Milli Gazette Fortnightly Magazine of Indian Muslims needs patronage and support. As per recent report in nations leading print media it is facing great cash crunch due to lack of advertisements and drastically reduced circulation and sales. Posting in service of community, to put forward an effort to bring awareness on faced constraints of Milli Gazettee

Indian Muslims leading English fortnightly in service of community to be a many ways mouth peace of Muslims of India, has little words for itself today to raise its own economic condition, and difficulties it is facing due to lack of funds, to meet day to expenses and printing and distribution of the magazine.

Leading English news paper  Indian Express carried a report on The Milli Gazette under a heading Should Milli Gazette be allowed to Sink. It was published on 15  Dec 2012.

The content of the whole report is as below.

Its office is tucked away in a corner of one of the many narrow, decrepit lanes of Abu Fazl Enclave, Jamia Nagar, Delhi. Anyone can walk easily into the office, which has no signboard and is situated inside an an old house with a low-rise iron gate. Inside, there are cartons full of newspapers strewn carelessly, lots of books, and people working on old computers.

The nondescript workspace, though, belies the voice of ‘Milli Gazette’, an English-language fortnightly, which is often quoted by various publications, including international ones such as ‘The Guardian’, in news stories about India’s Muslims. But very soon, though, the newspaper’s fate may match that of its workspace. In a recent edition, the ‘Milli Gazette’ had its first page almost blank, with a column on the side lamenting that not enough Muslims, whose “side of the story” it tells, have supported it by way of subscriptions, and appealing to the community to keep subscribing to the paper, or else, “all pages of MG may look blank as this one”.

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Milli Gazette’ was started by Zafar-ul-Islam Khan, a journalist from Azamgarh (in a sarcastic tone, he tells us he’s from “Atankgarh” when we ask him about his origins) in January 2000, when the BJP was the ruling party at the Centre, and “there was a lot of Islamophobia around”

“We needed to tell our side of the story,” he said, though he admits that, for Muslims, getting into the mainstream, non-Urdu media, has “been a very, very old idea, not much realised even today”. Eleven years on, MG too seems to be not able to realise that idea. “We’ve been incurring losses since we began, and we’ve reached the limit now,” says Khan. So, are they shutting down? “If things go on this way, we might,” he says.

‘Milli Gazette’ is located in Jamia Nagar, a sprawling and ever-growing Muslim-dominated locality, occupying a major part of south-east Delhi. Its target readers, we’d think, stay in its vicinity. But the many Muslims living in the area, specially the youth who study in Jamia Millia Islamia University, also located in Jamia Nagar, are ironically not the target readers of MG. “Did you know that the top heads of the Indian state as well as the top cops of the Delhi Police subscribe to us? They are our target readers. It is they whom we want to tell about what the ordinary Muslim is going through, and be able to affect their attitude towards the community,” says Khan.

The target readership explains Milli Gazette’s news content, which largely revolves around communal riots such as those that took place in Rudrapur and Ujjain recently, the plight of Muslims arrested after terror blasts, such as those in Malegaon, the policies of Narendra Modi and the RSS and criticism of the US and Israel.

The 32-page newspaper, priced at Rs 10 since it began, is a heavy, tiring head, and you’d wish the seriousness of the content was tempered by some cultural, social news. Surely, news about Muslim community doesn’t have to be synonymous with riots, terror and anti-Americanism.

“But these are the facts of our times. How many have our children lost the prime of their youth by being arrested after every terror act, tortured, forced to confess to a crime they didn’t commit, and then released 8-10 years later for want of evidence?” says Khan, with a passion which has made him stay put, despite the losses. Such reportage, which often questions the State, has put Khan and his team of 14 reporters at risk. “Our reporter in Indore was threatened by the police when he inquired about the arrest of a Muslim youth after the riots there, and then, I, too, frequently get threats over phone and e-mail,” says Khan.

Khan believes that Milli Gazzette’s fierce reportage of riots and harassment of Muslims after terror blasts has ‘mellowed down’ the rhetoric that follows a terror act. “Now, the government explores the possible involvement of terror groups belonging to another faith too, without immediately concluding that it is the handiwork of Islamists,” he says, adding that NGOs — local and international, such as Human Rights Watch — have visited their office for information related to riots.

Though ‘Milli Gazette’ has had an “impact” on its ‘target readership’, it still fails in drawing mass readers, which can sustain the newspaper. Circulation figures are ‘too low’ for Khan to reveal them to us, but online readership more than makes up for the embarrassment. “We have an estimated combined readership of 5 lakh per issue, online and offline, with a very large percentage coming from online visitors,” he says. Of course, reading stories on the website is offered free of cost, unlike the case with the newspaper, which Muslims ‘hardly support’.

“Do you see how many mosques and madarsas are in Jamia Nagar? Is there a need for so many of them? Muslims only want to contribute to religious causes, such as building mosques and madarsas, sometimes right in front of their homes. Of course, it’s their right to do so, but they overdo it and ignore social causes, such as spreading community news,” Khan explains.

Even the businessmen aren’t supportive, with just one company subscribing to the fortnightly, and almost none advertising in it (the ads on the website are only those by Google). “They fear being associated with a paper that focuses on riots and terror cases,” says Khan. That fear is also shared by vendors, who refuse to sell the paper at their stalls. Khan says he’s tried in vain — even given ‘several kilos of laddoos’ — to vendors in Connaught Place, and other well-frequented parts of Delhi — but no one wants to sell this paper, he says.

The Question I would like to ask my myself and to all my readers and to the Indian Muslim Community and to our Social and Relgious Bodies across cross section of society in Muslim Community and Majority Hindu Community and other minorities of India.

Is it not our responsibility to encourage and support Press Presence like that of Milli Gazettee to be watch dogs and raise issues before the community and nation like that of human rights, social justice and equality.

And raise voice against all forms of suppression and bring true stories to lime light in best interest of border secular and nationalistic and progressive building of community.

I appeal to one an all to reach out the promoters and editor of Milli Gazzette to know his side and try to find ways to  support by way of promotion and patronage with ads and supporting in increasing the decreased circulation.

Hope the message will be taken with concern for allowing the magazine to sail fine and grown to better levels in performance and live up the expectation it loyal readers and spread to the youth of the nation for bigger impact of its sincere efforts under its founder Janab Zafar Ul Islam Khan.

http://www.facebook.com/milligazetteTo subscribe and receive copies by post visithttp://www.milligazette.com/subscribe.htm

Can be purchased from select news stands as listed onhttp://www.milligazette.com/distributor.htm

Head Office:
D-84 Abul Fazl Enclave-I,
Jamia Nagar,
New Delhi 110 025 INDIA
Tel.: (+91-11) 2694 2883, 2694 7483, 2695 2825
E-mail: edit@milligazette(dot)com

This is posted in the interest public interest and with great concern on the basis of the Indian Express post Dec 15 th 2011. Will post it to Mr. Zafar Ul Islam and try to see what how we can be of  any use. Isha Allah.

I remain it is duty of each one of us to see that the existing credible institutions are strengthened. I thank  Amnah Khalid from and Aligarian now living in Malaysia for bring to this issue to my knowledge and demanding my attention. Credit goes to her.