In Vivek Agnihotri’s film ‘The Kashmir Files’, a journalist reporting the outbreak of an armed insurgency in Kashmir files stories which do not publish in his newspaper. When his IAS friend, the Divisional Commissioner, checks with him if he had reported a particular incident, he pleads: “My job is to file. To publish or not is the editor’s discretion”.
Years later, when the same journalist at an invitation meets his retired IAS and IPS friends, they enter into a discussion over Kashmir’s turbulent situation in which terrorists enjoy a field day. The officers taunt the journalist of being a coward. He retorts, telling the retired officers how they themselves were either timid or complacent or helpless and how the protagonist Krishna’s father had been killed despite the Police having inputs of attacks on him.
The physical brawl culminates into a self-introspection. The conclusion is that ‘nobody at the top cares in Delhi’. The film, first of its kind in the last 32 years, explains how the terrorists and separatists’ vast ecosystem, ranging from politics and bureaucracy to media and academia, has crippled the system of governance in India. The journalist explains the importance of the pen and the camera in a battle of narratives in the context of Kashmir’s separatist movement.
Aamir Khan speaks on The Kashmir Files pic.twitter.com/6jwFuz819d
— Khalid Baig (@KhalidBaig85) March 21, 2022
Inspite of the film’s brilliant narration, the ground zero in Kashmir is of a big conflict industry, where riveting untold stories are still kept under wraps. The fear of the gun in 2022 is all-pervading as much as it was in 1990.
The battle of narratives being pivotal in all proxy wars, Pakistan’s ISI drew a plan of seizing the media, not only in Kashmir but also in the whole of India and rest of the world, in 1988 itself. It discovered and managed an unseemly bonhomie between the extremes of the ideologies—the Communists and Leftists who don’t even believe in God’s existence and the Islamist radicals who wanted everything from ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’ to ISIS-type caliphate.
The strategy worked even in the valley where we saw the traditional arch rivals Jamaat-e-Islami and CPI (M) speaking the same language that suits Pakistan. Their relationship is continuing till date.
Through the Leftist ecosystem, the terrorists and separatists captured the whole domain of the national and international media. So it is not surprising if all of them from The New York Times to The Washington Post, from The Guardian and BBC to Al Jazeera and Khaleej Times and from newspapers to television channels fell victim to the single-story syndrome.
There have been thousands of stories on the human rights abuse committed by the State agencies—police, security forces, Ikhwanis—but none on the brutalities done by the non-State actors of violence. Insiders claim that the foreign agencies had their hand not only in the reporting and editorial opinion but also in the selection and hiring of reporters by India’s national newspapers and TV channels. So, no stories against the militants and separatists battling India in Kashmir!
Over the years, the same ecosystem chose participants in international conferences. And the most important premium on ‘tehreeki sahafat’ was the international awards and the fellowships at some top-ranking universities sponsored and controlled by the Leftist ecosystem from India to Europe to America. In the modern times, the freebies come also in the shape of scholarships and blue ticks from Twitter.
In the beginning, the Press Enclave in Srinagar became a hub of the separatist politics and journalism. Editor of Qaumi Awaz Srinagar edition Mohan Charagi was the first to leave Kashmir after he received a threat in 1989. In quick succession, he was followed by PTI bureau chief Pran Nath Jalali, UNI bureau chief SD Rohmetra, Shyam Kaul, JN Sathu, RC Ganjoo and many others who were seen as a threat to the idea of azadi. Even their local Muslim colleagues resorted to the canard that the Pandits had ‘monopolised everything’ from government jobs to media.
Very much in Faooq Abdullah’s government in 1989, Kashmir Times earned the ‘honour’ of interviewing the valley’s first militant (Azam Inquilabi) with one AK-47 in his hand. Bureau Chief Zafar Meraj claimed that the interview was recorded at Polo Ground. It was a brazen beginning of glorifying the armed terrorists. Same year, Inquilabi sent one AK-47 round to Sufi Ghulam Mohammad, editor of Srinagar Times, asking him to shut his mouth.
For some years, Kashmir looked like a ‘liberated zone’ where India’s writ ceased to run. Every single story was about the ‘good job’ done by the militants and the ‘bad job’ done by the Police, CRPF, BSF or Army. Out of fear or sympathy, the local newspaper called the terrorists as ‘Mujahideen’ and ‘Mehman Mujahideen’ (guest militants). The local journalists arranged everything for their foreign guests—interviews with militant chiefs and commanders, boarding and lodging at hotels and houseboats and transportation of video tapes from Srinagar to Delhi.
There was no merit in reporting the broad daylight killing of the alleged informer Tehseen Billa. IEDs were tied to his body and he was blown into pieces on a street. Nobody expected a journalist to report how the pro-azadi writer Akhtar Mohiuddin’s son was killed and his eyes were gouged out; how the SKIMS nurse Sarla Bhat was kidnapped and torn into shreds; how some renegades were shot dead at their camp at Baghi Mehtab and one of their pregnant woman’s abdomens was torn out with a butcher’s knife.
Whether it was Greater Kashmir and Kashmir Times in Srinagar or The Indian Express and other dailies in Delhi, not-a-word-against-the-militant was the ground rule. KT’s editor Ved Bhasin would not hesitate to claim azadi as the only solution of the Kashmir problem. He never missed an international conference organised by ISI through Ghulam Nabi Fai. Even the Times of India editor Dileep Padgaonkar once fell in this trap. Some journalists in Delhi emerged as the control room of every anti-India propaganda.
Yet the premium on azadi from the successive State and Central governments remained intact. KT being number 20 or 30 in circulation continued to receive the advertisement support of the State’s second or third largest circulated daily for about 30 years. There is no count of other privileges given to KT, GK and many other newspapers. Some of them published editorials written and faxed from Pakistan on a daily basis. Same brand of reporters and editors established a monopoly on SAFMA and Pugwash, frequently shuttling between Srinagar and Rawalpindi.
Senior journalist Ghulam Nabi Khayal reported entire anti-India propaganda for Pakistan Television from J&K House in New Delhi. When Farooq Abdullah became CM in 1996, he picked KT and ET’s journalist ON Kaul as his media advisor. Kaul circulated his friend and JKLF chief Yasin Malik’s press notes from J&K House’s official fax. Resident Commissioner’s Secretary GM Zahid, who wrote and faxed stories to national newspapers and agencies on behalf of their Srinagar correspondents, spent Rs 3 lakh of the migrant Pandits’ relief on Yasin Malik’s valve replacement.
Even in 2015-16, it was the editors and reporters of The Indian Express, NDTV and other dailies who made Burhan Wani a hero. They kept the street turmoil of 2008, 2010 and 2016 alive. Jamiatul Mujahideen chief Ashiq Faktoo, serving jail term for human rights activist HN Wanchoo’s murder, was interviewed by GK inside SMHS Hospital. The government in Srinagar or Delhi had neither will nor competence to contest the single-story syndrome.
According to the insiders living and reporting in Srinagar, professional jealousy and animosity among the local journalists resulted in the killing of at least six of the 19 mediapersons killed by the terrorists.
Editor of Alsafa Shaban Vakil was shot dead at his office in 1991, allegedly by Nazir Podar of JKLF. He had carried a series of editorials against the frequently enforced hartals by the militants. When TV journalist Sayidain Shafi was shot dead, fellow journalists allegedly generated threats for several colleagues. Even about the last victim Shujat Bukhari’s assassination, officials have received inputs about the involvement of his own colleagues and one-time friends.
The abrogation of Article 370 has finally shut the Kashmir militancy’s most flourishing shops—GK’s single-story reports, promotion of selectively anti-India and pro-Pakistan journalists by successive State and Central governments, international conferences and motivated visits of think tanks and the track-2 businesses of OP Shah, Sushobha Barve and Radha Kumar.
Also Read: The Kashmir Files: Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits and the battle for India’s soul
