisal is an exceptional Muslim – we both agree on the facticity of that – but we have polar opposite explanations for why.

    Last point. You seem to have a rather simplistic notion of the State, Somnath. You are pushing me to give evidence in ‘data points’ about the lack of good intentions within the Indian establishment. So in your black-and-white (I would even say childish) view of the world, if one Kashmiri Muslim tops the IAS or one Hindu is convicted ot terrorism, then it clinches the case of the State’s neutrality. Conversely, I would need to point to a literal act of bigotry (your word, not mine) on part of the Indian establishment in order to argue my case. The State is a complex amalgam of things in any part of the world. In the subcontinent, most States have struggled with ethnic/religious strife and have evolved various political strategies to deal with it. History has come back to bite various States in the butt (pardon my French) while on their part, States have kept those bits of history alive that suit them. The Indian State is not bigoted in an out-and-out way because its self-definition is that of a secular (and hence superior to Pakistan – we have been taught ad nauseum) State. While there is no denying that this self-definition is upheld most of the time (mostly through pressure from radical, progressive sections of the polity) and to that extent has provided precious breathing space to minorities, it remains fragile, given the inherent majoritarianism of most modern States. It implodes dramatically, and often – as in the case of the Sikhs in 1984 or Gujarat in 2002 and most recently, in the hundreds of minor and major barbarisms committed in the name of anti-terrorism on an already beleagured community. So the ‘soft’ Hindutva can bare its teeth and become quite ‘hard’ Hindutva when the moment demands it. And the motivations of statecraft can be multiple and obscure, often unknown to all its agents, at any given time. It doesn’t stop the State from having motivations and seeing them through, since like all organisms it is focussed on its long-term survival and profit. Tragically for South Asia, communalism of all varieities (covert, majoritarian or overt, fascist) has been supremely profitable for all sections of the establishment since the end of colonialism.

    So thank you, I don’t need a child’s laundry list of crimes of State bigotry in order to see the evidence of majoritarian steamrolling of Muslims all around me. Every fact/data point you may marshall will confirm my suspicions about the modern State only more deeply. You of course believe the State is largely benign, and we can’t do without it, so we should learn best how to live within it. I don’t see the State as an inevitability; just an unfortunate historical development that contingently won over many possibilities. To me, the real is not always the rational. As always, we are both free to disagree.

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  23. Ah Sunalini, so your fundamental point is “dont bother me with data, my ideology/understanding is right, and every data-point serves to only confirm the same”….Well of course, then there is never anything left to discuss or debate!:) Like the rest of the world (again today), I prefer to be Keynesian (“when data changes, I change my views, what do you do sir?”)…

    One last point here though – your constant allusion to the Indian state’s “datum level” being defined as some sort of a corollary or anti-thesis to Pakistan – its so laughably wrong that its a surprise (or maybe not one?) that you construct your viewpoint around it…The narrative of the Indian state, whether recounted by hagiographers or analysts (right, left, centre and everywhere else) is hardly that of “anti Pakistan” – Ram Guha, Rafiq Zakaria, MJ Akbar, Stanley Wolpert – no account of the evolution of the post-independence Indian state would allude to that…If anything, the bane of the Pakistani state (and nation, and society) has been its attempt to fashion itself as a sort of “anti-India”…

    And yes, on this, agree to disagree….

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