DAY 2 : 08 February 2020
SESSION 2: 9.00 – 10.30 am
Journalism, Culture and Identity
No matter what their beats or areas of coverage, journalists increasingly find that issues of culture and identity come up in the course of their work. Journalists like to think of themselves as professional chroniclers striving to be accurate, fair and balanced (even if “objectivity” per se is an impossibility for any human being) and whose work does not reflect their individual identity/ies. But sometimes the events and issues they are covering involve controversies related to religious/cultural practices or questions of social/cultural/religious identity. And, whether they like it or not, their own social/cultural/religious identity/ies can affect their interactions with sources ranging from ordinary people to politicians.
The session attempted to unpack these experiences and generate a discussion on how the intrusion of culture and identities into their work can be handled so that professional practice can still be maintained.
Moderators: Dhanya Rajendran and CG Manjula
Initiators of the discussion: Pushpa Rokde (Bastar), Rakamma from Navodayam (Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh), Roseline Taropi (Karbi Anglong), Nikhila Henry (Hyderabad), Meher Ali (Aligarh) and Sameera Khan (Mumbai).
Dhanya Rajendran explained that the intention of the session was for the journalists on the panel to talk about if and how their identities — in terms of caste, culture, gender, etc. – have intruded into their workspace and the challenges, if any, they have faced on account of this.
Senior journalist C.G. Manjula, who had a long innings with the Kannada newspaper Prajavani, revealed how prejudices work at the ground level. Once, when she was working as a staff correspondent in a district, a political party took reporters to a remote village because there was some conflict at the village. They did not invite her, saying that a female reporter would find it difficult to travel such a long distance. But after other local reporters spoke up and said that she had never missed a single press tour, the organisers called (on a landline in those days!) to invite her. She had the additional burden of proving that she had no constraints in travelling across the whole district and that she did have mobility. At every stage she had to overcome obstacles and prejudices and prove her professionalism.
According to Manjula, “Our understanding of culture and its role has developed over the years. However, political uses of culture these days denote many things. The notion of culture is being used to serve many political agendas. One cannot but see how culture and patriarchy are expressed in moral policing, honour killing, ‘love jihad’, etc. In all events involving such issues journalists cannot and should not just report these as some crime story or legal case. We have often seen or read how such reports get sensationalised or over dramatised. If we engage in such things then we are guilty of trivializing the matter. One has to go beyond the immediate event and try to understand the problem. One has to draw the linkages with structural factors such as culture and social norms. These crimes themselves are sensitive and they often involve violence against women. One has to understand the power and control inherent in these sorts of crimes. We face the challenge of bringing these aspects of the events to the fore in our stories. Otherwise ‘love jihad’, honour killing or domestic violence cases are often considered random crimes and dismissed as someone else’s problem.
Manjula pointed out that biases can also be experienced in newsrooms that lack diversity in terms of caste, creed or gender. “It is important to understand this and not let biased minds overpower the professional identity of a journalist. One should go beyond prejudices that restrict a particular identity to a certain category. I believe it is important for us to assert our identities as professional journalists who care about objective reporting. It is necessary to be aware how media content can also reflect communal and caste bias. This happened recently in regional language electronic media coverage of the bomb scare incident at Mangalore Airport. The communal angle initially adopted by the electronic media while narrating this story fizzled out after the accused turned out to belong to the majority community,” said Manjula.
The next speaker, Pushpa Rokde, spoke of her experiences as an Adivasi journalist from Bijapur in Bastar, Chhattisgarh. Pushpa explained how she slowly gained credibility among the villagers as a journalist reporting on their issues, so much so that they would call her for their meetings on issues relating to their everyday needs. Many media persons had no empathy for villagers. So villagers really appreciated Pushpa’s intervention and support. She spoke about an incident in 2004 where she helped a woman whose husband was arrested and injured due to police brutality. Pushpa was called upon to help carry him to hospital. He subsequently died due to his injuries and she was there with his wife from the time of arrest until his funeral. The story was very personal and invoked an emotional response from the audience.
Roseline Taropi from Karbi Anglong in Assam spoke next on the Assam movement of the 1980s, during which protestors would chant the slogan, ‘When culture is lost, identity is lost.’ As a child, she did not realise the significance of this but, as she grew up, she increasingly did. As a wife, a mother of two kids, as a woman and as a journalist she used to feel that her culture was her identity. “It was my responsibility to protect my culture. When our culture and language is strong, we become strong,” she said. She said many people like her felt like a minority in their own land, with tribal lands being taken over by migrants from what was earlier East Pakistan, after Bangladesh was formed. According to her, the Scheduled Tribes in Assam are now worried that the implementation of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 (CAA) would turn Assam into “a second Tripura” and that they would become marginalised in their own state. She felt there was a need to document the inflow of migrants to Assam.
Roseline also mentioned a group of individuals who write and sing folk songs as a form of documentation and preservation of their culture and history. In her view, as identity becomes strong, the community becomes stronger.
The next panellist to speak was Meher Ali, an independent journalist based in Aligarh, who spent her early years in the US. She spoke of the angst of being an Indian Muslim, of how they are invariably viewed as Muslims and not as Indians. Muslims are constantly forced to prove they are not a threat to national security, she said. That narrative has been further strengthened with the passing of the CAA. She clarified that successive governments have done little for Indian Muslims.
“Over and over again I’ve heard the assertion by Indian Muslims that this is their India. But I wonder why. What has India done for Indian Muslims? Whenever Modi goes abroad, we are used as marketing tools to show the world that India is still a democracy. But Modi is not who I want to talk about today. I want to talk about upper caste Hindu liberals and their blind spots,” she said.
According to her, prejudice against Muslims is one of the blind spots that upper class Hindus harbour, much like the attitude of white liberals towards African Americans. Erasure of the Muslim identity and lack of transparency in processes are additional problems. “This is why we see the use of bindis and burkhas by women protesting against the CAA,” she said. “While many see this as a symbol of solidarity between women across religious lines, I see it as an erasure of the specificity and problematics that come with wearing the burkha or the hijab. A bindi in India is not, nor will it ever be, the same as wearing a burkha. It is basically a performance of solidarity, an intrusion into what is a movement led by Indian Muslim women. Most likely, you will not get stopped and checked at airports if you wear a bindi, you will not get pulled out and indiscriminately shot at if you wear a bindi; this is not the case with the burkha.”
“A lot of people cheered for young Hindu women who wore the hijab, again in solidarity with Muslim women,” Meher pointed out. “But, again, to me this is false solidarity; rather it is the taking away of Indian Muslim women’s voice, or perhaps tilting the angle just a little so that, once again, the focus is on how we are all Indian and therefore the same, rather than on how we are different but also all equal,” she said. For the full text of Meher’s speech, click here.
Independent journalist Sameera Khan from Mumbai began by saying that a person’s identity is a part of the package; hence it cannot be left outside the newsroom. Politics has become increasingly polarised and hard to report on without identities intruding. Even though a newsroom is a professional space, there is a certain level of hostility; you are identified and projected as something you are not. According to Sameera, journalists are often actively encouraged, if not trained, to uncover stories related to their own culture and tradition. Each reporter is made to report stories about people belonging to their own caste and religious beliefs. This practice within newsrooms, she feels, is unjustified. “Can we make it part of our training to revel in our diversity?” she asked. “Is it necessary to ask Dalits to report on Dalit issues and Muslims to report on issues regarding Muslims? We should not be limited by our identities.”
Durga Nandini from Change.Org said she has had to juggle her roles of journalist, woman, mother and equal partner at home. At her workplace, 80 per cent of the staff were women, and 40 per cent Muslim. She felt cultural values shape your role in the workplace. When women are in a majority, a gender lens informs what you do and gender equality becomes the norm. According to her, they try to equip women to speak for themselves and work towards community building. However, it is a constant struggle to balance the situation in the workplace with the gender, caste and religious bias encountered in the outside world. At home her cultural identity is that of a working mother and that has played a role in making her push for childcare in the workplace. In her case, there was a reversal of traditional roles, with her husband staying at home and taking care of the child while she went out to work. She feels strongly that there should be gender parity in the area of work and that men should be given equal parental leave.
According to Durga, although she has her own set of beliefs, often she has no choice but to be the unbiased reporter that her job demands, since Change.org is an open platform. During the Jyoti Singh [gang-rape and murder] case there was a Change.org petition calling for extension of the jail time of the perpetrators, for the death penalty, etc., which went against her opinions on the subject. In fact, she said, there is a constant struggle between her own principles and those who initiate online petitions on the platform she works with.
Rakamma from Navodayam spoke about how the men in her village would initially complain when women brought up gender-related issues. They wanted to discuss only topics that were gender neutral. The women formed self-help groups and wrote songs and stories on corruption and other societal problems, including women’s health issues. Members of the self-help group also brought out the magazine, Navodayam. Initially the men tore up the magazines. However, eventually, as the women became stronger, things changed, she said.
At this point, Nikhila Henry from Hyderabad raised the issue of whether it was all right for a woman journalist to not locate herself in her various identities (related to culture, religion, language, caste, class or gender) while reporting on events and issues. Initially she felt that it should be possible to distance oneself from one’s own identity and empathise with the identities of the people being interviewed, in order to present a true picture of the event or issue being covered. However, while covering the Rohit Vemula case, she realised the importance of understanding the caste equation in the community in order to report fairly. Some identities are considered ‘invisible’, she pointed out. “How do privileged reporters report on issues of communities which they cannot personally relate to?” she asked.
Sameera spoke of the complexity of defining identity through apparel and highlighted the danger of categorising people as good and bad Muslims which, she said, was like walking on glass. Commenting on the challenges of reporting on the disproportionate brutality unleashed against students in Delhi during the anti-CAA/NRC/NPR agitation, Sameera said the effort has to be to report fairly and accurately.
During the discussion, Shahina KK pointed out that there are editors who are biased toward upper caste reporters. It is important to have marginalised communities in management positions, she said. Also, she added, “It is vital that upper class and upper caste people acknowledge and talk about the privileges they enjoy. In fact, why are we always having sessions about the marginalised? We should have a session on privilege and how journalists negotiate privilege!” Many in the audience agreed.
Dhanya said she was now convinced that her privileged caste and class background had helped her to rise in her journalistic career without even being aware of the advantages she took for granted. “Identities are not clothes we can take off,” she said. “The only way forward is to acknowledge one’s own prejudices and privileges. One has to be very conscious of both while reporting on another religion or community. This is not a time to battle each other.”