Jyoti Punwani
Tributes poured in from across the world for scholar and reformist Asghar Ali Engineer, who passed away on Tuesday, May 14. But no leading news channel thought fit to do a tribute to him. He changed the way people think about Islam; his contribution to the Bohra Reform movement posed such a threat to the high priest of the community, that he was attacked six times, twice almost fatally, his house was ransacked… His feminist interpretation of Islam, his campaign against the overturning of the Shah Bano judgment , his efforts to codify Muslim personal law – all these were newsworthy as well as controversial events in his life which impacted the country. The strange thing Is that two of our leading TV personalities, Rajdeep Sardesai and Sreenivasan Jain, tweeted their tributes to him. Rajdeep described him as a “dear friend and one of the bravest men I met”, while Jain said he “took on religious dogma, even at risk of violence by his own community”. Why then didn’t they spare him some news time?
