TCS Nashik and the Making of a Communal Scare Story on Prime-Time TV

The charges are serious, but the narrative built around them goes far beyond what the FIRs actually allege.

All the seeming anomalies in the TCS case start to make sense when you see how the case originated, the way it has progressed, and the themes around which it revolves.

(Photo: Aroop Mishra/The Quint)

What is it about the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) Nashik case that makes it seem unbelievable? Taken separately, every allegation against the seven Muslims and one Hindu is perfectly believable. But the sum of these separate parts coming together in one small office?

To take each allegation one by one:

• Accused Danish Shaikh is not the first married man to lead on a girl and then cry off when his wife intervenes. His being a Muslim is irrelevant to the offence he’s accused of.

• Nor is he the first man who "influenced" his girlfriend to follow his religious practices. It’s worth noting that she continued with the relationship for four years, breaking it only when she discovered he was married.

• Less common, but not unknown, is for a girl to adopt her lover’s religious practices. Indeed, love is not the only reason for some Hindus to fast during Ramzan, as this reporter found way back in 2008.

• Nor is the TCS management the first to ignore complaints of sexual harassment. 

• Even the allegation of conversion isn’t unbelievable. Propagation of their faith is enjoined upon the followers of both Christianity and Islam. Both believe that those who do not follow these religions land up in hell. Suggestions by overzealous believers to their Hindu friends that the latter save themselves from hell fire by following "the one true faith’’ are not unheard of. But this is in no way forced conversion. 

Where Allegation Ends and Evidence Begins

Significantly, no FIR alleges forced conversion, though one FIR talks about a Hindu being "forced" into wearing a topi and offering namaz when he visited the Muslim accused’s home on Eid. The related video shows him greeting the accused with the customary Eid hug after the topi was placed on him. It’s likely he performed namaz unwillingly, but can that be called "forced conversion"? Prudently, the police have not included it in their charges.

There is one accusation, however, that makes this case stand out: that the accused denigrated Hindu deities in front of their Hindu colleagues. In the 40-odd years that I have been meeting Muslims to report on the issues they face, I can recall having been told unkind things about Hinduism just thrice. Only someone supremely arrogant and equally insensitive can do this. 

For seven Muslims in one office to have this kind of arrogance and insensitivity, is unusual. What defies logic is the other acts the men are accused of alongside. According to the FIRs, at the same time as they were ridiculing their colleagues’ religious beliefs, some of these men were also making crass sexual advances towards them and blackmailing them.

The Implausibility of Collective Behaviour

All these seeming anomalies, however, start to make sense when you see how the case originated, the way it has progressed, and the themes around which it revolves. Muslim men preying on Hindu women, attempts at conversion, insults to religion—this one case has all the pet bogeys of the Sangh Parivar.

Set into motion by a politician, taken forward by a proactive police who actually went undercover (how many managers have been arrested for ignoring POSH guidelines?), the case was finally taken over by the electronic media.

TV channels gave it the kind of coverage that made it easy for the Sangh Parivar to launch a national campaign against employing Muslims. Social media is now full of Hindus complaining that their Muslim colleagues get to perform namaz during Ramzan in the restroom, denying them access during that time.

Had these Muslims been allowed to perform namaz at their office desks, wouldn’t videos have circulated and Hindutva mobs barged in to stop this? What of the satyanarayan pujas performed inside offices, including government offices? What of bhajans blaring at 6 am on the Rajdhani train to Delhi? Or the then national carrier Air India being forced to serve veg-only meals on Tuesdays? These impositions went beyond one office to affect all citizens.

Media Amplification and Manufactured Narratives

To give an added dimension to the TCS case, the electronic media sought out politicians known for hate speech such as the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Navneet Rana and minister Nitesh Rane. Rane coined the phrase "corporate jihad"—the term was validated by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, and is now the latest in a long list of "jihads’’ invoked by TV channels to demonise Muslims. 

The coverage of this case reminds one of the frenzy with which the Hadiya case was covered in 2018. That case too, arose out of the pet bogey of Hindutva organisations, a scenario which is also an average Hindu’s worst nightmare: a daughter converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim. The Kerala High Court’s annulment of the marriage, and the Supreme Court’s directive to the NIA to investigate it, fuelled the frenzy.

TV channels went to town depicting Kerala as the epicentre of a sinister  conversion racket which had the tacit backing of the CPIM government. Visuals showed a veiled face with blood streaming down from the bindi, and shadowy skull cap-wearing men with their arms around Hindu women.

Selective Outrage, Selective Silence

This time, the channels have found the scarf-wearing Nida Khan an easy target. Though named in only one FIR as having ridiculed Hindu deities, TV channels have made her the "mastermind’’ who instigated the conduct of the Muslim men. Significantly, no mention has been made about the Hindu HR manager, Ashwini Chainani, who ignored the victims’ complaints. 

This pattern of coverage by the electronic media (this time, NDTV too, is included) is one factor that raises doubts about the allegations made in the TCS case.

The second is the police’s record of framing Muslims. The number of Muslims exonerated by courts after spending years in jail on terror charges is legion. Every such arrest even today is accompanied by reporters acting like police stenographers.

The electronic media, no doubt egged on by police leaks (CNN News 18 quoted from a remand application), brought into the TCS case aspects not mentioned in the FIRs: terrorist and foreign connections; force-feeding beef; a "well-oiled racket’’ aimed at forced conversion.

Nothing stopped the police from coming on TV to say that these were false allegations. Indeed, it was their job to warn these channels not to vitiate the communal atmosphere by airing such false allegations. 

Typically, the police chose to stay silent. It is only when newspaper reporters approached them that they clarified that they had found no organised, external conspiracy; that one accused, having become "religious’’, had influenced the others.  

Beyond the Case: What Is Really at Stake

The charges made in the TCS case are serious enough not to need these embellishments. Why did the TV channels add them then?

Contrast this with the way they covered the Ashok Kharat case. Revelations about this Nashik-based godman, which made headlines in regional channels just before the TCS case took over prime time, were even more serious: a man who hobnobbed with the state’s top politicians was caught sexually exploiting his followers. Yet, media reportage of Kharat did not tar all Hindu godmen with the same brush, though enough of them have been convicted of rape.

The TCS case could also have been treated as a one-off incident. Hindus and Muslims do work together, fall in love, often break off but sometimes marry and adopt each other’s customs: Muslim women give up eating meat at home; some even observe the karva chauth fast. Muslim men visit temples with their Hindu wives, while the latter start keeping roza. 

Not just couples, office colleagues too, go for outings together, visiting each other’s shrines, celebrating each other’s festivals. Remember Husain Haidry’s Hindustani Musalman saying (in the poem of the same name): "Mera ek mahina Ramzan bhi hai/Maine kiya toh Ganga snan bhi hai?" 

Isn’t it commonplace to see during Mumbai’s favourite festival, Muslims waiting for darshan at Ganpati mandals? Some even bring the deity home. Similarly, Hindus constitute a substantial section of worshippers at Mumbai’s shrine-in-the-sea, Haji Ali dargah.

What the Narrative Cannot Accept

It is this tradition of shared cultural practices that the Sangh Parivar cannot tolerate. For them, it is inconceivable that a Hindu would voluntarily adopt Muslim practices. There has to be force involved, specially if the Hindu is a woman.

Equally intolerable for the Sangh Parivar is the assertion of Muslim identity and their success. The past 11 years have demonstrated that Hindutvavadis want Muslims to exist only as invisible, second class citizens. Any public assertion of their identity is resisted. The idea that they can be hired by professional firms in large numbers; be promoted to senior positions, with Hindus reporting to them; that managements can accommodate the demands of their faith; all of this violates the very idea of India according to Hindutvawadis. 

The media, which didn’t hide its prejudices even under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) regime (their coverage of terror cases then is a blatant example), now gives them full rein, projecting the stereotype of the fanatic, oversexed Muslim male and the burqa-clad scheming Muslim woman (she was the oppressed victim during the triple talaq debate in 2017).

Thus, it is that the same media that has alleged "forced conversion and torture" at the hands of Muslims in the TCS case, has kept quiet when Muslims have been assaulted and forced to chant "Jai Sri Ram" by mobs. A common justification given by Muslims for burqa, that it’s a protection against rape, allegedly made in this case by Nida Khan, has been distorted by TV anchors to mean: "Wear a burqa or you will be raped."

Courts have over the last few years ordered TV channels to take down communally offensive programmes and imposed fines on them. Obviously, these verdicts have made no difference.  

Only the trial will bring out the truth of l’affaire TCS. That might be too late for Nida Khan and the other accused. Till then, the police, the media, and the Sangh Parivar can have a field day.

(Jyoti Punwani is a Mumbai-based journalist. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)