sdmsh@tstt.net.tt

Hinduism and mass media

• Twenty-five years ago, the Maha Sabha attempted to buy radio time.
• No government was willing to give the Maha Sabha a radio licence.
• Hindus at large do not have a coherent mass media strategy.

More than 20 years ago, the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha recognised the need for Hinduism to spread its message via the mass media. The western religions owned large chunks of the mass media locally and internationally and Hinduism could find no place to express itself.

I remember most clearly on a Divali day one of our daily newspapers ran a Divali message on its front page with a picture alongside the archbishop of the Catholic Church. On an inside left hand page was a single-column message by the Dharmacharya of the Hindu community, Pt Krishna Maharaj, our spiritual head.

This was either ignorance by the editor or total contempt for the Hindu community.

But Bhadase Sagan Maraj, president general of the Maha Sabha more than 36 years ago, recognised the need for a media voice and so he launched the first weekly newspaper in T&T in 1970. He used this medium for political, religious and the propagation of news.

Twenty-five years ago, the Maha Sabha executives and I attempted to buy radio time on a weekly basis but the two radio voices in Trinidad were dominated by a group of Indian broadcasters, through whom we had to negotiate.

In the end we did get half hour a week of prerecorded Hindu messages at a cost of $1,000. This was totally inadequate and did not provide for the needs of the Maha Sabha and the Hindu community.

It is for this reason that when the media industry started to open up we applied for a radio licence to speak to our people who are spread across not only the developed areas but the scattered villages of Trinidad as well. No government was willing to give the Maha Sabha a radio licence.

It is now history that we took court action against the Government and won the right, in the court of first instance in San Fernando, to have a radio station.

This was appealed by the State and we twice won at the Appeal Court in Port-of-Spain. The State again appealed and the Maha Sabha again won at our highest court, the Privy Council in London.

It is now legal history that the Privy Council was critical of the Government for discriminating against Hindus and ordered that we be given a radio licence forthwith. And so on February 19, Radio Jaagriti hit the airwaves locally and internationally via the Internet.

In October, a group of Hindus in North America and the Caribbean met in Dallas, Texas, to discuss Hindu dharma and the media. I reproduce the theme of that seminar and workshop:

In today’s world of mass communication through radio and TV, the roles of the written word have indeed diminished as a primary vehicle of social dialogue. Further, radio and TV have created a monologue-oriented communication phenomenon, where the audience can only listen or view (for the most part) and cannot in general talk back, at least not within the time frame of the radio show or TV programme.

This fact combined with the vast and widespread reach of both the radio (initially) and TV (increasingly) has transformed the way ordinary people are informed, educated and even misinformed or misdirected.

Politicians in all lands have been quick to grasp the importance of controlling and influencing the media for their own personal interest, as well as to propagate their points of view.

Today what shows up on TV and radio is the news. It is not the case that the news shows up on the TV and radio. Further, driven by a capitalistic market-oriented system, which strives relentlessly for share of viewership, the lines between news and entertainment are fast blurring.

In this background, many religions have also taken to the airwaves to an extraordinary extent, recognising the power of the mass media for their purposes of propaganda and getting their message across. Hindu dharma has, however, been lagging behind.

Today we find that Hindus at large do not have a coherent mass media strategy, either in India or internationally. Hindu penetration of various channels, networks, radio and TV stations and shows is very weak.

Hindus have literally been conceding the space of mass media to non-Hindus, ie, the secularist, Muslims, Christians, Communists and others. This results on the one hand in a complete absence of prominent Hindu voices in the mass media, and on the other hand, gross misrepresentations and denigration of the Hindu religion go unchallenged with a proper counter view.

Hindus are very active on the Internet where the barriers to entry are very low, unlike the radio and TV.

With the advent of the British policies invented by Macaulay, Hindus were relentlessly drawn away from their traditional educational systems such as the Gurukula. The schools and colleges that most Hindu children and youth attended were also devoid of any Hindu oriented curriculum.

n Satnarayan Maharaj is the

secretary general of the

Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha