Light fare in heavy Onam packs

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Today is Onam, the most important day in the Keralite’s calendar. Bloated newspapers heralded the arrival of festive season days in advance with two-in-one editions. Television channels whipped up interest with announcements of celebrity chats and other special programmes.

The two-in-one newspaper idea was conceived by Malayala Manorama, which is the most widely circulated Malayalam daily and pulls in the most advertisements, a decade ago. Mathrubhumi followed suit.

The day’s edition has to be printed in two sections because of the limited capacity of the press. The masthead appears in the same size in both the sections, making it difficult to decide which one is the main section.

The front pages of both sections of Manorama carry a note saying: “Two Manoramas today.” Mathrubhumi plays no such trick. It simply says, “In two sections today.”

Traditionally the newspapers also bring out special Onam editions in magazine format with literary content. Since the special edition attracts lots advertisements, the two large newspapers have been bringing it out in two volumes for some years. This year Manorama had to go in for three volumes.

Onam, the traditional harvest festival, has been the main shopping season for as long as one can remember. To begin with, it was the time when people bought new clothes. Today it is the time when people acquire all manner of goods.

According to market watchers, 50 to 60 per cent of all consumer durables sales in Kerala take place during this season. Sales of expensive items like jewellery and automobiles also go up at this time. This year the makers of a well-known brand announced prizes worth more than Rs9.3 million in a bid to boost sales of their mobile handsets.

Manufacturers of consumer goods, automobiles and mobile handsets and jewellers resort to heavy advertising at this time. Although television probably has more clout than newspapers, the print media still gets the biggest share of the advertising pie.

A website devoted to media matters quoted spokesmen of Malayala Manorama and the Communist Party of India-Marxist daily Deshabhimani as saying they earn one-fifth of their annual advertisement revenue during the Onam season.

Manorama has been working hard for years to boost Onam advertisements. It began Onam brand building a decade ago. The success registered in the early years encouraged it to plan new activities to impress advertisers and advertising agencies.

This year, beginning July, in an innovative campaign, it staged Pulikali, the tiger dance which is associated with Onam celebrations, at the offices of big and small advertising agencies in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai. As the dancer performed to the accompaniment of drums, the newspaper’s marketing staff handed out to media planners pamphlets which said “The best way to reach Malayalees is through Manorama.”

The two Manoramas the subscribers received each day for a fortnight for the usual price and the three volumes of the special they got for Rs50 testify to the success of the paper’s efforts.

The media website’s reporter who spoke to marketing officials of Mathrubhumi and Deshabhimani said both were hoping to haul in twice as much as they did last year.

At the market place everybody is happy — producers and distributors because they have sold more, the media because they have earned more, and consumers because they have acquired new products.

However, not many consumers of the media — newspaper readers and television viewers — can share their same sense of exhilaration. For, the Onam fare which has come in heavy packages is rather light.

The newspaper can accommodate more advertisements by increasing the number of pages. But it cannot find enough new poets and writers to produce additional reading material to fill the extra pages.

Many editors fill the extra pages with material that can be generated with comparative ease like celebrity interviews and discussions. The superstars hogged much of the space in one Onam special. Another devoted 55 pages (inclusive of advertisements, of course) to a minor actor-politician and 23 more to a comedian.
Cartoonist EP Bunny, who lives outside the state, provided a rare insight into the local scene in an interview published by Madhyamam in its Onam special. “Although power has been decentarlised to the panchayat level, in daily life the Keralite has to go through a more hierarchical setup than before,” he said. “The people maintain their dignity playing snake and ladder everyday.”

Discord mars goodwill season

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

On the eve of the Onam festival, when people rejoice in memories of a just society characterised by equality and fraternity, Kerala is under a cloud of distrust generated and sustained by acts motivated by political and religious considerations.

A popular myth links Onam with annual homecoming by a benevolent ancient king, Mahabali, whom jealous gods had deposed. Ballads hail his reign as a time when all were equal and there was no falsehood or deceit.

Although the myth connects Onam tenuously with the Hindu religion, scholars are agreed that it is the traditional harvest festival of the region, and followers of all faiths join the celebrations enthusiastically, making it the most important goodwill season in the Keralite’s calendar. In recent years, the state government has developed it as the tourist season.

Onam, which falls next week, acquires added sanctity this year as it coincides with the holy month of Ramadan. Muslims, who form about 25 per cent of the population, constitute the state’s largest minority.

The people of the state have always prided themselves in the region’s long tradition of communal harmony. India’s oldest synagogue, church and mosque are all located in the state. They bear eloquent testimony to this hoary tradition.

Kerala, still under Buddhist-Jain influence, extended a warm welcome to Jews when they landed here centuries ago to escape persecution in Israel. The local Christian community believes St Thomas, one of Jesus’s 12 disciples, came here and preached the gospel. An Arab, Malik bin Deenar, reputedly built the Cheraman mosque at Kodungallur in the lifetime of the Holy Prophet (PBUH).

In the early 1920s, violence erupted in Malabar in the course of the Khilafat movement launched by the Congress at the instance of Mahatma Gandhi. Although the event had communal overtones, scholars are of the opinion that it was primarily anti-British and anti-landlord in character. Thanks to the spirit of inclusiveness promoted by the social reform movements that had swept the region earlier, the trouble did not spread far.

The emergence of vote banks built around religious and caste identities promoted a degree of divisiveness after Independence. Sectarian groups gained political legitimacy as the Congress and Communist parties pampered them to win elections.

Communal sentiments grew in the 1990s in the wake of the Ayodhya temple controversy fanned by the Sangh Parivar. That was when Abdul Naser Mahdani appeared on the horizon. That was also when National Development Front, predecessor of the Popular Front of India, which is now under the scanner following a hand-chopping incident, took birth.

Both the Congress and the CPI-M vied for Mahdani’s favours but he eventually ended up as a pawn on the political chessboard. He spent more than nine years in a Tamil Nadu jail without bail or parole before being acquitted in a bomb blast case. As these lines are written, a police team from Karnataka is waiting to arrest him to face trial in a blast case in that state.

The murder of PK Mohammed Abdul Hassan Maulavi of Chekannur, whose reformist ideas infuriated orthodox elements, in 1993 and the communal riot that rocked the fishing hamlet of Marad in 2002 were rude reminders that fanaticism was on the rise. The warning signals evoked only a weak response.

The hand-chopping case shows how those who ought to act soberly are exacerbating the situation with short-sighted action.

In March, TJ Joseph, a college teacher in Thodupuzha, set a question paper in which students were asked to provide punctuation marks in a text, which was an imaginary dialogue between the Creator and a character named Muhammed. There was nothing in the text to suggest that the character was the Prophet (PBUH) but word spread that the teacher had denigrated the Prophet (PBUH). The college, the university, the government and the media implicitly endorsed the charge of denigration.

Religious leaders in Thodupuzha came together and brought communal sentiments under control quickly. However, elsewhere, some people were plotting revenge. On July 4 Joseph was waylaid near his home in Muvattupuzha while returning from church and his right hand chopped off. Six weeks later, he is back at home, the severed hand sewn up, but the social fabric remains torn.

The political parties have their eyes on the local self-government elections which are at hand and the Assembly elections which are not far away. The CPI-M, eager to live down the impact of its disastrous association with Mahdani in last year’s parliamentary elections, is taking a position close to that of the Bharatiya Janata Party on communally sensitive issues.

Organisations like the pro-CPI-M Democratic Youth Federation of India, the Indian Union Muslim League, the BJP and Jamaat-e-Islami have drawn up separate programmes to repair the damage to the social fabric. The partisan approach reflected in these efforts offers little room for hope.

Onam's journey from harvest festival to shopping carnival

There is a morning-after air in Kerala as the state recovers from the hectic annual Onam festivities.

These are the opening lines of a Letter from Kerala distributed by Indo Asian News Service (IANS)

A published version of the artcle can be seen at the AOL India site.