Go to Kashmir to understand what life is like under an Emergency

 On the eve of the 48th anniversary of the Emergency, here's something I wrote for the Network of Women in Media, India (NWMI) website.

Link: https://nwmindia.org/features/nwmi-writes/the-emergency-writing-back-to-the-future/

Forty-eight years after Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency on the night of June 25, 1975, people still ask: What was it like?

If today, in the year 2023, you want to get a sense of what life was like under the Emergency, go and spend some time in what was once the state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Not as a tourist, or a pilgrim, but as a citizen who wants to understand what life is like for people in that region.

Since August 5, 2019, when the rights provided to the people of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 were taken away overnight, and a full-fledged state was reduced to a union territory, there is a virtual state of emergency in the region, especially in Kashmir.

Think about it.  Even as the central government led by Narendra Modi took this step, all political leaders who opposed the move were arrested.

The media, that has never had an easy run because of the presence of security forces, virtually fell silent. Internet was suspended making it impossible for journalists to file stories. They were questioned, intimidated, and detained.

Over time, what little remained of an independent media was snuffed out, while journalists who dared to question were charged under public safety and terror laws.

Four Kashmiri journalists are still in jail, and dozens more have had to either leave Kashmir or tread carefully as the sword of arrest or interrogation hangs over them all the time. Even leaving the country is not an option as several have found themselves on a no-fly list without prior intimation.

Many prominent Kashmiri journalists now write for international publications as their stories are rarely picked up by mainstream Indian media barring some independent digital news platforms.

Newspapers in Kashmir survive only if they toe the line as they are now entirely dependent on government advertising. Kashmir Times, the oldest English language paper founded by the veteran journalist Ved Bhasin and now run by his daughter Anuradha Bhasin, was forced to shut its Srinagar office when the lease was cancelled without explanation.

The Kashmir Press Club in Srinagar, an important meeting place for journalists, was also arbitrarily closed.

 

Kashmir Press Club. Photo by Quratulain Rehbar

A media policy was put in place in 2020 that would penalise any publication or journalist who reported what the government considered “misleading” or “false”. In other words, nothing critical of government policies or programmes could be reported.

How is any of this different from what happened in the days following the declaration of emergency in June 1975?

Then too, opposition leaders were rounded up and put in jail. Most of them remained in jail for the entire period of the emergency.

The press soon fell silent as press censorship was imposed. Any publication violating censorship “guidelines”, which were frequently revised and updated, faced closure. No one could question the logic of these guidelines. You just had to follow them.

Even if journalists working for prominent newspapers wanted to report what they saw on the ground, they could not as their stories would not have been carried by their own publications. Their only option was to somehow sneak out the information they had collected so that it could be published in the international media.

A pall of fear that fell on the country after the first weeks of the declaration of emergency ensured that no dissent or political activity could take place. Such activity was compelled to go underground. Opponents of the Emergency, who had managed to evade arrest, had to devise ways to communicate without being detected.

For the 20 months that the Emergency lasted, people in one part of the country were unaware of what was happening in other parts. We only knew the full extent of the atrocities that were committed during the period when censorship was lifted, elections were held, and the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government was thrown out.

It will soon be four years since the abrogation of article 370. Have things changed in Kashmir?

Although some political leaders have been released, they have no role in the running of their former state because there is no legislative assembly. Normal political activity, such as public meetings and rallies are impossible to hold.  Political parties are compelled to reach out to their constituents in ways that will not attract the attention of the authorities, people who take direct orders from New Delhi.

And what about the media? Before August 5, 2019, many highly regarded Kashmiri journalists reported for mainstream media houses. Their stories included reports on human rights violations and the views of ordinary people about the situation.  They featured opposition politicians even if their views were unpalatable to those in power in New Delhi.

Today, there is a trickle of news from the region. What we read or watch are stories based on handouts by the security forces, and upbeat write-ups about tourism. It’s as if all the human rights abuses we read about in the past have disappeared.

So, even if a formal state of emergency has not been declared in Jammu and Kashmir, what people in the region have lived through in the last four years is not that different from the Emergency period of 1975-77.

What is more worrying is the absence of outrage in the rest of India about citizens in one part of this country being deprived of their basic democratic rights.

Authoritarianism finds fertile ground when the citizenry is immunised against violations of democratic rights, when people are willing to delude themselves that what happens in one region really cannot happen elsewhere, and when they swallow the propaganda that India remains the “mother of democracy”.

We need to recognise that what has happened in Kashmir is an experiment by this government to see how far they can go to deny citizens their basic rights. Why declare a formal emergency when you can manage without it?

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Smriti Irani’s outburst, Modi’s lack of press conferences: Unpacking Indian govt’s hostility to the press

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 15, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/15/smriti-iranis-outburst-modis-lack-of-press-conferences-unpacking-indias-hostility-to-the-press

On June 9, on a visit to her parliamentary constituency of Amethi, BJP MP and Union Minister for Women and Child Welfare, Smriti Irani got really annoyed with a journalist. He never got around to asking a question. He merely requested her to say something. 

And she did. She charged him with insulting the people of her constituency and went further, saying, “I will call the owner of your paper and tell them no journalist has the right to insult the people.”

The journalist was a stringer for Dainik Bhaskar, although the paper later denied that he worked for them. But Irani did speak to the owners of Dainik Bhaskar. And they sacked the other stringer present, who was on their rolls.

Why should this incident be a reason for the media, and those concerned about press freedom, to worry? 

We need to be concerned because this is not just a passing incident.  It exemplifies the contempt with which the current government treats the media.  

If it had the slightest respect for what a free media is supposed to do in a democracy, would not the prime minister make himself available to answer questions directly to the media in these nine years that he has held office?

If ministers in the Modi government had even a modicum of understanding of what the media is supposed to do, would they heckle and harass reporters asking legitimate questions and threaten to speak to the owners of their media outlets?

Several media organisations, like the Editors Guild of India, Digipub and some press clubs have issued strong statements. The Editors Guild states: “This trigger-happy approach to browbeat and harass reporters and news camera persons undermines the freedom of the press.” The Digipub statement brings out an important aspect of journalism today in India – the role of stringers. They are sometimes not paid at all, or paid a pittance, and yet they serve an important role in news gathering in the face of the cutbacks on hiring full time reporters by much of mainstream media.

This attitude of the current government – where any kind of questioning is viewed as hostile, where journalists are singled out and threatened either directly or through social media platforms, and where journalists have been arrested while on assignment, as was Siddique Kappan – is a direct threat to freedom of the press. It is not possible for a vibrant, questioning, and free press to survive in such a hostile atmosphere.

This government knows that the media with the largest reach, namely television, has already prostrated itself at its feet. Until last year, just one channel had survived with a modicum of independence. Now that too is part of the laudatory lot, singing hosannas to the government and saving its criticism for the opposition. 

This government also understands the power of other forms of media, especially social media, to spread its narrative. And how to use this effectively. 

And it could have sensed that increasingly people are not interested in “news” the way we have come to understand it in the past. Cross-check, verify, report. That used to be the norm.

These restrictions don’t apply to some of the “news” circulating on social media platforms. And unfortunately, this is what an increasing number of people are consuming in India, and in many other parts of the world.

According to the Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023, there has been a noticeable decline in news consumption and trust in news worldwide. In India, the social media platform most preferred by those surveyed for news was YouTube (56 percent). WhatsApp and Facebook came next with 47 percent and 39 percent respectively. Some of this “news” could be from established media houses, but much of it would also be from unverified sources. 

Additionally, the survey recorded a decline in trust in what we call “news” although in India, the difference between last year and this year is marginal. 

We now have a situation where the government of the day does not care about the media, or media persons, and makes that more than apparent in its behaviour. And the consumers of news do not trust what is presented to them. Together, they represent a danger to press freedom, and to the very existence of established media. 

This is not the space to look at the economics of the media, but that too must be factored in. It is evident today that more of the larger media houses are dependent on government advertising than they were at any point in the recent past. This gives the government a handle to ensure that they fall in line when asked. They are asked, and they do fall in line.

Those that take no advertising at all, such as Newslaundry, or refuse government advertising, as some independent digital news platforms do, lead a precarious existence. In a country, where even support for voices of dissent is frowned upon, how long will these spaces of independent thought and expression survive? That too without adequate financial backing.

The state of the media in the United States holds out some lessons and a warning. Lydia Polgreen, a former New York Times correspondent in India, has written an important piece in the paper about the American media and the dilemma it faces as fewer people want to pay for news. Without a constituency that appreciates the costs involved in disseminating credible news, a free media cannot survive even if there are laws protecting its freedom, as in the US. In India, with the whitling down of laws relating to press freedom, the very survival of a free media comes into question. 

So indeed, Smriti Irani’s outburst should worry us, not just those of us in the news business, but ordinary Indians who look to the media for verified, credible, information and news. 

Wrestlers' Protest: It's Time To Reflect

 An Opinion piece I wrote in Outlook Magazine on the protest by women wrestlers against sexual harassment.

Link: https://www.outlookindia.com/sports/wrestlers-protest-it-s-time-to-reflect-magazine-293459

If mainstream media is to be believed, the protests by India’s award-winning wrestlers demanding action against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, the president of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), have fizzled out. The reason being floated around is the late-night meeting on June 3 between the protesting wrestlers and Home Minister Amit Shah, India’s second most powerful man.

This is the kind of fake news perfected by some prominent television channels. Although the details of that meeting are still not known, Olympic medallist Sakshi Malik did reiterate that their protest would not end until Singh—accused of sexual harassment—is arrested.

That said, after the June 7 meeting with Sports Minister Anurag Thakur, the public phase of the protest has been suspended till June 15. The protestors were either persuaded, or bullied, into returning to their day jobs.

This, of course, suits this government perfectly. Its time-worn strategy to deal with protests that cause discomfort is to ignore them or use brute force to break them up. This was done in 2019-20 against those opposing the Citizenship Amendment Act. It was repeated during the protest by thousands of farmers demanding the withdrawal of the three farm acts. And it has been done now in the case of protesting women wrestlers.

This temporary pause, however, is an opportunity to reflect on what this particular protest, demanding action on charges of sexual harassment, tells us about our country, the current government, and the reality of violence against women in India.

First, it is evident that most people still do not understand that sexual harassment is a form of violence that impacts women deeply. It humiliates and scars the women at the receiving end of it. It is violence encased in silence. When some women dare to break the silence, they are ignored, disbelieved, belittled, and vilified.

Importantly, sexual harassment is about power, as in this case, where the alleged perpetrator is a politically powerful man, linked to the party in power. And even though the women accusing him are not powerless, they are still not heard.

Second, why has this protest failed to trigger a nationwide response and outrage on the scale we saw in 2012 after the gang rape of Jyoti Singh? After that incident, the protests spread in Delhi and beyond, to other cities. The difference between 2012 and 2023 is not just that then there was a different, more responsive government, but also a media that was critical of it and unafraid to amplify protests.

And finally, the main reason for a muted res­ponse this time is that our society fails to understand the nature of violence against women.

Rape, murder, dowry deaths—especially when these occur in big cities within the reach of the media—generate some interest and concern. This is especially so if the victim/survivor belongs to a higher class/caste and the perpetrators to a lower class/caste. Then there is public anger and demands for justice and exemplary punishment.

It is the other way around when the victim/survivor is of lower social status and the perpetrators are powerful by way of their class/caste, or political connections. In such cases, we hear a splutter of protest that soon subsides and disappears. Think of the rape and subsequent death of the Dalit woman in Hathras in 2020 and innumerable other similar cases that often go unreported.

The acts of violence that come into public view, and particularly those in a public space, loom larger than life. But the bigger arena of daily violence against women draws hardly any attention. These include acts of violence within the so-called “safe” spaces—homes, schools, colleges, workplaces. These go practically unnoticed, and unaddressed. Domestic violence, sexual harassment and child sexual abuse represent the largest percentage of incidents of sexual violence against women.

Looking back at the last month and more of the wrestlers’ protest, irrespective of whether this government finally acts against Singh or not, we must thank Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat and others for reminding us about this hidden violence. Despite immense personal cost, they have shown the courage to hold the powerful to account.

Manipur simmers, champions protest, but Modi's focus is on his new Parliament

 Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on June 2, 2023

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2023/06/02/manipur-simmers-champions-protest-but-modis-focus-is-on-his-new-parliament

We have witnessed a fortnight of high drama. The contrasting images – of the prime minister of a secular country walking into a new Parliament building accompanied by saffron-clad Hindu priests even as award-winning women wrestlers literally wrestled with the police to assert their right to protest – were riveting. 

One image told us that the concept of a secular state is now history. And the other, that in the new version of ‘democracy’, there is no room for protest or dissent. They also depicted where India is as a country today as captured by the Mumbai-based newspaper Mid-Day. 

The images also spoke to another reality: that one of India’s most voluble prime ministers cannot find a word to say to women demanding action against one of his powerful satraps on charges of sexual harassment.  

This even after widespread coverage of the protest in the international media, and the statement made by the International Olympic Committee which says: “The treatment of the Indian wrestling athletes over the weekend was very disturbing. The IOC insists that the allegations by the wrestlers are followed up on by an unbiased, criminal investigation in line with local law.” 

Ever since the wrestlers began their sit-in at Jantar Mantar, their protest has received widespread coverage, and strong comment in editorials and op-eds. In my view, one of the best commentaries is by leading sports journalist Sharda Ugra. It is a must read because it gives us a better sense of these women who have excelled in a non-traditional sport like wrestling. It also goes beyond the bare details of the protest to help us understand where these women are coming from, what they have endured, and why they know bad touch from good touch. 

Ugra writes that as “elite” athletes, “they have a far better knowledge of human anatomy and physiology than anyone pushing them around. They know how to exert pressure and use weight, maintain balance, use force, inflict and absorb pain. During their protest, the wrestlers have absorbed pain in many forms but chose not to inflict any.”

And she concludes with these powerful words: “India’s protesting women wrestlers have lived and worked with complex contradictions: their sport requires physical hyper-awareness, response and aggression from bodies policed through unyielding boundaries of honour and shame from a young age. At the very least, it should be through sport that these boundaries are crushed into the ground. Not by the police or by political policing.”

If after this you read the details in the FIRs that the Delhi police has finally filed on the basis of the complaints of sexual harassment by six adult women wrestlers and the father of a minor against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, you will understand better what they are saying. 

At the time of writing this column, there is a momentary pause in the protest as a five-day ultimatum has been served to the government by leaders of khap panchayats to move against Singh. Failing this, the protesting wrestlers will once again go to Haridwar, as they did on May 29, and immerse their hard-won medals and trophies in the Ganga river.

While these dramatic events were unfolding in Delhi, the seat of political power and the home of the national media, lurking in the shadows were the images of a state literally burning. The state of Manipur in northeast India has been caught in a cauldron on ethnic strife from May 3. Some of it has been reported. For the details you need to search independent platforms, especially those based in the region. 

Yet, it took India’s home minister Amit Shah 24 days before he finally made a statement, and that too from Guwahati, a short flight from Imphal, the capital of Manipur. What he said would have caused more grief than consolation to the troubled people of Manipur. He insisted that the trouble was due to the March 27 ruling of the Manipur High Court granting Scheduled Tribe status to the Meitei, who are the majority in the state. The ruling has since been challenged. 

The home minister should have known better. Nothing is so simple in the northeast or, for that matter, anywhere else in India. But especially in the northeast, a region where each state has a complex history, multiple cultures, tribes, dialects, and faiths. The heavy hand of Delhi has been a constant presence, in the form of the security forces backed by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. For decades, residents of these states have manoeuvred around this constant, and often ugly, reality. To dismiss the ongoing violence as the outcome of one court ruling indicates a serious deficit in Delhi’s understanding of the region. It reinforces the feeling of many ordinary people in the region that the “mainland” and Delhi do not care. 

As any journalist from the “mainland” who has reported from a northeastern state would know, there are few simple answers to be found to the problems or the conflicts in the region. The best that we can do is to listen to all sides, especially ordinary people instead of just the “authorities”, and report as honestly as we can without judgement. We can also use the chance to understand, at least a little bit, about the history and the distinctive culture of the region.

There have been several reports and articles that have attempted this kind of sensitivity. More often than not, these reports are written by someone from the region, and there are many excellent local journalists in every northeastern state. At times like this, the mainstream media ought to turn to this excellent, well-trained resource instead of parachuting journalists who may not have an adequate understanding of the region.

Take, for instance, this piece in Article-14 by Kimi Colney, a journalist based in Mizoram. It gives us a flavour of what ordinary people have suffered on both sides while at the same time placing in perspective the history of the tensions between the majority Meitei, who make up 53 percent of the population of 3.3 million, and the minority tribal groups that include the Kuki. It is worth taking the time to read this long article to get a fuller picture of the current conflagration in the state.

Interestingly, Colney also reports that people in Manipur are wondering why the prime minister is silent. She quotes Babloo Loitangbam, director of advocacy group Human Rights Alert: “What is most surprising is that till date the double engine government of Modiji (a reference to BJP governments in Imphal and New Delhi) has not made a statement on what is happening today...The honourable PM does not have five minutes to spare and make a statement, this is very strange.” 

In all conflicts, there is a trigger, but behind it is a long history that needs to be understood and acknowledged. Anyone with even a perfunctory understanding of the region would know that you cannot simply blame a high court ruling for the current violence in Manipur.   

Unfortunately, those in power at the centre, or even in the state, appear not to care about this, thereby aggravating the hurt and the frustration of the ordinary people of Manipur, both Meitei and Kuki, who are caught in the violence. An imposed peace from Delhi will not erase the history of mistrust that lies at the root of the current violence.

Update at 11.30 am, June 3: The FIRs contain allegations against Singh by seven wrestlers, including a minor, not 10 wrestlers. This has been corrected.