An analysis of the magazine Wartha
The publisher of Wartha is the Diözesanbildungswerk Münster, i.e. the institution for education of the diocese Münster in northern Germany. It also employs the responsible editor of the magazine Dr. Mathew Mandapathil who is their Ausländerreferent, i.e. who is in charge of dealing with issues dealing with foreigners or as one would say outside of Germany with ethnic minority issues. It seems that from 1982 to 1996 Mandapathil was on his own editing Wartha, writing short articles himself, collecting material from others and then somehow making a magazine of these elements. With the first issue of 1996, however, an apparent change can be perceived in Wartha. From that issue on there is an editorial team comprising of the white German director of the Diözesanbildungswerk who is responsible for general advise and support as well as for the layout, one of the nurses who is supposed to deal with women’s issues and an editor in India who is working in a project supported by Wartha. Furthermore, beginning with the second number of 1997 a spiritual advisor has been included in the team. In the same year also Wartha opened a regional office on the premises of the Indian project Vidya Bhavan and increased its editorial team there.
The title Wartha, which means news, is supplemented by a subtitle which was
in the time from 1991 to 1993 Nachrichten aus Indien, i.e. news from India. It
then briefly changed in 1994 to Nachrichtendienst für Inder in Deutschland, i.e.
news service for Indians in Germany, and ever since 1995 it has been Nachrichten
für Inder in Deutschland, i.e. news for Indians in Germany. The new title while
encompassing the first one illustrates that news of interest to the Malayali
community have their origin not only in India but potentially also in Germany.
This seems to capture more adequately than the former subtitle the philosophy of
Wartha as described in No.1, Vol.10, pp.2-3. The editor perceives this magazine
to be an important link and mouthpiece for the Indian community in Germany. He
states that it on purpose differs from both publications by NGOs who in his view
concentrate on ‘problems’ and on those by government agencies who only want to
sell the official point of view. One of the major concerns of Wartha is the
perceived lacking emotional link of the second generation to their parents’
country of origin, the one-sided image of India they are confronted with in the
German media and the assumed resulting identity crisis on their part. The editor
wants to contribute in strengthening the self-confidence of the second
generation, wants to impart Indian norms and traditions to them and thus hopes
to provide some aid in their orientation. Adding to this it is clearly stated
that Wartha is also the magazine for the participants of education programmes of
the Diözesanbildungswerk and as such sees its task also in reporting on events
and making advertisement for them. In fact it seems as if most of the 1,200
copies of Wartha which are published of each issue are send, free of cost, to
former participants of seminars for the Malayali community.
As has already been said Wartha is a multi-lingual magazine with articles in
German, Malayalam and English. There does not seem to be a stable relation
between the shares of the individual languages, but in general between half and
three quarters of the issue is in German, between a quarter and a half is in
Malayalam and less then one in ten articles is in English. Before the change in
concept in 1996 it seems that the majority of the own editorial work was done in
German, while Malayalam and English texts always appeared whenever a press
clipping of that origin was included in the magazine. One major exception to
this rule was a series of English articles on the Malayali churches which seems
to have been written directly for Wartha. In this case probably the author did
not know German. Since 1996 this pattern has somewhat changed with more articles
being directly written in Malayalam.
Before the change of concept Wartha, which is printed by the Diözesanbildungswerk itself, makes the impression of a low quality school magazine. It is dominated by photos, press clippings, other sort of documents as well as articles submitted by readers and advertisement for seminars and trips organised by the publisher. All this is somehow assembled into a magazine and supplemented by short comments and articles in between. The issues make the impression of a picture book which tries to make sure that as many readers as possible find their face at least once in it and that all press articles which appeared about any member of the Malayali community are included. The enlargement of the editorial team in 1996 alters this to some degree. There now seems to be more time and effort allocated to actually plan and layout the magazine as well as to write articles which are longer than a few sentences. Thus the face of Wartha has gone somewhat away from an arbitrary assortment of texts and photos although still press clippings and pictures are included.
At this stage it is necessary to discuss another problem involved with describing the Malayali community in Germany by analysing the magazine Wartha. Even if it is conceived as the mouthpiece of the community this does not mean that its contents necessarily accurately reflect the life and the opinions of its members, even ignoring the fact that the individual members will have differing ideas and that there is not really a homogenous well-defined Malayali community. Everything that is written has gone through several filters before it is published. The two most important are the editor’s personal views and the structural restrictions put on the magazine by outside forces. The latter are given in particular by the interest of the Diözesanbildungswerk and its financier who are all outsiders to the Malayali community. On the one hand they will make sure that the contents of Wartha do not contradict any of their own beliefs, that they will include a considerable share on religious issues, that events organised by this organisation will be sufficiently represented, etc. On the other hand they might want to make sure that the circle of readers appears not too restricted. It, for example, is interesting to note that Wartha almost always talks of the Indian rather than of the Malayali community thus trying to convey a broader field of interest than the contents actually reflect. Furthermore, the editor is employed as Ausländerreferent although he seems to work only for the Malayali community and there is no indication that he, for example, has any time to address issues of interest to the Turkish minority or to those of asylum seekers. While Wartha and the seminars organised seem to cater only for a small self-contained group of people, some efforts seem to be made to hide this focus to outsiders. Adding to these restrictions comes the personality of the responsible editor. The image of him reflected in Wartha indicates that he considers himself as a major authority concerning the Malayali community who is in close contact with all kinds of VIPs and is in a position to give paternal advice to others. This dominant character certainly determines the image of the Malayali community conveyed and thus will necessarily have introduced some bias. Nonetheless, the magazine can be considered to give some insights into the community life or at least its ideal type. If this was not true, there would not be such a large loyal readership which contributes articles and praising letters to the editor.
This essay thus does not claim that an analysis of Wartha will give an accurate reflection of the Malayali community in Germany. It can only give an idea of how one (large) part of this community likes itself to be portrayed and make some tentative interpretations about it on this basis.
Wartha is only one of the offers made by the Diözesanbildungswerk to the Malayali community. In its conference centre in the small town of Hopsten several regular seminars are held for the Malayalis, organised either by the Diözesanbildungswerk itself or by one of the many Keralite societies. Hopsten is thus today a well known place within the community and a reference to it implies images of a meeting place of all German Malayalis. The seminars are organised for a wide range of topics reaching from religion to sports, dealing with mechanisms to deal with stress to meetings for bi-cultural families. The central event, however, seems to be the annual Kerala Meela in the summer holidays.
As far as the extensive coverage of the Kerala Meela in Wartha indicates this seminar came into existence as participants of earlier weekend seminars had proposed to have once each year an intensive seminar together with the children in which one can deal with ones own history, origin, culture, identity and future. Thus one year after the creation of the magazine the first Kerala Meela took place in 1983. In the first four years there was one one week long seminar per year, this was increased to two seminars per year in 1987 and 1988. From 1989 to 1995 there was a further increase to three annual seminars which seem to have been always fully booked leading to several hundred participants. An attempt to reduce the number of seminars to two in 1996 was futile as participants demanded a third one. From 1997 onwards, however, it is planned to only have one yearly seminar as it is believed that the considerable change in the family structure within the Malayali community, this probably refers to the advanced age of the children who no longer unquestioningly follow their parents to any event, does not give scope for more.
Especially the early issues of Wartha allocate a lot of their space to advertisement for the next Kerala Meelas - in almost 100% of the cases using a large portrait of a ‘traditional’ and charming Indian woman - and reports of the past one. The latter consist primarily of photos from the seminar showing people taking part in discussions or performing in something, mainly classical Indian dance. Accompanying these illustrations there is hardly any text but a lot of slogans like „Heimweh und Sehnsucht“, „Harmonie und Toleranz“ or „Gekonnt und entzückend“ . The general impressions conveyed is that a Kerala Meela makes you experience all the nice things from back home thus satisfying your longing, gives your children the possibility to learn about these so that the negative image they get through the German media is compensated, that one can be oneself in Hopsten and flee the strenuous world outside. Advertisement phrases like
"Freunde kennenlernen - Heimatliche Küche kennenlernen - Eigene Geschichte kennenlernen - Eigene Herkunft kennenlernen - Sich selbst entdecken - Eigenes Land entdecken - Eigene Kultur entdecken - Eigene Identität entdecken - Einfach Zeit haben - Den Alltag vergessen - Zur Besinnung kommen - Sich vom Streß erholen - Muße und Ruhe haben - Beten und meditieren" (1993, No. 3, 10, 12, 14)
illustrate this. This impression is further supported by a look at one of the recent seminar programmes which shows that the main features of a Kerala Meela are classes on Indian music and dance for parents and children separately, Malayalam classes for children and discussion groups for parents to deal with problems of child rearing, conflicts in the family, planning of the future etc. This is complemented by religious gatherings, lectures on a special topic, leisure programmes and general discussions. Furthermore, it seems as if the organisers always put some effort into inviting some famous personalities from Kerala, in particular actors and actresses, and that a major part of the cultural programme is carried out by artists of the second generation.
Advertisement for and reports about the Kerala Meela can take up to half the content of an individual issue of Wartha. This shows how important the editor considers this event and how much readers are willing to be confronted by it. Adding to this each issue will have some few general articles about India, mostly about films and politics. Each issue also contains information about temperatures in different Indian towns, the rates of exchange and some commodity prices, which seem to have in particular nostalgic value. There is hardly any general reference to German issues and also topics concerning ethnic minorities in general are very seldomly raised. The major focus of Wartha is on the German Malayalis, not on their problems but on their successes. So besides the reports on the Kerala Meela there will be descriptions of all kinds of other events, references to the nurses’ contribution to the German health system, to cultural and other achievements, to engagements in developing Kerala and to the fabulously successful second generation. All this contributions are very personalised, praising the people involved rather than giving information about what actually was done. Furthermore, there are discussions of religious issues, the editor gives paternal advice about living in Germany and the magazine is used to publicise family events. In a few cases the editor also comments on high politics in the same paternal manner as he does on community events.
The Malayali articles seem, as has already been mentioned, to focus on the
same topics. In the earlier issues there was a bias towards things happening in
India - either film or German Malayalis going there -, but since the change in
concept in 1996 many of the articles deal actually with community events in
Germany. This is less true for the English texts as these are mainly press
clippings dealing mostly with important people from Kerala, such as Arundathi
Roy, with general Indian issues or with Indians in the UK or in the USA.
Everything is illustrated richly with photos where a high proportion of these
actually depict the ideal Indian woman.
1. Introduction
1.1. The 'Malayali Community' in Germany
1.2. The state of research in 1998
3. An analysis of the contents
3.1. Pan-Indian claim
3.2. Image of India
3.3. The 'Malayali Community'
3.4. The Second Generation
3.5. Missing issues