Gudiya And Media

Is the tele-Media (in particular) playing the watch dog in all wrong ways?
Is the audience so gullible that the mention of word Kargil and TRPs go up?

http://www.sacw.net/Wmov/Openletter30092004.html

Open Letter to the Media

[September 30, 2004]

We are appalled by at the media's (especially television) coverage of
the 'Gudiya-Taufiq-Arif' case. We strongly resent the growing
instances of trial by media, the media's self-appointed role as
resolvers of conflict, and the use of people's personal tragedies to
increase network ratings. Headlines like 'Kiski Gudiya?'also
symbolised the regressive image of women as property that informed the
media's coverage.

Zee's advertisement for its show said, "A man gets his life
back....... a family gets its future: A soldier at Kargil spends 5
years as POW. His newly wed wife waits in futility and then
re-marries. The soldier returns to find his life turned upside down.
.... At Zee news we are happy to be the forum where the issue was
resolved. As India's largest media house, its our duty to the nation".
This is particularly tasteless and disturbing, but the other channels
like NDTV and Aaj Tak fared little better. It is bad enough having
village panchayats and religious representatives enforcing particular
decisions, without having the media act as an alternative court.

The terms of the 'debate' were backward to say the least. Television
anchors repeatedly asked Arif and Taufiq what they wanted, while
Gudiya was rarely given a chance. The 'public' at large, which has no
locus standi in the case, was asked for their opinion, and again the
terms of the debate were set as a choice of which of the two men
should get her. The media thus repeatedly reinforced the idea of a
woman as an object to be handed around between various men.

One of the questions concerned the status of the child - i.e. whether
Arif should keep the child or if Taufiq should take it back once it is
born. The decision of the Deoband Ulema that Arif should keep the
child, but Taufiq should pay for its upkeep also reduces parenting to
a question of money and 'ownership'. But most of all, one got no sense
in all this, that it is Gudiya's child as well, or rather, Gudiya's
child most of all. Far from displaying any sense of social
responsibility, the media have reinforced the idea that women should
have no control over their fertility, bodies and lives- and that these
should be controlled by the husband, family, panchayat and now the
media.

The media claims in its defense that noone forced the parties to come
to the media. However, there is a fine line between choice and
coercion when the media decides to take over an issue like this.
Besides, in complex situations of this kind, people may use any avenue
to get their point of view across. Rather than resolving conflict, as
Zee and others claimed to be doing, the media enhanced conflict in
this case by forcing relatives to give public statements against one
another. Gudiya and other family members have since complained of the
media's violation of their privacy (HT, 26.9.04).

We also note a communal subtext to the coverage. Even as the media
reduced Gudiya to silence, they kept focusing on how the decisions
were being made for her by the Ulema and the village panchayat, the
underlying message being that Muslim women have no choice and that the
community is ruled by fatwas. We wish to point out that retrogressive
caste or religious panchayats are a common feature of both Hindu and
Muslim life.

While one may have every sympathy for Arif's trauma as a Kargil POW,
this does not mean that 'the nation' owes him a wife. Nor does Taufiq
become a hero because he 'accepted soiled goods' as one interviewee
graciously informed us on television. If anyone is the real heroine,
it is Gudiya, who has endured both her village panchayat, clerics and
Arif's unreasonable demands that she abandon her child.

We also object to the way in which a woman who is eight months
pregnant and reportedly ill due to the pressure of decision-making was
virtually 'kidnapped' and subjected to long hours in the studio.

Finally, we believe that Gudiya should have been given the space to
make her decision, away from the media and the contending families,
village panchayats, clerics etc.