Kashmir: Caught in the media’s tug of war

Peppering the news coverage with jingoism is certainly not the way to go about it

The media of Pakistan and India has always been used by their respective governments to project official stances with regards to Kashmir issue, thus, shaping the public minds accordingly

The Kashmir dispute has been raging on for the last six decades without a foreseeable end in sight. The dispute is not only causing damage and untold misery to Kashmiris, both in property and life, but it’s also a root cause of confrontation between Pakistan and India.

This unresolved matter has kept both the neighbouring countries on a dangerous course of confrontation ever since their inception. International Crisis Group Report of 2003 indicated Kashmir conflict as a key cause of tension between the two countries.

The media of Pakistan and India has always been used by their respective governments to project official stances with regards to Kashmir issue, thus, shaping the public minds accordingly.

Growing up, I remember right after the news bulletin, there always used to be a news package about India-held Kashmir, where death toll and injuries to the Kashmiris on that day was highlighted. A Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan sad song was included in the report just for a good measure.

But those were the days of PTV and now after the advent of so many private channels — with their own modus operandi– and no state narrative breathing down their necks, they have largely sidelined the Kashmir issue.

On the other hand, if you see the coverage of Kashmir in the Indian media, you’ll be left with questions like if the protests and uprisings are indigenous, and the ones pummelling the protesters with pellet guns are from the Indian army, then how on earth Pakistan is to be blamed for that? But for Indian nationalistic politicians blaming Pakistan for their own ineptitude and giving a free reign to the Indian army to use brutal force is always the way to go.

DNA reached out to journalists, activists and writers to talk about the role of the media when it comes to Kashmir.

When it comes to the coverage of Kashmir in Pakistani media, a general trend is to focus on Indian brutalities and different statements of Pakistani politicians condemning those brutalities. However, the focus on Kashmiris and a pathway towards conflict resolution is generally missing.

Muhammad Faysal, a Srinagar-based Kashmiri activist and blogger, while talking toDNA said: “Pakistani media although has shown Kashmir prominently after the Azad Kashmir elections. It is good, but they should go beyond just showing the oppression on Kashmiris, e.g. advocating a policy that could be productive for Kashmiris. The coverage must maintain its consistency and credibility.”

Talking to DNA about Pakistani media, Pakistani journalist Ahmed Quraishi said, “The Pakistani media is more realistic on Kashmir than its Indian counterpart. There’s no dearth of Pakistani commentators who disagree with the government narrative on Kashmir. Pakistani media delegations visiting India often give interviews challenging their own Pakistani government’s policies on Kashmir. This is unlike the Indian media delegates who visit us in Pakistan. They appear to have talking points memo from the Indian government.”

Ovais Sultan Khan, a Delhi-based human rights activist and political analyst suggested that media has a responsibility to report the facts for the well-being of the society at large.

Talking about the Western media Rhee said: “Kashmir is too far and too unknown for the Western media to understand, and much less project with clarity to the larger world. It’s always been a causality of the partisan, an old tale left to wither after the British exited.”

While talking to DNA about the media of the two neighbouring countries, Ovais said, “It is unfortunate, whenever the issue of Kashmir comes, the majority of both sides of journalists become jingoists. They spread hyper-nationalism, which is not in favour of the people living in India and Pakistan. I believe Kashmir as a political issue can be solved with dialogue. The Kashmiris have suffered a lot due to several reasons, and we strongly oppose the grave human rights violations in Kashmir.”

Indian media tends to follow the policy of its government, thus, its approach is biased and negative towards portraying the issue. Barring a few sane voices, most of the time, the coverage remains negative and does not present any peaceful resolution of the conflict. Kashmir conflict is not treated as an international issue by the Indian press which is affecting the peace of South Asian region in particular and the world in general.

Ahmed Quraishi, while talking about the Indian media, said Indian media is completely one-sided and conformist when it comes to Kashmir, barring one or two dissenting voices. For a country known as world’s largest democracy, this is nothing less than a scandal, he added.

“I know India and I know most Indians are good and fair-minded people. Most of them are not interested in forcibly keeping Kashmir as an Indian territory. That’s why this uniformist attitude of the Indian media leaves me with one explanation which is a bigger scandal: that the Indian media follows the government’s and military’s line on this issue,” he maintained.

Rheea Rodrigues Mukherjee, a published author and writer from Bangalore said: “Where’s our humanity gone? Kashmir issue has been reduced to a left and right issue. Either we are ‘with the country’ or we are not. A friend had written about a teenager being blinded by pellets, and how this was testing the limits of any perceived national solution. An educated Indian woman replied ‘they deserve it’. It’s easy to see how polarised politics can be used to defend anything.”

Rheea, while talking to DNA, further critiqued the Indian media and said, “The Indian media is stuck with a sizable population that believes they are being patriotic because they want to keep Kashmir from Pakistani control by any means. We have generations of Kashmiris brought up under the scrutiny and rule of the Indian military — what do you expect its children to feel? What other role models are the Indian government providing, except for surveillance and authoritativeness? India wants to be quick to justify its violence with the implied Kashmiri terrorist threat, while at the same time being dismissive of the history and cause of mass disapproval. The nation has revoked national rights, pelted children, and disempowered the voice of the people.”

Muhammad Faysal thinks that instead of showing empathy and trying to create an environment of dialogue, the Indian media is busy with demonising and dehumanising Kashmiris, who are under a vicious military siege since two months.

“Unfortunately they have become a propaganda wagon for the Hindu nationalists. Although there are a few who have been credible in their reporting as any journalist should be,” he said while talking about the Indian media’s role in covering Kashmir.

DNA also reached out to American activist and independent socialist candidate for US elections Mary Scully.

When it comes to Indian media, she said, “The language is inflammatory and biased, using terms like ‘terrorists’, and the political slant is nationalist.”

She goes on to say, “But Indian media is sketchy, sometimes incoherent in their reporting so I have to put the story together from different Indian, Kashmiri, and Western media sources. Kashmiri media is useful, particularly around the executions and deaths of Kashmiris at the hands of the occupying army — but it’s censored and monitored and editors must walk a fine line so as not to be completely shut down.”

On the question about the role of Western media, Mary said, “I believe the recent coverage in Western media — which remains scanty, but does exist — is only because of the Kashmiri activists on social media, including Facebook and Twitter.”

“There is some reporting in media like the NY Times, Washington Post, and Guardian-UK, but it is infrequent and uses the inflammatory, nationalist political slant of Indian media. They’re modelling their coverage on their dishonest coverage of Israel and the Palestinians but perhaps more important for US media, India now plays a central role in the US military strategy for South Asia,” she added.

According to a research paper for National Defence University (NDU) co-authored by Dr Anjum Zia and Hajrah Syedah, most of the news (75pc) in the New York Times regarding Kashmir was negatively framed.

The paper further highlighted: “Whenever the New York Times covered the issue, mainly it favoured India’s viewpoint regarding Kashmir dispute instead of publishing an independent, unbiased and impartial opinion.”

Talking about the Western media Rhee said: “Kashmir is too far and too unknown for the Western media to understand, and much less project with clarity to the larger world. It’s always been a causality of the partisan, an old tale left to wither after the British exited.”

“When India can speak about Kashmir with respect and an understanding of its shortcomings as a nation — that’s when global attention and engagement on Kashmir will be authentic and meaningful,” she added.

Ahmed Quraishi had a different take on the role of Western media and said that some of the best reporting in the last two months on the Kashmir resistance to Indian military occupation has come from the Western media.

“I see American, British, Arab, and Turkish media, in particular doing superb reporting on Indian suppression and rights violations in Kashmir, in some cases better than the Pakistani media,” he said, and added, “We in Pakistan have grown so accustomed to seeing the world media ignore Kashmir that we are not paying attention when the world media is changing the way it looks at Kashmir and India’s role in that conflict zone.”

A lot of the times in conflict theatres, media ignores the conflict resolution approach. It does not remain neutral and emerges as a party to the conflict. Peppering the news coverage with jingoism is certainly not the way to go about it. Media often resorts to selling negative stories that capture public attention rather than analysing and putting forward a coherent and balanced view. Therefore, media practitioners on both sides of the border and the world at large ought to make structural changes, which are badly needed for peace journalism to evolve into a feasible approach to news coverage of a raging conflict.