Somebody once told me, if you are a woman, then you must work twice as hard to prove half as much as men. And god forbid, that you ever go wrong, then they will come right after you. And that is exactly what is happening to Mumbai-based Shirin Dalvi, once proudly labeled the first and only female editor of an Urdu daily.
Today, this female editor of the Avadhnama has been fired from her position, separated from her children, arrested, forced to flee her house and go into hiding and don a burqa for the first time in her life to disguise herself. All because she published a Charlie Hebdo cartoon.
Since the incident at the offices of Charlie Hebdo, how many of their cartoons have we seen published by media organisations worldwide? How many in India? Hundreds? How many of them were persecuted, harassed, driven from their homes? None. So why is Shirin being singled out?
Incidentally, the story whose publication is causing all this furore was not a fiery castigation or even an open support of Charlie Hebdo. It was simply a neutral article on the Pope’s remarks on the limits to freedom of speech, and also pointed out that the killings of its staffers had, instead of silencing Charlie Hebdo, sent both its circulation and its price skyrocketing.
And she wanted to illustrate the story with a picture of the Charlie Hebdo magazine cover. It is probably what any other editor would have done. If we wanted to speak about ‘x’ magazine, the illustration or picture used would be the cover of that magazine. Her mistake was that she used an old cover of Charlie Hebdo, which showed a tearful figure, hands covering his face lamenting, “It’s hard to be loved by idiots.” The headline in French said: “Mahomet overwhelmed by fundamentalists.”
Since Dalvi did not understand French, she had no idea that the caricature represented Prophet Mohammad. “I did not realize I was making a mistake. That’s exactly how inadvertently this happened,” she wrote in a blog for the NDTV.
And to her credit, Dalvi did not defend herself by quoting freedom of speech and expression. She openly admitted to her mistake and unconditionally apologised to people through the columns of her newspaper. But the apology was not accepted. Her opponents were not impressed. “She deserves the strictest punishment that can be given under Indian law,” said Izhar Ahmed, President of the Urdu Patrakar Sangh to Scroll.in
Instead, six FIRs were registered against her in different police stations across Mumbai, from Thane to Malegaon. She was arrested and the police did their level best to petition against her bail, citing that she would create law and order problems. She gets threatening messages everyday on Whatsapp like, ‘Maafi Nahin Milegi’ (you won’t get forgiveness). A day after the story was published, staff from the entire Mumbai edition was sacked, while the owner of the Avadhnama title, Taqdees Fatima issued a statement from Lucknow that they had no links whatsoever to the Mumbai edition. Shirin Dalvi for all intents and purposes, is fighting a lone battle.
When the staffers of Charlie Hebdo were ruthlessly massacred, the entire world came out in support with an outpouring of sympathy and indiscriminate use of the phrase, Je suis Charlie. In an act of defiance, media houses published the cartoons used by Charlie Hebdo. While there were collective gasps of outrage at the appalling nature of the Charlie Hebdo cartoons, there were also calls to support freedom of speech.
Shirin Dalvi did not act in defiance. She made a mistake. She accidentally published the wrong cartoon. And she has apologised. Over and over again. Yet there are very few people who have come out in support. There is no Je suis Shirin.
Not only does all this indicate a gender bias, it also shows the level of hypocrisy in regional media. Dalvi feels the same way too. In an interview with the Indian Express, she stated, “When organisations such as Raza Academy and Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind were satisfied with my apology, I do not understand why these letterhead organisations are hounding me. Their only agenda is to harass a woman editor.”
It is being said that it is not religious institutions that are at the forefront of all this harassment. Instead they are actually fellow journalists and intellectuals from the Urdu publication community, reports Scroll.in. In fact, given the very limited circulation of the Awadhnama, bordering on obscurity, the picture would normally have gone unnoticed. How else does one explain the fact of all the hundreds of publications carrying Charlie Hebdo cartoons across the world, here is one lone woman editor who is being prosecuted, persecuted, harassed and threatened?
We may or may not agree with what she has written. But what is happening to Shirin Dalvi is horrific. In the last decade or so, we Indians have proved time and again that freedom of speech and expression be damned. We have created our own fundamental right that is not part of our Constitution – The right to be offended. And the right to continue feeling offended.
Image Courtesy: Reuters
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