Manufacturing Normalcy - How the Indian media covered Kashmir

26 Pages·2019·5.144 MB·English

by  Atul Dev

5/21/2021 How the Indian media covered Kashmir
ESSAY / MEDIA
Manufacturi
ng Normalcy
How the Indian media covered
Kashmir
ATUL DEV
01 December 2019
AASHIM RAJ FOR THE CARAVAN
ON 9 AUGUST, the last Friday before Eid-ul-Adha, thousands gathered
in the streets of Soura, a neighbourhood in Srinagar, for a massive
protest against the Indian state. Four days earlier, the home minister,
Amit Shah, had announced the e�ective abrogation of Article 370 in the
Constitution, which had provided Jammu and Kashmir a special status
that allowed the state to have its own separate constitution and state
�ag. In addition, the government also divided the state into two union
territories: Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh. The move virtually
stripped the local leadership of political power, concentrating it
completely in the hands of the central government.
According to the New York Times, the crowd chanted slogans of freedom
and waved Kashmiri �ags. The procession was blocked by security
personnel, who, according to the Washington Post, “began �ring tear gas
canisters and shotguns carrying pellet rounds at the crowd.” Though
they found their own eyewitnesses, both papers were following up on
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video reports put out by the BBC and Al Jazeera, in which everything
described can be seen and heard.
These stories and videos were signi�cant as they showed a Kashmir that
was completely di�erent from the one shown in the Indian national
media. Ever since Shah’s announcement, the Indian government had
been at great pains to show that there was no major discontent about its
decision in the state. The national media repeated constantly that all was
“normal” in Kashmir. The narrative of normalcy played out on primetime
television and the front pages of newspapers, and was repeated endlessly
on Twitter by journalists who boasted about �ying over Kashmir in
government helicopters. The video of the huge crowd gathered in Soura,
the sight of people running amok and the hammering sound of shotguns
in the background punctured that narrative.
The government immediately issued a statement denying that the
protests ever happened. On 10 August, the ministry of home a�airs
tweeted that the news was “completely fabricated and incorrect.” Gaurav
Arya, a former army o�cer and defence analyst, claimed on Twitter the
next day that the videos were fabricated. “There are over 100 reporters in
Kashmir right now…reporting live for past 5 days. BBC is lying,” he
replied to a tweet asking him about the protests. Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, a
Delhi-based defence analyst and a columnist for The Print, started a
Twitter thread to point out all the possible ways in which the protesters
could be discredited. He pointed out that the �ags carried by protesters
in the video bore the motifs of Islamic State and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and
that they were chanting the names of al-Qaida terrorists. (In his own
screenshot of the video, the biggest banner was about the abrogation of
Article 370.) They were pelting stones. And they “MUST have turned
violent as they normally do to get shot at.” Swarajya published a story on
their website about Iyer-Mitra’s tweets.
There were wilder claims going around, such as that the video was in fact
an old one, and was from Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, not Srinagar.
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Several others regurgitated these claims, even though these could not
stand even the most basic scrutiny, given the banners held up by the
crowd said the protest was about the abrogation of Article 370 and the
dome of the Jenab mosque—which stands in Soura, Srinagar, and not in
PoK—could be seen in the background.
The four biggest English-language dailies—the Times of India, the
Hindustan Times, The Hindu and the Indian Express—either did not cover
the incident, or drastically played down its importance. The Hindu, on 10
August, mentioned the incident in a small story headlined, “Friday
prayers are peaceful.” Another report, on the front page, at least twice as
long, had Kashmiris lining up in queues to make a phone call, in which
the reporter saw “tears of both anger and relief.” The Indian Express used
a government statement chiding Pakistan as the lead headline of its front
page, which also had a story about the struggle of ailing Kashmiris trying
to access government hospitals. The Hindustan Times mentioned the
incident in a ground report on “Sombre Eid” in the valley; the mention of
the protests was immediately followed by an o�cial denial. The Times of
India also put out a government statement as its lead headline on the
jacket before its front page and recorded the protest in a story headlined:
“Stray Violent Protests in Valley Reported.”
A total communication blackout
was enforced in the state,
disrupting internet connectivity,
mobile networks and phone lines.
About �fty thousand troops began
patrolling barb-wired streets.
(There are about half a million
security personnel already
stationed in the region.) The
security forces clamped down
hard on any attempt at protest.
There have been numerous arrests
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and several casualties. An entire
state was turned into a prison,
and its populace forbidden
contact with the outside world.
Aarti Tikoo Singh and Rohan Dua, who reported the Times of India story,
seemed unsure of how many attributions were needed before they could
say the protests took place. “A Reuters report said police used teargas and
pellets to �ght back at least 10,000 protesters in Srinagar, a police o�cial
and two witnesses said,” they wrote. An eyewitness told them that “some
women and children even jumped into the water” as the security
personnel “attacked us from two sides.”
Towards the end of the story, the reporters found the normalcy that the
Indian state has been emphasising so strongly. Singh and Dua found
“hawkers selling fresh �sh and roasted corn” who found “a rare
opportunity to smile as people stopped by to do some purchasing after
four days of standstill.” Bizarrely, after mentioning the use of pellet guns
and tear gas by the security forces on over ten thousand protesters, some
of whom found it safer to jump into rivers, the story ended with this
quote from the director general of police: “Everything was by and large
peaceful today. Restrictions on movement will be eased with every
passing day.”
The international media, however, stuck to its story despite the
government’s denial. Three days later, the home ministry acknowledged
the protests, albeit calling them the work of “miscreants” who “resorted
to unprovoked stone pelting against law enforcement forces to cause
widespread unrest.” While the national media moved on, unquestioned
and unrepentant, the incident showed how closely mainstream
journalism in India follows the agenda set by the government, and how
the dissenting voices of Kashmiris are systematically muzzled.
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If you do not follow international media outlets—as most of India does
not—it was almost as if the massive, violent protests in Soura never
happened, and the security forces never �red tear gas and pellets at
Indian citizens.
THE INDIAN MEDIA’S RECORD on covering Kashmir has been
consistent with how it acted during the Soura episode. It makes no bones
about giving primacy to the government’s version of events. This has
often created divergent narratives of Kashmir in the national and
international media. Describing the divergence, a senior Kashmiri
journalist told me, “You people look at Kashmir through the lens of
nationalist pride or national security. For the rest of the world, it is a
con�ict zone.” In the service of national interest, certain facts often get
tinkered—unarmed civilian protesters are often portrayed as militants;
security forces �ring at peaceful protesters are portrayed as cross�re; and
political leaders of Kashmir are constantly demonised.
According to another senior Kashmiri journalist I met in Srinagar, several
major incidents in the history of Kashmir have been presented to the
Indian populace in a distorted manner. “The average Kashmiri had lost
faith in Indian media a long time ago,” he said. “You ask me what do I
think of the coverage after 5 August? I ask you if it is any di�erent than
how it was in 2016?”—in the aftermath of the killing of the highly
popular militant Burhan Wani—“Or throughout the 1990s?”—at the
peak of militancy in the state.
In the 1990s, local media emerged as an alternative to the mainstream
press. However, journalism in a con�ict zone that does not serve the
state’s propaganda purposes has proven to be a dangerous prospect.
Journalists have faced intimidation and violence from both the state and
various militant groups. Last year, Shujaat Bukhari, the editor of the
second-largest newspaper in Kashmir, was shot dead by unidenti�ed
gunmen. The local press has wilted under pressure from the state, to the
point that, as a journalist in Srinagar told me, “Every newspaper is now a
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BJP mouthpiece.” In the evenings at the Kashmir Press Club, many local
journalists can be found reminiscing about what used to be.
Since 5 August, the absence of a functional local media has left Kashmiris
smarting more than ever. A total communication blackout was enforced
in the state, disrupting internet connectivity, mobile networks and
phone lines. About �fty thousand troops began patrolling barb-wired
streets. (There are about half a million security personnel already
stationed in the region.) The entire Kashmiri political establishment was
put under house arrest. The security forces clamped down hard on any
attempt at protest. There have been numerous arrests and several
casualties. An entire state was turned into a prison, and its populace
forbidden contact with the outside world. The international media has
carried reports of brutal violence meted out by security personnel to
anyone perceived to be stepping out of line.
At this, the Indian media has expressed a sense of euphoria, painting the
political disempowerment of the state as its integration with the rest of
India. Television-news panellists have called the move a political
masterstroke by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Shah, similar to
decisions such as demonetisation and the “surgical strikes” on Pakistan.
They argue that the move highlights the ineptitude of the Congress and
Jawaharlal Nehru, who gave the state special status in the �rst place. The
perspective of the Kashmiri people has no space in this imagination.
Though not as buoyant as television news channels, the mood in the
English-language newspapers has also been jubilant. The headlines in the
Times of India, the Hindustan Times, the Indian Express and The Hindu
have largely been devoted to government claims, and stories that
challenge the government’s narrative have rarely found space on the
front pages. Most critically, there has been a glaring lack of inquiry or
curiosity about what Kashmiri people have to say about losing the rights
given to them by Article 370.
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On social media, some journalists posted pictures and videos from
Kashmir to propagate normalcy. They were untouched by the
communication blackout and poker-faced about their access to the
internet. The news agency Asian News International has also been
crucial in propagating the state’s narrative. As Praveen Donthi wrote in a
March 2019 article for this magazine, the agency has for long been
involved in producing propaganda on Kashmir
(https://caravanmagazine.in/reportage/ani-reports-government-version-
truth) and seemingly works closely with the government.
A feedback loop has been created between primetime anchors, print
coverage, social-media punditry and panel discussions, whose vocabulary
has nothing to do with Kashmir’s history or present. They could not look
beyond Modi and Shah, so the historical context of the abrogation of
Article 370 had to be demonetisation and surgical strikes.
In sharp contrast, the international media has kept its focus on the
Kashmiri people. The reports published in the Washington Post, the New
York Times, BBC and the Associated Press, among others, show people
living in a state of siege, denied such basic facilities as mobile
connections and access to hospitals. In these reports you sense an anger
building beneath the silence. As one report called it, Kashmir appears to
be “a dormant volcano.” These reports are not only an indictment of the
Indian state in Kashmir, but also an indictment of the Indian media.
IN A PRIMETIME DEBATE on the evening of 5 August, the news
channel Republic �ashed its hashtag for the night: #KashmirIntegrated.
“Justice has been done,” Arnab Goswami, an anchor and part owner of
the channel, declared. “The injustice of seventy years had been reversed.
In the heart of every Indian, in yours and mine, there is an overwhelming
sense of pride, that in our lifetimes, before our very eyes, the integration
of Jammu and Kashmir has actually happened.”
Soon after his opening monologue, Goswami pointed his rage to “the
lobby” that was upset at the news. It was upset, he explained later in the
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show, because it has been “thrown out of their apple-orchard azadi
business.”
You could see the echoes of the sentiment behind Goswami’s monologue
in almost every major news organisation in the country. The largest
selling English newspapers in the country chose words that could be
taken to mean integration as well as annexation. Both in all caps, the
Times of India announced, “KASHMIR IS NOW UNION’S TERRITORY,”
and the Hindustan Times blared, “TERRITORY OF THE UNION.” The
Indian Express’s banner headline the following day said, “History, in one
stroke.” A wide-angle shot of the upper house of parliament
accompanied it, in which Modi was congratulating Shah. All the
datelines on the Indian Express front page were from New Delhi. The
Hindu seemed more restrained, with “J&K loses its special status, divided
into two UTs.” It even found space on the front page for a Press Trust of
India report from Jammu, in which Kashmiris expressed their
apprehensions about the move. But the lead story used “surgical strike”
as a verb to describe the government’s move.
Dainik Bhaskar, the most read newspaper in the country, used a quote by
the Hindu-nationalist ideologue Shyama Prasad Mukherjee as its
headline: “Desh mein ab Ek Vidhan, Ek Nishan”—The entire country now
has one constitution, one �ag. Dainik Jagran, which sells about as many
copies as Bhaskar, had two red lines forming an X over “Article 370” on
the front page, �anked by half-page sketches of Modi and Shah, making a
V with their �ngers. Inside, another headline said that this was—as
Goswami, and Amit Shah before him, had already said—the righting of a
historical wrong. Neither of these papers did any substantial reporting
from Kashmir afterwards, though on 11 August, Dainik Bhaskar did put
out on its front page a rate card of land prices across the state, since, the
report said, with Article 370 gone, Indians could now start buying land in
Kashmir.
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 (https://caravanmagazine.in/essay/manufacturing-normalcy/attachment-1427
A few select journalists reporting from Kashmir posted on their social media with abandon
during the communications blackout. According to a local Kashmiri journalist, the state police
helped these reporters access internet. The journalists’ posts often aligned with the official
line of the government.
Several television anchors hailed Modi for another “political
masterstroke,” assuming that the move would be popular with the
masses even before anyone had a chance to react. On the India Today
news channel, Rahul Kanwal called the decision a “virtual surgical strike.”
“Whether you count demonetisation or not,” he said, 5 August was “one
of the most important days in the life and times of Narendra Modi.”
Sreenivasan Jain, on NDTV, also invoked demonetisation, while
describing the decision as a “bombshell” and a “game changer.”
From the very next day, the national media began telling us how
acceptable the decision was for Kashmiris, even as a communications
blackout was imposed across the valley. On 6 August, the executive
editor of the Hindustan Times, Shishir Gupta, who, according to a
colleague of his on the national security beat, has had a “decades-long
relationship” with Doval, wrote a story in which Doval claimed that the
state’s residents were “supportive of Centre’s initiative on Article 370.”
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On 7 August, ANI put out videos of Doval eating biryani and casually
talking with a small group of people in Shopian. News channels played
these videos on primetime, though during a ground report from Kashmir
on NDTV, the reporter called the videos “a publicity stunt, nothing else.”
Nonetheless, Goswami was ecstatic. “This is Kashmir,” he said. “Our
Kashmir. Safe Kashmir. A new Kashmir.”

The Indian media has made no
bones about giving primacy to the
government’s version of events.
This creates divergent narratives
of Kashmir in the national and
international media. Describing
the divergence, a senior Kashmiri
journalist told me, “You people
look at Kashmir through the lens
of
nationalist pride or national
security. For the rest of the world,
it is a conflict zone.”
The NSA’s visit was prominently displayed across the national media. In
a Times of India article by Aarti Tikoo Singh and Rohan Dua about
Doval’s visit, the headline stressed that Doval had been “speaking in
Urdu” as he reached out to Kashmiris. All the quotes were from Doval
himself. The Indian Express covered Doval’s visit as well, with a picture on
the front page and a Press Trust of India copy on Page 7. As in Singh and
Dua’s story, all the quotes came from Doval.
Days later, the Indian Express published a story about one of the Kashmiri
men who had appeared in the Doval videos. Mansoor Ahmad Magray
told the reporter that he had no idea that the man he was speaking to
was the NSA. If he had known, he said, he would have never spoken to
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