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Hindi news anchors such as Rubika Liyaquat and Sayeed Ansari are like Muslim leaders of BJP

India's Muslim anchors of ABP News or Aaj Tak are caught between many identities, unlike Hindu anchors who can be communal off-stage too.

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Let’s talk about Muslim anchors in India’s Hindi news channels. Since the mainstay of their 24X7 news cycle is Hindu-Muslim conflict, it must be one of the toughest jobs for Muslim anchors of these channels to walk the moral-ethical tightrope. Rubika Liyaquat and Romana Isar Khan of ABP News and Sayeed Ansari of Aaj Tak are among the prominent names.

They literally have to host shows not only critical of their community but also indulge in ridiculing and shaming Muslims most of the times.

It must have been very tough for them to do shows during the CAA-NRC-NPR debate and on the Covid-19 pandemic when, throughout April, the focus of the coverage was on Tablighi Jamaat and Maulana Saad and the related hate crimes against Muslims. As we know, the central point of many of these shows is Muslim bashing. In any case, such issues have always been on the plate since 2014 with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) playing on the Hindu-Muslim binary.

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Identity clash with citizenship debate

We noticed this trend during the anti-CAA-NRC-NPR protest movement as well. When journalist Rana Ayub, a columnist with The Washington Post, listed TV shows in her hall of shame list, two out of four shows were hosted by Rubika Liyaquat and Romana Isar Khan. The other two shows were hosted by Amish Devgan of News18 India and Suresh Chavhanke who runs Sudarshan News, a platform often caught peddling fake news.

It’s not like these anchors do shows only on communal and religious issues that demonise Muslims or perpetuate misconceptions about the community. Some of their programmes carry a secular line based on so-called vanilla topics.

But these Muslim anchors of Hindi news channels also conduct an interesting balancing act off camera.

The Twitter timeline of Rubika Liyaquat reads like a paradox. While tweeting about her shows and expressing her views on various topics, she also regularly posts verses from the Quran. In one of her tweets, she says – “Jihad primarily refers to the inner struggle of being a person of virtue and submission to God in all aspects of life.”

When wrestler Babita Phogat put out an overtly communal tweet and later on reiterated her stance, Rubika readily endorsed it. She was heavily ridiculed owing to her Muslim identity, and a morphed video of her went viral. One of the Muslim clergy challenged ABP News anchors over their communal coverage of Tablighi Jamaat. She has publicly announced that she had contributed to the PM Cares Fund after BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra nominated her. She retweeted a tweet in which she has been praised – “It’s commendable how being a Muslim she’s bashing those #NizamuddinIdiots who are supporting & defending their Maulana Sahab & the Markaj.”


Also read: Indian media is waging a holy war against Muslims. It acts like hyenas


Uncle Tom or Goffmanian framework?

One way of analysing the actions of India’s Muslim anchors and their treatment on social media is to look at the current phenomena from the anchors’ perspective. Another is to see it from the perspective of the news channels that they are part of or from the audience that they cater to.

Critics can brand them Uncle Tom or somebody whose role is similar to one being played by the Muslim leaders of the BJP. These anchors can be branded as Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi or Shahnawaz Hussain of the news channels. It can be said that their role is similar to the character played by Samuel Jackson in Django Unchained, in which the black slave employee Stephen is more rabidly racist than his master. For the news channels, the presence of these Muslim anchors is lucrative for business or its possible the anchors  do what they do just for the optics of representation. Or having a Muslim anchor say something against Muslims reconfirms Hindu biases.

But this will be a simplistic analysis of an extremely complex and jumbled scenario that the Muslim anchors operate in. Let’s turn the gaze and try to see it from the perspective of the anchors.

It seems that they are actually living in a Goffmanian framework, in which they consider themselves more as performers who have evolved the art of impression management. They have to act according to the definition of the situation, which is shaped by the policy of the news channel and also by the dominant narrative. It is possible that they are acting because India’s audience, which has been attuned and habituated to communal content, wants them to act this way.


Also read: Tablighi Jamaat brought out Republic, Zee and Times Now’s fangs that Covid-19 had withdrawn


Caught between many identities

But that is not the only shade of their life. Their appearance on TV screen is only their performance on the front stage. They also have a backstage in their lives where they might be acting differently. Because they have to act according to the role defined by a largely majoritarian Indian media, they have to follow certain rules, without which there will be disruptions and their performance in the TV studios will be ruined.

Whatever we see of these anchors on screen is only their situated identity, the identity associated with the role they have been assigned by the news channels. They are bound by dramaturgical loyalty. While joining a news channel, they agree to become a member of the team and accept certain moral and professional obligations. Being a Muslim, they may take a more aggressive posture to prove that they are more loyal and not that type of Muslim that majority Hindus love to hate and demonise on a daily basis.

For Hindu anchors, hosting a communally charged show is a normal affair because they do not have to act differently backstage. They can be equally communal or secular in their home environment or in the club or among their friends and relatives. Their identity is not a burden for them. For Muslim anchors, their offstage identity could be entirely different from the role they play in the office for the ‘Hindu audiences’ watching them at home or discussing Muslims and their lifestyle in WhatsApp groups. Muslim anchors have to get rid of their situated identity while interacting with their Muslim family members and relatives. We can notice this contradiction in their social media behaviours as well.

For instance when Romana Isar Khan of ABP News tweets against the use of loudspeakers for Azaan, a topic of particular interest for rabid bigots on social media who repeatedly trend Muslims’ call to prayer while seeking a ban on the use of loudspeakers.

For these anchors, the TV studio is a stage and as spoken by Jaques in As you Like It: All the world’s a stage/ And all the men and women merely players/ They have their exits and their entrances; /And one man in his time plays many parts.

Muslim anchors in Hindi news channels live this Shakespearean dichotomy every day.

The author is the former managing editor of India Today Hindi magazine, and has authored books on media and sociology. Views are personal.

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137 COMMENTS

  1. It’s ironic how you bash them for being critical of Mus-lims while you guys actively bash Hindus for everything without blinking an eye. R@na @yyub is known to be Hin-du-pho-bic and hates BJP because they want equal rights for Hindus too in this country. Never seen Rubiqa Liyaqat abuse anyone for the sake of Religion. She just asks some hard questions which other MSM journos do not want to ask, due to appeasement policies of their News Channels. Remember, how Barkha Dutt justified Kashmiri Hindus Genocide? Remember, how R@jdeep & B@rkha showed one-sided news about Gujarat Riots? Delhi Anti-Hindu Riots of 2020 was almost whitewashed. If anything, it is these people who must be ashamed of calling themselves Journos. Jai Hind.

  2. Due to ignorance by BJP on freedom of speech, freedom of press, biased anti-Hindu leftist pages like the Print who peddle biased news are still operating in India. This should be dealt with soon I hope.

  3. The Print is supposed to be supporter of freedom of speech and now if the journalist don’t suit their agenda, they are recognised by their religion and not profession. This is what we call double standards of the leftist liberal media. Don’t you think the journalists have their freedom of specch. If your logic is true, can we call you Hindu leaders of Congress and left? Shame on you ‘The print’.

    • Media houses like Print deserve to be banned. There’s too much freedom of press so much that such shitty articles are too on display to the public

  4. Only a shit person like Dilip Mandal can write such a shit.
    Dilip Mandal is criminal who deserve jail for failing students on caste line.

  5. Well…That’s what we can expect from The Print. Only such hypocrite like The Print can point out religion out of News Anchors. And The Print call others communal.
    The Print is doing best as any Bias Media can do.

  6. All these TV anchors like Rubiqa Liyakat, Romana Isar Khan and Saied Ansari are very much professional, intelligent and smart journalists.
    My request,let’s do things without any bias and favour. Let’s not discuss the religions, let’s work together for the poor Indians, for the malnourished children of India, for the BPL category of India. Let’s make India a better place to live in. Let’s shed hatred. Let’s live with each other with peace, love ,harmony and respect. Let’s not have this attitude ,, I’m better than him or her,,
    Remember friends,A great person is one who lets feel others that they are great.
    God bless us all.

  7. Reporting the truth is muslim bashing but spinning a story to malign hindus is normal. Wtf print! Wtf are you really? Who owns you? What education and where did you receive? You seem so alien to our land

    • U hit the nail o the head, Muslims can’t tell truth about their fellow religious people but it is ok for Hindu reporters to continue Hindu bashing and feel no guilt about it. They are the same in their real life so why can’t the Muslim reporters also be neutral in their real life and feel guilty about reporting the truth.

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