[Reader-list] Should Milli Gazette be allowed to die?

[Sharan Lal]

Hi,

May be Milli Gazette should be allowed to die in its present avatar.

Before you brand me anti-muslim and all that, let me clarify.

Any kind of external support (like this readers list, or government
protection/aid) for Milli to survive is not going to make a difference that
is sustainable unless it comes from within the community in which it is
published. If you think feeding 'laddoos' to distributors is the way to
increase circulation of a publication, think twice, thrice.

Publications thrive on sentiments, perceptions, and issues. If a
community's paper is not supported by the people who distribute them to the
households in Delhi, then the question is why? And the answer is certainly
not 'laddoos'. Why?

Why is Milli published and who is it targeted at? Only Jamia Nagar?. Why
not Punjabi Bagh and Vikas Puri? The very nature of the publication and
target group is the answer to the closing down of the publication.
Fragmentation of the secular fabric of Delhi (when was it ever not
fragmented) is due to the rise of hindu fundamentalism (Islamophobia), but
not ONLY during BJP rule. The rise in muslim fundamentalism elsewhere, and
hardening of religious stances every where, all over the world, is a direct
cause of this continuous polarisation over the years. Idal secularism is a
political myth that has been forced down out throats. Milli is only one of
the victims.

This polarisation is natural, a reaction of a primarily Hindu population of
Delhi to a wider phenomenon, a stimuli to the sensibility of a people with
a majority belief, and worse, under a machinery that works primary on the
fuel called hinduism. You cannot deny it, however you may hate it. It is
akin to printing a 32 page hindu (or christian) paper in Iran, and
expecting it to thrive.

For Milli to survive, it will have to break the mould, and shift its
ideology away from 'only muslim' to 'everyone' and location of its office
from Jamia Nagar to elsewhere. Only then can you be assured that not only
the publication will survive in the long run, but influence a reform in the
minds of the people who read its articles and stories to realise that
communities and religions, at a very basic level, are myriad
interpretations of sameness rather than differences.

The tone needs to change, probably.

Sharan

On 12 February 2012 16:10, Javed <javedmasoo at gmail.com> wrote:

> Should Milli Gazette be allowed to die?
> Irena Akbar:
> New Delhi
>
> Its office is tucked away in a corner of one of the many narrow,
> decrepit lanes of Abu Fazl Enclave, Jamia Nagar, Delhi. Anyone can
> walk easily into the office, which has no signboard and is situated
> inside an an old house with a low-rise iron gate. Inside, there are
> cartons full of newspapers strewn carelessly, lots of books, and
> people working on old computers.
>
> The nondescript workspace, though, belies the voice of 'Milli
> Gazette', an English-language fortnightly, which is often quoted by
> various publications, including international ones such as 'The
> Guardian', in news stories about India's Muslims. But very soon,
> though, the newspaper's fate may match that of its workspace. In a
> recent edition, the 'Milli Gazette' had its first page almost blank,
> with a column on the side lamenting that not enough Muslims, whose
> “side of the story” it tells, have supported it by way of
> subscriptions, and appealing to the community to keep subscribing to
> the paper, or else, “all pages of MG may look blank as this one”.
>
> 'Milli Gazette' was started by Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, a journalist from
> Azamgarh (in a sarcastic tone, he tells us he's from “Atankgarh” when
> we ask him about his origins) in January 2000, when the BJP was the
> ruling party at the Centre, and “there was a lot of Islamophobia
> around”
>
> “We needed to tell our side of the story,” he said, though he admits
> that, for Muslims, getting into the mainstream, non-Urdu media, has
> “been a very, very old idea, not much realised even today”. Eleven
> years on, MG too seems to be not able to realise that idea. “We've
> been incurring losses since we began, and we've reached the limit
> now,” says Khan. So, are they shutting down? “If things go on this
> way, we might,” he says.
>
> 'Milli Gazette' is located in Jamia Nagar, a sprawling and
> ever-growing Muslim-dominated locality, occupying a major part of
> south-east Delhi. Its target readers, we'd think, stay in its
> vicinity. But the many Muslims living in the area, specially the youth
> who study in Jamia Millia Islamia University, also located in Jamia
> Nagar, are ironically not the target readers of MG. “Did you know that
> the top heads of the Indian state as well as the top cops of the Delhi
> Police subscribe to us? They are our target readers. It is they whom
> we want to tell about what the ordinary Muslim is going through, and
> be able to affect their attitude towards the community,” says Khan.
>
> The target readership explains Milli Gazette's news content, which
> largely revolves around communal riots such as those that took place
> in Rudrapur and Ujjain recently, the plight of Muslims arrested after
> terror blasts, such as those in Malegaon, the policies of Narendra
> Modi and the RSS and criticism of the US and Israel.
>
> The 32-page newspaper, priced at Rs 10 since it began, is a heavy,
> tiring head, and you'd wish the seriousness of the content was
> tempered by some cultural, social news. Surely, news about Muslim
> community doesn't have to be synonymous with riots, terror and
> anti-Americanism.
>
> “But these are the facts of our times. How many have our children lost
> the prime of their youth by being arrested after every terror act,
> tortured, forced to confess to a crime they didn't commit, and then
> released 8-10 years later for want of evidence?” says Khan, with a
> passion which has made him stay put, despite the losses. Such
> reportage, which often questions the State, has put Khan and his team
> of 14 reporters at risk. “Our reporter in Indore was threatened by the
> police when he inquired about the arrest of a Muslim youth after the
> riots there, and then, I, too, frequently get threats over phone and
> e-mail,” says Khan.
>
> Khan believes that Milli Gazzette's fierce reportage of riots and
> harassment of Muslims after terror blasts has 'mellowed down' the
> rhetoric that follows a terror act. “Now, the government explores the
> possible involvement of terror groups belonging to another faith too,
> without immediately concluding that it is the handiwork of Islamists,”
> he says, adding that NGOs -- local and international, such as Human
> Rights Watch -- have visited their office for information related to
> riots.
>
> Though 'Milli Gazette' has had an “impact” on its 'target readership',
> it still fails in drawing mass readers, which can sustain the
> newspaper. Circulation figures are 'too low' for Khan to reveal them
> to us, but online readership more than makes up for the embarrassment.
> “We have an estimated combined readership of 5 lakh per issue, online
> and offline, with a very large percentage coming from online
> visitors,” he says. Of course, reading stories on the website is
> offered free of cost, unlike the case with the newspaper, which
> Muslims 'hardly support'.
>
> “Do you see how many mosques and madarsas are in Jamia Nagar? Is there
> a need for so many of them? Muslims only want to contribute to
> religious causes, such as building mosques and madarsas, sometimes
> right in front of their homes. Of course, it's their right to do so,
> but they overdo it and ignore social causes, such as spreading
> community news,” Khan explains.
>
> Even the businessmen aren't supportive, with just one company
> subscribing to the fortnightly, and almost none advertising in it (the
> ads on the website are only those by Google). “They fear being
> associated with a paper that focuses on riots and terror cases,” says
> Khan. That fear is also shared by vendors, who refuse to sell the
> paper at their stalls. Khan says he's tried in vain -- even given
> 'several kilos of laddoos' -- to vendors in Connaught Place, and other
> well-frequented parts of Delhi -- but no one wants to sell this paper,
> he says.
>
>
> http://www.indianexpress.com/news/should-milli-gazette-be-allowed-to-die/888226/0
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