Bollywood stars have been roped in to help promote the upcoming Commonwealth Games on which India stakes its prestige. It's for the first time that the country has the privilege of hosting the once-in-four-years multi-sport event. Yet it's still anybody's guess whether New Delhi will have its ambitious infrastructure plans implemented by October for the 7,000 players and delegates from over 70 countries expected. Moreover, in a country where cricket is the only game worth going crazy about, it's not easy to whip up the kind of public enthusiasm needed to help make any other sporting event – whatever be the scale – a comparable success. That's perhaps why the celebrity-ad series have started appearing so early on India's many TV channels, beginning with two of India's most popular opinion leaders, poet-lyricist Javed Akhtar and actor Amir Khan. The two are now regulars in public service advertisements and TV talk shows aimed at gauging/moulding pubic opinion on a wide range of social causes and controversies. Like them, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, India's former president, is also another media celebrity who's word can make a difference, settle an issue. Last week, he topped Reader's Digest's list of 100 most trusted Indians, beating the likes of industrialist Ratan Tata, Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, Oscar award-winning music composer A.R. Rahman, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and even cricketing icon Sachin Tendulkar. What's interesting to note in the Indian media's commercially driven and insatiable need to achieve higher readership or television rating points (TRP) is the recent emergence of Muslims – practicing, partially practicing or non-practicing – right up there in the front-page or primetime popularity stakes by dint of their sheer success as very talented Indians. Their power to steer the masses, irrespective of religious denomination, has become extraordinary, their commercial worth stupendous. They, all Indians to the bone, have attained what the country's Muslim political leaders have so far not. Look at what Shah Rukh Khan did recently when he bravely spoke up for including Pakistani players in the Indian IPL Cricket League. He sparked an outrage among the country's rabid Hindu radicals but then demolished them all outright when the rest of India rose to stand by him. That's why it still irks a bit to have watched a recent TV show, titled “We the People,” hosted by Barkha Dutt, India's Oprah wannabe. “We the People” is a weekly show on NDTV that discusses serious political and social issues. It brings together a crafty mix of opinion leaders who are allowed to shout at the same time while Barkha goes about outshouting them and cutting short anyone's who gets close to convincingly making an untimely point by dictating she's running out of time. The show is guaranteed to stir up the adrenalin and stress out its vast TV audience across the country and abroad. But that's not quite why last week's show on the “Indian Muslim identity” got my goat. It's because the show, featured in all that restrictive din, that renowned and dynamic international orator on Islam and Comparative Religion, Dr. Zakir Naik. Dr. Naik, as millions of his fans around the world will agree, can be captivating but only with his detailed explanations from his exhaustive knowledge of the scriptures of the major religions. I myself had acquired the then-complete series of his VHS tapes more than a decade ago in Jeddah, just so as to glean a bit of the brilliance of the man, whether one agrees with him all the time or not. During his many visits to Saudi Arabia over the past two decades, Dr. Naik would make it a point to call on us at the Saudi Gazette, time permitting, to discuss his work, especially his efforts to bring about religious harmony in India. To this day I treasure a personal letter from him to me – a Hindu as stated in my Iqama – that begins with “My Dear Brother.” Back to Barkha and how she cut short Dr. Naik just as he was beginning to make a larger point on the 9/11 attacks. (Dr. Naik's point is better explained in his DVDs and also on an earlier “Walk the Talk” NDTV show, a no-shouting, one-on-one interview format hosted by Shekhar Gupta.) What ensued unfortunately in the Barkha show was that Dr. Naik ended up making a few stark one-liners such as Osama Bin Laden is “neither a terrorist nor a saint” and that, based on a DVD released by 75 top American analysts and professors, 9/11 was an inside job. Dr. Naik, whose Peace TV has more viewers than ‘We the People', could only remain silent after Barkha's interruption with a sneering ‘C'mon…' and what appeared to be quick rebuttal from the other panelists. Najeeb Jung, vice chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, butted in to say that the debate was falling to “ridiculous” levels while Moulana Mahmoud Madani, leader of the Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind, went on to declare that that Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their supporters were all working against Islam. The other panelists, Shah Rukh Khan, ad-man Alyque Padamsee, filmmakers Karan Johar and Kabir Khan, and actor Soha Ali Khan, played it safe by dwelling on their various takes on what they thought Muslim identity should ideally be, bearded or unbearded, capped or uncapped, veiled or unveiled. Judging by the explosion of online rage caused by the show, many troubling questions have arisen. Must Dr. Naik expound on his truncated “We the People” views to the millions of his fans in India and elsewhere? Does he cut a sorry figure for having taken Barkha's bait? Does he deserve better? You tell me. – SG Feedback: [email protected] __
