Media in Kashmir: Shooting the Messenger

[avinash shahi]

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal (anu...@gmail.com) is Executive Editor, Kashmir Times.
http://www.epw.in/journal/2016/30/comment/shooting-messenger.html
The gag on expression in J&K attempted to criminalise the media

Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal writes:

On 16 July, the post-midnight knock by policemen at the door of
newspaper offices in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) was not a case of simple
intimidation. It was a calculated and brazenly undemocratic step to
gag the press in a manner that is reminiscent of the Emergency with
the explicit aim of muzzling voices. Printing material and newspapers
were seized and technical staff arrested before the crack of dawn. The
divisional commissioner, whom editors met, pleaded helplessness. J&K
People’s Democratic Party (PDP) minister Nayeem Akhtar said that these
measures had been taken in anticipation of trouble after the 8 July
killing of a militant commander, Burhan Wani. How does an assault on
the freedom of expression ensure calm in volatile Kashmir? Three days
later the chief minister’s adviser, Amitabh Mattoo, claimed that there
was no ban on the media and that it had been a mistake committed by an
overzealous police officer against whom action had been taken.
However, this belated statement does little to put to rest the
ambiguity of the government’s stand. Many believe the officer became a
scapegoat in a damage control exercise. Newspapers resumed publication
on 21 July after an assurance from Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti
Sayeed.

What purpose did the ham-handed attempt to gag the media serve? Bans
and other methods of controlling expression are usually convenient
tools in the hands of the powerful if there is something to hide.
World history bears testimony to the fact that what is sought to be
hidden eventually comes out, as did the gory stories of India’s
Emergency, the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, Stalin’s era of repression
or more recently the war crimes in Bosnia and closer home in Sri
Lanka. The other possible reason for cracking down on free speech and
free media could be the paranoia. In either case, the move is an
ill-advised one. The state government may have acted on the diktats of
the centre, which has a greater space for manipulation in Kashmir
exercised through security agencies and even a part of the state
police, but did it not think of the consequences? The silence and the
contradictory statements at the top rungs of J&K government reveal the
story of a premeditated and planned agenda.

There is no empirical evidence to suggest that blanket bans on media
help ameliorate conflict situations. The only purpose they fulfil is
to satiate the arrogance of those at the helm of affairs. Or else,
they suit the various vested interests in unleashing the unmanageable
power of rumour mongering or filling the gaps with an
ultra-nationalistic narrative at the cost of making the agonised
masses invisible, even demonised and criminalised. The significance of
free media which operates in a professional manner and functions with
its own self-operating mechanism of verifying information cannot be
underscored. In Kashmir, the local media has played the vital role of
documenting the peoples’ narrative which is in striking contrast to
the official narrative. Media does not only perform the job of
informing the public. In a democratic set-up it is also the voice of
the public and a vital link between the government and public, the
need of which is felt even more in view of the existing gap between
the rulers and the ruled. The gag on expression thus weakens the last
vestiges of Indian demo­cracy in Kashmir. The ban may be over but will
go down as a symbol of brute power in Kashmir, where jackboots,
bullets and intimidations have become the predominant forms of
governance.

Kashmir is not unfamiliar with such censorships operating through
intimidations, stopping of government advertisements and keeping the
media in check through curfews and other restrictions. The police
action this time has brought the censorship to a new level by
criminalising the media for daring to give space to narratives of an
agonised population, killed, maimed and blinded by the so-called
non-lethal pellets. In a land where the narrative of enforced
disappearances, of people who went missing in custody of security
forces is so deeply embedded in the psyche of the people, the media
became yet another addition. The messenger was shot down, making it
easier for the Indian media, by and large guided by a code of jingoism
and ultra-nationalism with respect to Kashmir, to carry on its
narrative of Kashmir minus Kashmiris and ironically, use the
nationalistic discourse to justify this onslaught on a democratic
necessity.




--
Avinash Shahi
Doctoral student at Centre for Law and Governance JNU