What we feel and believe is the product of how we perceive, and our perception is the result of the way news or information is presented or rather bombarded to us. If 10 persons start lying about a particular issue, the general trend would be that the person, to whom the lie was being told, would start feeling that yes, perhaps these 10 persons are true in their saying. Today, this role of consent making or making public opinion about a particular issue has become the job of the media. Noam Chomsky argues that media ‘manufactures the consent’ among the people. It is the very medium through which millions of people are reached at a time. And who could deny the imposing power of the movies, wherein people not only start believing in the characters, but rather try to look like the stars by imitating their lifestyle and even haircut. Recall Gajani, Tere Naam, etc.
Today when the whole world is talking about Islamo-fascism, and when Islam is being dubbed an ‘evil ideology’ – of course the allegations are according to what their limited mind could perceive and most of the time have political angles to it – it is very sad to see Kamal Haasan coming up with the movie Vishwaroopam and claiming that the movie would make the Muslims proud. Instead of making Muslims proud, the movie is doing just opposite of it by once again portraying all in bad light. The direct connection of Namaz and bomb, Qur’ān and crime would reinforce in the minds of the watchers that perhaps Muslims are indeed terrorists.
In one of the scenes of the movie a Nigerian Muslim is shown offering namaz just before carrying out the bombings. As more often people relate to what they see in movies, such relation with the religion and crime would never make the Muslims proud and it seems that Kamal Haasan needs to reassess his thought. Instead, it would definitely send a strong message to the masses, who generally lack the capability of extracting truth from what is being projected, that what has been shown is indeed right.
Now, seeing the whole episode from a different vantage point, it appears that the hullabaloo had resulted in two sure things. One is the publicity of the movie Vishwaroopam, which according to many critics lacks thorough research. The online surge in the number of download hits for Vishwaroopam, corroborates to its publicity. And the other, it again diverted the Muslims from the question of development and how they fare in relation to other communities in the country. This is perhaps exactly what Amartya Sen, a noted economist and Nobel Laureate, said. At Kolkata Literary Meet, on the issue of protests organised by the Muslims against Rushdie, he said, “There are a lot of people, who are enormously disadvantaged, have reasons to complain about other things. Here, I’m not only talking about the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes but the fact that even in Bengal, if you look at Muslim groups in terms of the even-handedness of progress, they have not been as privileged. To subvert that issue into a completely different kind, and getting offended about something else is distracting the attention from the real disadvantages they face.”
Amartya Sen was in fact right when he made this comment; however there is another way to look at the situation. It is indeed right that the issues of development and parity with other communities do get miss out as the protests override the debate over development and progress of the Muslims. However, one must also see that it is the faith of the Muslims that is being hurt time and again. It is their belief, which they hold dear to their lives, that is being ridiculed by the people under the garb of freedom of expression. It is the very Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be to him), whom the Muslims love more than anyone and anything else, is made fun at and it is the very Qur’ān, which is the guidance from Allah, that is being ridiculed, by setting it on fire. The phenomenon is global and is not confined to a particular area or region. Last year, the situation became tense, near Azamgarh, when the papers that got left after burning the firecrackers was found to have Qur’ānic verses inscribed thereon. Similar kinds of incidences have taken place in the past and continue to take place even today.
Also there is a need to look at the reaction of the government as well in relation to such issues. Take the example of the recent fatwa on the all-girl band of Kashmir. The whole country came to their rescue by claiming the rhetoric of right of the individuals and freedom of expression. It was interesting to see the chief minister Omar Abdullah to speak in favour of them; however the question of grave violations of human rights, which is the order of the day in Kashmir, got missed out of the discussion. No one came so strongly on the issue of disappearance of youths in Kashmir, no one cared about the issue of unmarked graves in Kashmir and no one bothered to see the daily atrocities that women face in the state.
Hence it is not about bringing forward core issues, rather it is the kind of attention the government gives to it. Everyone knows about the sorry state of Muslims in the country, yet no one wants to look at it and when issues like fatwa or protests against Rushdie come, everyone jumps the gun and starts taking interest in the issue. The Sachar Committee report has long revealed the pathetic condition of the Muslims, yet nothing has been done and issues like protests and others paint the stereotypical image of the Muslims which make others believe that the backwardness of the Muslims is because of their own attitude, which is nothing but farce. The need is to emancipate the Muslims from being stereotyped and this can be done only by projecting the other side of the story as well, where Muslims are backward and their backwardness is nothing but the result of the apathetic and indifferent attitude of the government.