Name of Fellow: Asghar Khan
Genre: Journalism
Area of Work: Jharkhand
Asghar Khan is an award winning journalist based out of Ranchi, Jharkhand. His works are focused on the issues of the tribals, land alienation, minority rights, and environment.
A graduate in history, Khan pursued television journalism diploma from Jamia Millia Islamia in 2011-2012. After completing his studies at the university, he interned and trained at various news organisations in Delhi.
Soon after, realising that there was not much scope in reporting for him, he moved to Ranchi in 2014. Initially working as a freelance journalist for various newspapers, he developed his understanding about social issues and started pursuing issue-based stories. In the meantime, from 20015 to 2017, he worked as fulltime journalist for Ranchi-based news organisations where he covered sports as well as minority and tribal issues.
Then he left fulltime work to pursue hard news for various national and renown news platforms including The Wire, The Caravan Magazine, Dainik Bhaskar, Prabhat Khabar, Down to Earth, News Laundry among others.
His journey from Gaya, Bihar to winning national media awards has not been an easy ride. Without any connection and knowledge of media industry, he had to face a lot of difficulties throughout his early career. When he moved to Ranchi from Delhi, he was forced to go back home for a few months for not being able to manage the expenses. However, his perseverance kept him going and he started writing from home. With whatever support he got from publication houses, he used to travel to various places for ground reporting. In the process, he has done cover stories for Down to Earth magazine, award winning stories for Dainik Bhaskar, News Laundry and BBC Hindi.
Despite his rural background and regional coverage, Khan has been honoured with the ICRW Asia Media Award-2018, BREAKTHROUGH Media Award-2019, National Foundation of India Media Award-2019-20, and four Laadli Media Awards for his stories on women, child marriage, sex workers and their hardship in taking care of their children and parents during Covid-19 outbreak, forest rights act and women’s rights.
Asghar is highlighting the violation of various provisions of the Constitution enacted for the protection of tribal in Fifth Schedule areas. His analysis of policies give extensive perspective to the concerns of tribals and why they protest against the government’s certain policies. Through his work, he also highlights the violation of Constitutional values and takes expert opinion to dissect such violations.
With the rise of sectarian and communal politics, Asghar tries spread the message of secularism and co-existence of communities. He argues that religiosity exists across the spectrum and such religiosity can be detrimental to a peaceful society.
In his ground reports, he highlight those perspective which go missing in fast, mainstream media. In his recent report on the protests carried out by Muslims in Ranchi, he reported that though the breaking news reported that the protesters pelted stones, but the initial stone pelter were standing on the roofs. Those who stood on the roofs, started throwing stones leading to clashes between police and protesters.
He intends to report extensively on communalism to promote social and communal harmony.