Constructing the Muslim “other”: A critical discourse analysis of Indian news coverage of the tablighi jamaat congregation during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

This paper analyzes the representation of Indian Muslims in national news coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic. By deploying Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the paper examines how hegemonic news discourses in four Indian daily newspapers published in English and Hindi constructed the image of a Muslim “other” across various discursive moments in relation to the news coverage of a Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) congregation and its link to the spread of COVID-19 in India. Describing the congregation’s Muslim participants as anti-nationals, insensitive to the suffering of their compatriots, disrespectful of the law of the land, super-spreaders of the virus and jihadis, the image of the Muslim “other” was constructed and conveyed to the public by using such appellations. These conformed to many beliefs of Hindutva, the right-wing Hindu ideology, that seeks to infuse in public discourse feelings of the “other” – an other which needs to be criminalized and ostracized. The mediated reality produced is embedded in the power structure and is an ideologically driven exercise. The way hegemonic power operates is clearly reflected in the discourses about Muslims that circulated in the media during the first wave of COVID-19 in 2020.

Introduction

The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on 11 March 2020 (Ducharme, 2020). This declaration alerted many countries which began preparations for handling the pandemic in case they were hit by it. However, the world, by and large, was caught off-guard by the COVID-19 outbreak, and most governments only took significant action once the medical emergency became undeniable. This lack of preparedness led to India’s announcement of a complete 21-day national lockdown, which was declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25, 2020, providing a mere six-hour notice. Considering the global nature of the pandemic, it was expected that stories related to the spread and impact of COVID-19 within India would dominate the news headlines. Barely a week into the national lockdown, on 30 March, news outlets reported that six people who had died from COVID-19 in the state of Telangana had attended a Tablighi Jamaat (TJ) congregation (Pandey, 2020).

A transnational religious group, TJ originated in 1926 in the Mewat region near Delhi, the capital of India (Ali, 2012), and since then held regular congregations of its followers. Accordingly, it organized a congregation at Nizamuddin’s Markaz, its New Delhi headquarters, from 13-15 March 2020. From 30 March onward, TJ-related news began dominating Indian prime-time shows and remained on the front page of almost all major dailies for weeks (Singh, 2020). All these stories emphasized the link between attendance at the TJ congregation and the sudden rise of COVID-19 infections in India. For example, on 9 April, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) spokesperson, Sambit Patra tweeted: “66 positive ...this #Tablighi Jamaat has single-handedly damaged India as none other ...should never ever ...NEVER EVER be pardoned !!” BJP members went on calling it a “corona jihad” and Tablighis, “human bombs” (Gettleman et al., 2020). The Union Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi linked it to religious extremism and declared: “It is a Talibani crime by Tablighi Jamaat” (Venugopal, 2020). Another BJP politician asserted that it would not be “wrong to shoot Tablighi members evading authorities” (PTI, 8 April 2020a). These extreme statements by ruling politicians revealed deep-rooted biases against the Indian Muslim community and became the catalyst for the media’s negative portrayal of the TJ as a super-spreader of COVID-19. This portrayal, in turn, contributed to a systematic process of “othering” Indian Muslims, making them the focal point of epidemiological concerns in the country (see Kolb, 2021).

Nevertheless, this negative representation of Indian Muslims, while deeply entrenched in the historical and political contexts of India, must also be viewed through the lens of the immediate local context. The NRC (National Register of Citizens) and CAA (Citizenship Amendment Act) protests that erupted in December 2019 fueled suspicion and scrutiny towards Muslims. The NRC and CAA protests were driven by concerns that these legislative measures disproportionately targeted Muslim minorities, thereby undermining the secular principles enshrined in the Indian constitution. Critics of the NRC and CAA argued that these two policies, in combination, could potentially render millions of Muslims stateless. Despite attracting supporters from a diverse spectrum of backgrounds and political leanings, the protests were chiefly linked with the Muslim community. This association, coupled with the already tense atmosphere, set the stage for media outlets to disproportionately portray Muslims as responsible for spreading COVID-19 (see Bhatia and Gajjala, 2020).

The news media, in this manner, created hegemonic discourses that reflected the interests of those in power and became the dominant narratives to frame Muslims during COVID-19 (Hall, 2019; Van Dijk, 1993). These discourses not only reinforced existing power structures but also marginalized alternative perspectives and perpetuated stereotypes. Consequently, a damaging cycle of stigmatization and discrimination against TJ and Indian Muslims started. For example, on 31 March 2020, a day after Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal ordered a case to be registered against TJ, Delhi Police booked Maulana Saad, the TJ president, under sections of the Epidemic Disease Act. Another 35 chargesheets were filed against 376 foreign nationals who had attended the congregation (PTI, 28 May 2020b).

This paper analyzes the coverage of COVID-19 in relation to the TJ issue in four national daily newspapers published in two languages, namely English and Hindi to understand how the English and Hindi news media produced a remarkable discursive homogeneity about the mediated representation of TJ. This is important as the Indian media is very diverse with multiple media systems in the regional and vernacular languages in addition to a national media system in the English language (Downey and Neyazi, 2014; Neyazi, 2018). The Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk, 1993) approach is deployed to explore how the hegemonic news discourses, privileging certain perspectives and marginalizing others, constructed the image of the Muslim “other” across various discursive moments present in coverage of the TJ congregation and its alleged link to the spread of COVID-19 in India.

News has a unique signifying power, and it has the potential to shape the popular understanding of critical events and related discourse (Fairclough, 1995). This paper investigates the discursive power of mediated construction of a Muslim “other” which disrupted and overshadowed the coverage of a pandemic and took the spotlight away from the government’s mishandling. The contemporary resurgence of aggressive majoritarian nationalism in India has contributed towards the gradual normalization and mainstreaming of the stigmatization of the minority Muslim community, providing socio-empirical content to Islamophobia as an ideological construct. We unravel aspects of the relationship between Hindutva and Islamophobia, a dimension of mediated discourse that awaits the attention of scholars (for a few early interventions, see Kaul, 2020; Upadhyay, 2020).

Critical Discourse Analysis and the Notion of “Other”

Media content has been viewed as a site of ideological negotiation, which not only produces mediated ‘‘reality’’ (Fürsich, 2009) but also impacts the perception of a particular event by audiences. The persuasive potential of media text has already been established by many studies (Borchers, 2002; O’Keefe, 2009). But it is important to understand “the compliance of media institutions and journalists” (Fürsich, 2009:248) with the hegemonic power. In addition to the normalization of a particular version of reality, media content goes on to produce its own ingroup and outgroup. It is, therefore, crucial to unpack the latent meaning, implicit patterns, and exclusion of certain realities in the production of media content, which can be achieved through discourse analysis.

Harvey (1996:78) conceived the social process as constituting various social moments with “discursive moments” being one of them. These moments, according to Harvey, serve as “basic markers” of a range of social practices of power relations. Discursive moments, also referred to as “critical discourse moments,” signify discursive turns in the social construction of an issue. These discursive turns can appear in the form of change in the argument, the use of language, the presentation of alternative explanations or views, and foregrounding certain narratives. Political activities, scientific findings, and socially relevant events are some factors that may define discursive moments.

In CDA scholarship, the notion of “other” continues to be an essential aspect of enquiry for understanding the inequalities in social structures based on socio-cultural group identities and representation. CDA examines the centrality of discourse in reproducing and maintaining hegemonic and discriminatory social relations like xenophobia and Islamophobia resulting in the marginalization of vulnerable social groups (Nartey and Ladegaard, 2021). The discursive moments embedded in the discourse related to minority groups are often associated with “identity construction, argumentation, and the reproduction of ideologies” (Nartey and Ladegaard, 2021:185). Such social representations often involve the production and naturalization of “moral panic,” a situation where groups “emerge to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; their nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the media” (Cohen, 2002:1).

Historically, health crises and epidemic threats have often led to discrimination and scapegoating of “others,” especially marginalized groups (Li and Nicholson, 2021). This involves the stigmatization of minority groups by blaming them as the cause for the origin and spread of novel diseases (Eichelberger, 2007). During epidemics and pandemics, dehumanization and stigmatization of “othered” social groups are among the major socio-political implications of the disease threat (Esses et al., 2013). The construction of “ the other” during disease threats is often associated with ascribing “immoral” behaviour among inferior outgroups (Briggs and Mantini-Briggs, 2003). The demonized “others” are represented as actively conspiring to trigger health crises by maliciously spreading diseases (Joffe, 1999).

During controversies, the discursive moments in media texts often reinforce national imaginings through aggressive nationalistic overtones (Van Dijk, 2006). Fürsich (2009:247) claims that whether the nature of a popular cultural text like news reports is hegemonic or emancipatory can be discerned only through a “close reading” of the text. The counter-discursive moments in media texts reflect the non-mainstream and non-hegemonic discourses on issues. They indicate the diversity of perspectives on issues and infuse the overall coverage with a sense of “multiperspectivism” (Gans, 2011).

Further, CDA uses the concept of “collocation” to understand the discursive practices at work in the media representation of an issue. Fairclough (2003: 131) describes collocations as “patterns of co-occurrence of words in texts”. Sinclair et al. (2004) propose three criteria (distance, frequency, and exclusivity) to identify “collocates” and to ascertain whether the co-occurrence of two words is collocation. Since collocates of a word are not purely “descriptors,” their function includes attaching the meaning they embody to the words they co-occur with (Gabrielatos and Baker, 2008). Hence, collocative consistency and a “routinized link” (Philo, 2007: 180) between two or more words helps in understanding the discursive strategy which is employed to establish the “preferred” meaning or to construct a trope to communicate the idea of a demonized “other” versus a dignified “we.”

Media Coverage of Islam and Hindutva

The negative portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the news media has been a topic of growing concern in recent years. Several studies have highlighted problematic coverage of Muslims and Islam in the news media, which tend to portray Muslims as different, strange, and threatening (Ewart et al., 2017; Bleich et al., 2015). Kolb (2021) argues that the association of Muslims with contemporary epidemic narratives should not be surprising. In fact, the practice of attributing diseases to racial groups (or, inversely, associating racial groups with epidemics) has been a persistent effort spanning no less than the past two centuries. One reason behind this negative representation in the media is the “us versus them” mentality, which perpetuates the belief that Muslims and Islam are fundamentally incompatible with Western values (Said, 2008). This kind of binary thinking contributes to a distorted image of Muslims as a monolithic group, ignoring the diversity and nuances within the Islamic faith (Alsultany, 2012). Moreover, the aftermath of the American War on Terror has led to the creation of a “global geography of Islamophobia that overlaps with racial categories” (Aydin, 2019; Rana, 2011). This overlapping of racial and religious categorizations has fostered a climate of fear and suspicion around Muslims, which is perpetuated by sensationalist news reporting (Bleich et al., 2015). Such coverage not only reinforces stereotypes and stigmatizes Muslim communities but also contributes to the normalization of Islamophobia (Kolb, 2021).

As a result, the vilification of Muslims in India, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, must be understood as a continuation of this historical project, which has become more pronounced following the ascendency of Hindutva post-2014. ¹ In India, scholars confirm that during nation-wide controversies, the national media draws from the ideological superstructure of the state and shapes, even legitimizes, the discourse about nationalist majoritarianism (Manchanda, 2002; Nadaf, 2023; Neyazi, 2014, 2018). We argue that the failure of the Indian government in dealing with COVID-19 caused a “health emergency” that led to “moral panic” among the political leadership, putting in jeopardy the latter’s main interest and ideology. During this “moral panic”, the political leadership resorted to the amplification of the Muslim “other” in the news discourse about the TJ controversy. This media discourse on the Muslim “other” drew on Hindutva tropes about Indian Muslims. Scholars have suggested that these Hindutva tropes are drawn from Islamophobia which, in turn, is one of the contemporary forms of Orientalism (Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, 1997; Jeffery and Jeffery, 2005:448; Poole, 2002:40). The bias embedded in the news discourse amplifies people’s pre-existing fears and ideological beliefs and helps construct a group identity that is “culturally strange and socially disruptive” (Hanson-Easey and Augoustinos, 2012:48). The conceptual framework adopted here attempts to deconstruct the socio-linguistic structure in the news discourse on the TJ controversy and to locate the construction of the Muslim “other” in the contextual rhetoric regarding the COVID crisis in the country. Given Hindutva’s status as an ideology that pervades the Indian body politic, our framework considers it as a hegemonic ideology and Hindutva-based media discourses on the Muslim “other” as part of hegemonic discourses (see Natrajan, 2022).

Method

The sample for our study included news stories about the TJ controversy that appeared on the front pages of four daily newspapers between 12 March 2020 to 31 August 2020. These dailies were: The Hindu, The Times of India (TOI), Dainik Jagran (DJ), and Hindustan. The former two are English dailies, while the latter two are in Hindi. Our selection of the sample end date is informed by the decreasing mentions of TJ, which dwindled significantly by June 30 and entirely ceased by August 31. For instance, DJ and Hindustan published only three and one TJ stories respectively in June.

Two criteria guided our selection of these newspapers: their circulation and status (measured through indicators like the social class of their readers, coverage of local/national issues, cosmopolitan/vernacular perspectives, and so forth). According to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) report for June-December 2019, these newspapers were among the top ten in India. TOI holds the leading position in the English language market, while The Hindu is recognized for its left-of-center stance and comprehensive reporting. DJ and Hindustan are second and sixth on the ABC list of top ten newspapers, respectively, and have a substantial presence in the national capital region and states like Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand. (See Appendix 1 for more details on samples).

Scholars (Gupta, 1995; Stahlberg, 2002) have classified the Indian press into three categories: the national elite press (English language), the regional press (vernacular languages like Hindi), and the hybrid press (vernacular language newspapers published by owners of English language newspapers). Gupta (1995:388) acknowledges the possibility of “wide variations” within the regional press functioning in vernacular languages (see also Neyazi, 2018). The first category ranks the highest in status (TOI and Hindu fall in this category) while the third (the hybrid press) lies “in between the two status poles” (Stahlberg, 2002: 225) of the first and the second. Though DJ and Hindustan are both Hindi newspapers, DJ is seen as part of the vernacular press and Hindustan as a notch above in the hybrid category – since its publisher Hindustan Media Private Limited is the owner of the second largest English daily in circulation, Hindustan Times. Hence, all four newspapers are among the most prominent dailies published from the national capital.

We manually went through four newspapers and collected a total of 92 reports concerning the TJ controversy. Their distribution was as follows: TOI (33), The Hindu (10), Hindustan (16), and DJ (33). It is worth emphasizing that although TOI and DJ belong to two opposite ‘status poles’ of Indian journalism, they provided equal coverage to the TJ controversy, 33 news reports each. This numeric similarity highlights a majoritarian bias in the coverage strategy of an English-language elite national newspaper. That the epicenter of the controversy was located in the heart of the national capital partly explains this similarity between an English-language newspaper and a Hindi newspaper. Another similarity is that they are among the market leaders in their respective languages. We explain the discursive aspects of this numeric similarity during our discussion on discursive moments and collocates.

After reviewing the English and Hindi samples, we saw the necessity for a comprehensive background note covering all relevant details about the TJ episode, preferably in chronological order. While preparing this note, we relied mostly on English samples, occasionally cross-verifying them with Hindi samples. During this process, we gained an overall understanding of key “discursive moments” in news reporting. Following the creation of the background note, we formulated a matrix of discursive moments and began coding our samples accordingly. We arranged news stories by their relevant discursive moments. We initiated our coding with DJ, transitioned to Hindustan, translated the majority of the Hindi stories, and concluded our coding with samples from the two English dailies.

We triangulated our method and enquiry by examining the patterns of collocations and relevant collocates, i.e., the words or group of words that were used frequently in relation to or to describe Tabligh, Tablighi, Tablighi Jamaat, Jamaati, the TJ president Maulana Saad and Markaz (the TJ headquarters). We arranged the collocates according to sub-themes. This exercise yielded some collocates that differed across the two language newspapers. The collocates also suggested intra-language variations from one newspaper to another. These collocates added to the richness of our analysis. The analysis revealed four discursive moments during the media representation of the TJ controversy which is discussed below. Please refer to Tables 1 to 4 under Appendix 2 for further evidence of these moments.

Results and Analysis

Discursive Moment 1- Tracing infections//infrastructural Nightmare/Super-spreader

The first discursive moment was marked by a discussion on infrastructural preparedness in terms of healthcare facilities to deal with a large number of COVID-19 infections. But it soon shifted the focus by attributing blame to Tablighi Jamaat (TJ), labelling them as “super-spreaders” with the potential to cause a massive explosion of COVID-19 cases across the country. This characterization perpetuated a narrative that framed the entire Muslim community as a significant threat to public health largely because of inadequate healthcare facilities in the country to deal with COVID-19. Consequently, the discourse around TJ served to shift the focus away from systemic shortcomings and instead placed an undue burden on an entire religious community. The death of a few TJ members due to COVID-19 who had attended the congregation at Markaz and infections among other TJ members was presented as emergency news. It exposed the lack of adequate health infrastructure even within India’s capital city. Vacating Markaz by shifting all those who remained to a quarantine facility, getting them tested for COVID-19, and making arrangements for the treatment of the infected was a Herculean task.

News reports provided details about how difficult it was to convince the TJ leadership and stayers-on to vacate the building and to come forward for medical check-ups. National Security Advisor Ajit Doval visited Markaz to persuade the Tablighis to vacate it, which was celebrated in the media as a triumph for the Modi government in its bid to arrest the further spread of the virus. Likewise, photographs of large buses ferrying stayers to and from hospitals appeared on the front pages. Tracing attendees who had left Delhi for their homes, and their primary contacts, was the next daunting task that required urgent attention.

In a nutshell, this turned out to be an administrative nightmare for the central and state governments. This “moment” lasted only for 3-4 days (31 March to 2 April) when the emphasis in the news discourse was on tracing TJ members who had attended the congregation at Markaz and treating the COVID-19 infected among them. However, the association of the term “super-spreader” with TJ set a precedent for subsequent discussions about the group and the pandemic, shaping the language and tone of the discourse.

Discursive moment 2-connecting infections to a community/communalizing a pandemic

The second discursive moment was the attempt on the part of the ruling BJP and its ideological affiliates to link the spread of COVID-19 to a particular religious group in a way that it would be held responsible for the loss the pandemic caused to the nation. This moment, which lasted for two weeks (4-19 April) witnessed Islamophobic reactions from three arenas: the state, Hindutva organizations, and some civil society organizations with their activities and views working toward communalizing the pandemic.

In his evening press briefings, Lav Agarwal, the Ministry of Health’s joint secretary, provided the aggregate number of COVID-19 infections, recoveries, and deaths along with a separate set of statistics about the number and percentage of TJ members among the new and total number of COVID-19 infected patients. From April onward, descriptions like “super-spreaders” for TJ members became less frequent in Agarwal's briefings, perhaps because non-TJ-related patients started outnumbering TJ-related patients. On 19 April, Agarwal provided such a break-up for the last time in his briefing. Avaneesh Awasthi, additional chief secretary of Uttar Pradesh, also followed the same classificatory scheme in his briefings. The following quote from a news report headlined “There are Corona-affected Tablighi Jamaat members in 23 states” substantiates the role of the Indian state as represented by its top bureaucracy in the construction of this discursive moment:

Lav Agarwal said that the number of Corona patients in the country stood at 14,378 until Saturday evening, out of which 4291 or 29.8% were related to the Tablighi Jamaat. Markaz located at Nizamuddin as a single source spread Corona to 23 states and union territories. 84% of Corona patients in Tamil Nadu, 63 in Delhi, 79 in Telangana, 59 in Uttar Pradesh, 61 in Andhra Pradesh, 91 in Assam and 83 in Andaman and Nicobar are related to this Markaz. Lav Agarwal further said that the purpose behind providing these statistics about the Tablighi Jamaat was to inform people that if only one person did not follow instructions about the lockdown and social distancing, the whole country suffered from its bad effects. (DJ, 19 April 2020).

This practice by the top bureaucracy of classifying COVID-19 patients into TJ members and non-TJ members and categorizing TJ members as “super-spreaders” of COVID-19 went a long way toward communalizing the pandemic. In our Hindi sample, DJ and Hindustan presented the data shared by Luv Agarwal through their infographics and charts very differently. Hindustan presented only a consolidated number of active cases, new cases, deaths, and cured patients while DJ used to provide a separate break-up for Tablighi and non-Tablighi Corona patients. Such a classification provided daily newspapers with enough opportunity to stir up Islamophobic sentiments among their readers.

Discursive moment 3-the foreigners’ link/the proselytization thesis

The third discursive moment is related to the presence of foreign nationals among TJ members, many of whom attended the congregation and stayed on. The international dimension of TJ’s activities is well-documented (Salam, 2020; Sikand, 2002). This moment flashed at the beginning of the coverage on 31 March and 1 April, but it disappeared on subsequent dates only to make a strong comeback from 6 April onward. In all, 1306 foreigners attended the TJ congregation. Like Indian TJ members, the foreigners among them were also placed in quarantine facilities and charged with violation of lockdown norms.

This discursive moment was strong in DJ and TOI. A headline in DJ on 1 April 2020 read: “The foreigners who participated in the Tablighi Jamaat congregation will be sent back to their countries; ban on their visa; Home Ministry orders: Put Tablighi members in the quarantine facilities.” According to a communication from the Ministry of Home Affairs on 2 April 2020, the government cancelled the visas of 960 foreigners who had participated in the congregation, blacklisted them, and said that legal action would be taken against them under the Foreigners Act, the Disaster Management Act, and Passport Act. Their passports were seized and they were not allowed to return to their home countries after they completed their quarantine. They were accused of misusing their tourist visas for the purpose of proselytization. Some Malaysian citizens tried to board planes from Delhi and Chennai to their home country but were deplaned at both airports. A headline in TOI on 6 April 2020 read: “8 Malaysians trying to flee caught at IGI”.

Discursive moment 4-TJ president Saad: Personifying the pandemic and mystery

The fourth discursive moment revolved around the personality of Maulana Mohammad Saad Kandhalvi. His refusal to surrender before the police, his unavailability over cell phone, his audio messages, and speeches and his property at Kandhla in the Muzaffarnagar district of Uttar Pradesh were used in news discourses to portray him as a person who headed an organization which, with the help of its gigantic global network, was involved in proselytization, money laundering and training youth for militancy. In his individual capacity, he had allegedly amassed a lot of wealth in India and abroad and had farmhouses where he and his associates indulged in illegal and immoral activities.

For example, a headline from our Hindi sample reads: “All facilities for fun and frolic are available at the farmhouse of Maulana Saad at Kandhala” (DJ, 5 April, 2020). The report goes on to provide details about the housing capacity, electricity consumption, and security features of the farmhouse. It tries to trigger the curiosity of readers by exploring the links between Nizamuddin Markaz and the farmhouse at Kandhala. This and other such reports from our sample tried to create for Saad an image that is identical to controversial godmen in India. From 16 April onward for three days, the front page of DJ carried stories that smeared Saad’s character and reputation. Consider this headline about his alleged involvement in terror activities: “NIA investigates into Saad's links with terrorists” (DJ, 18 April 2020).

Later, such stories in DJ became sporadic but did not stop. In contrast, during these three days, Hindustan carried only one such report: about the Enforcement Directorate registering a case of money laundering against him (“Maulana Saad under ED scanner”, Hindustan, 17 April 2020). So, we infer that this discursive moment was strong in DJ and weak in Hindustan. It was nominally present in our English sample. TOI published a few reports about Maulana Saad. For example, a headline read: “TJ chief booked for culpable homicide” (TOI, 16 April 2020). This discursive moment was, however, absent from The Hindu.

Collocates

Through examining patterns of collocations and relevant collocates related to specific nodes, we systematically arranged these into sub-thematic clusters, providing us with consistent collocates. Collocative consistency fulfills two out of three criteria of collocation: frequency and exclusivity (Sinclair et al., 2004). Hence, collocative consistency reveals the discursive strategy and “intention” at work to impregnate the news report with the “preferred” meaning or to construct a trope to communicate the idea of a demonized “other” or a dignified “we.” In this way, collocative consistency and “routinized link” (Philo, 2007:180) between two or more words help gauge the discursive leaning of a particular newspaper.

The collocates in any given context can fall into three categories: negative, neutral, and positive. We also divided the collocates found in our sample into these three categories. Negative collocates were those which suggested either the journalists’ ignorance about the existence of TJ among Indian Muslims or the ideological predilection to malign an organization by using an unreasonably negative idiom. Our Hindi samples were full of negative collocates. Neutral collocates presented TJ-related stories largely in descriptive language, with the help of legal, procedural and technical terms. We found them through all samples. Such collocates indicated the absence of the assumption among journalists that TJ and its members were anti-social, anti-national, and guilty of negative activities. This might either be due to their adherence to professional norms or lack of any pressure from their news organizations. Positive collocates were those which suggested either awareness about the existence and politics of TJ or the ideological predilection to disprove that TJ or its members could engage in any anti-social or negative activities (see Tables 5 and 6 in Appendix 3 for the collocates from Hindi and English samples).

Negative collocates: Dainik Jagran and Hindustan

In the DJ sample, “difficulties/problems” (mushkil), “destruction” (tabahi), “illegal activities” (kale karname) and “single source” of virus (Markaz ke single source) occur in collocation with Markaz (the Nizamuddin centre of TJ). Likewise, collocates like “carriers of infection” (sankraman ke sanwahak), “those who indulge in immoral and indecent acts” (kar rahe ashlil ishare Jamati/abhadrata karne wale Tablighi Jamatiyon), “those who made mistakes or committed criminal negligence” (Tablighiyon ki ghalati/apradhik laparwahi), etc. occurred consistently in the description of TJ as an organization and its members in DJ. They were accused of aggravating the Coronavirus problem in the country (Corona ka sankat/Jamati bane musibat), conspiring in spreading the virus (Tablighi Jamaat walon ka haath) and thus weakening the fight of the nation against the pandemic (Corona ke khilaf desh ki ladai ko kamzor kiya hai/jatil bana diya hai). “Foreign members” (Videshi sadasyon/karyakarta) was a frequent collocate that occurred to emphasize the presence of foreign delegates in the Nizamuddin centre of TJ and its overseas connections.

We found remarkable consistency in the occurrence of negative collocates to describe TJ’s president Maulana Saad. Most mentioned him as a person who provoked his followers to gather in large numbers (Saad ne masjid me jama hone ke liye logon ko uksaya) thereby endangering the life of his compatriots due to his negligence and irresponsible behaviour. Some collocates tried to link him with terror activities and claimed he had many secrets: the terrorist link of Maulana Saad, the reality of Saad hidden behind the curtain (Maulana Saad ka atanki sampark, parde me chhipi Saad ki haqiqat).

Among the collocates related to the Markaz in Hindustan samples, we found high occurrence of “difficulties/problems” (mushkil), “disease/Corona” (marz) and “Corona patients” (marizon). In this respect, it was very much like the DJ. The most frequent collocate about TJ in Hindustan was “negligence of TJ” (Tablighi Jamaat ki laparwahi) which led to the sudden escalation in the number of COVID patients in the country. The description of TJ members as mischief-creators who indulged in indecent activities (Badsuluki karne wale Jamaatiyon) and the collocates that helped communicate this portrayal was present in Hindustan samples but not as prevalent as in DJ. Interestingly, the Hindustan samples had no negative collocates to describe Maulana Saad.

“Neutral” collocates: The times of India and the Hindu

The collocates that we collected from TOI and The Hindu ranged from neutral to negative. The Hindu’s coverage of the TJ controversy was restricted to a limited period and yielded only neutral collocates. TOI’s coverage could be compared with some of our Hindi samples in terms of its frequent and elaborate reports. The prominence it gave to the negative collocates brought it closer to DJ and Hindustan than we could have imagined. The Hindu almost completely avoided negative collocates.

The collocates that occurred with Markaz in The Hindu sample included “the latest hotspot of COVID-19”, “Nizamuddin cluster”, and “the centre of an extensive network of the novel coronavirus transmission.” The collocates that The Hindu frequently used for TJ described the latter as “a puritanical Islamic sect” which “indulges in missionary activities.” It did not use any negative collocates for TJ members, whether Indian citizens or foreign nationals. Neutral collocates in The Hindu described the legal measures taken against them for not respecting Corona-related government guidelines and continuing with their missionary work. The Hindu stands out as the only newspaper in the whole sample which provided the least information about Maulana Saad and mentioned him only in passing in the context of a case that the government registered against him and several other TJ officials for violating Corona-related guidelines.

In the TOI sample, the collocates that occurred with Markaz are neutral: “the Delhi-based headquarters,” “a hotspot alarming health authorities,” “a seminary,” “facility,” etc. Descriptors like “the Islamic group,” “Islamic missionary movement,” and “missionary sect” occur in collocation with TJ. Likewise, descriptors like preachers, clerics, and followers occur in collocation with the members of TJ. However, these neutral collocates did not ensure a positive portrayal of the TJ in TOI. It used “the Tablighi Jamaat nightmare” as a collocate to communicate about a situation that we have earlier described during our discussion on Discursive Moment 1 as “the logistical nightmare.”

The phrases that TOI used for these TJ members indicated that they were held responsible for “transmitting the infections to their contacts” and spreading the “virus multiple times.” Though these collocates appear neutral since they seem to portray the “objective” reality, or circumstances, in reality they are negative collocates because they do not question the elements of “intention” that these collocates ascribe to TJ members. The TOI sample portrayed TJ members as unruly, indecent troublemakers who lacked basic common civil sense and failed to realize the gravity of the pandemic.

Discussion and conclusion

In this paper, we have shown how hegemonic media discourse about the TJ during the first wave of COVID-19 was constructed, which in turn affected the larger discourse about Muslims in India. The process of “othering” is evident in the discursive moments found in the coverage of the TJ controversy across four newspapers in two languages. Although these moments vary in terms of specific details of discursive thrusts and tools deployed, the construction of a “Muslim other” persists in both Hindi and English samples. Our samples were noticeably devoid of strong counter-narratives that challenged this construct by normalizing the social existence of Muslims. In essence, a counter-narrative that humanized Muslim citizens was conspicuously absent from our samples. By portraying Muslims as objects of epidemiological concern during the COVID-19 pandemic, both the state and media played a role in constructing an “other” that can be held responsible for the crisis. This stigmatization of the Muslim minority, although primarily situated within the social and political contexts of India, has global resonances (see Kolb, 2021). Research suggests that media coverage of Islam and Muslims tends to be negative, perpetuating stereotypes and reinforcing misconceptions (Ewart et al., 2017; Bleich et al., 2015; Said, 2008). The discourse about Muslims has been racialized, leading to the emergence of Islamophobia on global scale (Aydin, 2019; Garner and Selod, 2015).

Such biased media coverage can significantly shape perceptions about certain groups and communities, fostering an atmosphere of fear and mistrust over time (Entman, 2007). The mediated reality produced is embedded in the power structure, representing an ideologically driven exercise (Fairclough, 1995; Hall, 2019). The way hegemonic power operates is clearly reflected in how these hegemonic discourses about Muslims, who were singularly blamed for the spread of COVID-19 in the country, circulated in the media during the first wave of the pandemic. What was the underlying “interest” in presenting stories in particular ways? As succinctly put by Philo (2007:179), “the interests behind an ideology may remain the same, but its immediate content does not.” It became evident from the first discursive moment that the Indian government was unprepared and hence unable to effectively manage the pandemic. As late as 13 March, the health ministry declared that the virus in India “was not a health emergency.” This approach was also visible in the media’s reporting on the coronavirus. with the first story about COVID-19 in India appearing on a national daily’s front page only on March 1. The first COVID-19 related death was recorded on March 13.

By branding TJ as a “super-spreader” in the first discursive moment, the media helped the government maintain its image and that of the prime minister as a strong leader and a competent administrator. This strategy may have helped to alleviate scrutiny and preserve their image of efficiency. However, this label contributed to the stigmatization of the Muslim community, as it propagated the idea that they were solely responsible for the spread of the virus, which in turn influenced public perception and policy decisions in the following discursive moments. The second discursive moment, i.e., connecting infections to a community and communalizing a pandemic, signified the government’s desperate efforts to frame its failure in tackling the pandemic that served its main “interest” within the framework of the Hindutva ideology by packaging the spread of COVID-19 in India as the handiwork of an Islamic missionary movement that jeopardized the wellbeing of the nation.

Likewise, our enquiry into the patterns of collocates revealed that the words that frequently occurred in collocation with Tabligh, Markaz, and Maulana Saad drew on the Hindutva tropes of the Muslim “other.” Discursive moments, the absence of their respective counter-moments, and collocates together provided evidence of the process of “othering” TJ along the lines of the “othering” of the Muslim community at work in news texts. News reports described TJ members as unruly, uncooperative, lawbreakers, uncivilized, and nuisance-creators at the quarantine centre. Media portrayals of TJ members subjected them to “rituals of degradation” (Hall, 2019:168–170). Exploiting the possibility of seamlessly extrapolating the same on the entire community of Indian Muslims, the TJ emerged as the perfect scapegoat for the Indian government’s botched-up response to the pandemic.

The third discursive moment, i.e., “the Foreigners’ Link/Proselytization Thesis” was also produced by borrowing a leaf from the Hindutva tropes of the Muslim “other.” The presence of foreign nationals among TJ members confirmed the proselytization thesis of Hindutva which contends that Muslims engage in proselytization to convert Hindus into Muslims, thereby hoping to transform India over a period of time into a Muslim-majority country and deprive Hindus of political power. This proselytization work receives monetary and human resource support from Muslims across the globe (for the significance of religious conversion within the Hindutva ideology see Sikand and Katju, 1994; Verschooten et al., 2016).This discursive moment was very strong in the pro-Hindutva Hindi newspaper DJ and the centrist English newspaper TOI too. The view that the TJ had actually caused the spread of the coronavirus was contested in public debate but press coverage was replete with attribution of blame to the Tabligh event as discussed above.

There appears to be a remarkable consistency across these discursive moments in our samples in terms of foregrounding Hindutva tropes of the Muslim “other.” These discursive moments signify dominant trends within the media’s representation of the TJ controversy. They remained coherent with the main “interest” and “ideology” of the Indian government. Importantly, the Indian government worked towards communalization of the pandemic, and newspapers “adjusted” their practices to help the government execute its intent. On 24 March 2020, Modi had a video conference with over twenty owners and editors from the mainstream print media and asked them to publish positive stories about COVID-19 (Sagar, 2020). This interaction appears to have paved the way for securing what Fürsich (2009: 248) calls “the compliance of media institutions and journalists” with the hegemonic power of the Indian state. The political executive forced the top bureaucracy and journalists to make compromises with their professional ethics so that its interests and ideology could be served. Government press briefings promoted the view that the TJ had caused the spread of coronavirus which consequently framed news coverage of the pandemic; for instance, details about the number of cases associated with the Tabligh cluster were regularly provided insinuating them as “super-spreaders.”

By unpacking the relationship between the hegemonic discourse and how it was produced and circulated in the public sphere, this paper makes four important contributions. First, it shows that media discourses are not produced in isolation but are driven by certain ideological and commercial interests, thus supporting existing studies (Van Dijk, 2006). Second, it demonstrates how discursive practices and journalistic practices collaborate in the production of hegemonic discourse and counter-discourse on a particular issue within a given configuration of politics and media outlets. Third, it sheds fresh light on the emerging relationship between Islamophobia and Hindutva in the age of digital capitalism. Finally, the paper demonstrates that the process of “othering” varies across different language media markets and news outlets. It foregrounds the complexity that characterizes the relationship between various language markets that operate within a single “national” media system in India. We concur with Philo (2007) that scholars should mix text-based methods like CDA with non-textual methods like production studies and audience studies to fully understand the issue. We tried to minimize the effect of this limitation by drawing on literature that used field-based methods. Future studies may benefit by combining text-based and field-based methods to provide a comprehensive framework to understand the production of discursive moments during a crisis. Notwithstanding these limitations, the current study makes an important contribution to understanding the process of othering the Muslim minority through hegemonic discourses in Indian news outlets – a process shaped by an array of actors including the state, media, and civil society organizations.

Author Biographies

Arshad Amanullah (PhD, National University of Singapore) is a Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi, India. His research interests include media sociology, political communication, and South Asian Muslim Public Sphere. Email. E0212229@u.nus.edu

Arif Hussain Nadaf is an Assistant Professor of media studies at the Department of Journalism, Islamic University of Science & Technology, Kashmir, India. His research interests include political communication, Misinformation & new media research. Email: aarif.nadaf@gmail.com

Taberez Ahmed Neyazi (PhD, National University of Singapore) is Assistant Professor of Political Communication and New Media and a Principal Investigator at the Centre for Trusted Internet and Community at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include political communication and public opinion; computational social science; digital, mobile and social media and communication theory. He is the author of Political communication and mobilization: The Hindi media in India, Cambridge University Press, 2018 and has published several journal articles. Email. taberez@nus.edu.sg

ORCID iDs

Arshad Amanullah https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9049-1998

Arif Husain Nadaf https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9493-4853

Taberez Ahmed Neyazi https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8695-1007