Is there an Indian way of reporting?
Indian media seems quite thrilled and joyful on spotting the mistake of Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s ambassador to the UN, at the 72nd United Nations General Assembly.
Speaking at the UNGA after the Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj’s speech where she referred to Pakistan as Terroristan, Ms. Lodhi showed a photo of a war victim saying it was of a Kashmiri injured by pellets shot by the Indian Army. With the photo in her hand she said, “This is the face of Indian democracy.” But the photo that she held in her hand was not from Kashmir but from Gaza. A photo of Rawia Abu Joma clicked in the year 2014 by Heidi Levine.
While the lack of homework on the part of Ms. Lodhi is quite embarrassing for Pakistan and also a matter of irresponsibility though not as shameful and irresponsible as the atrocity of the Indian army in Kashmir about which Ms. Lodhi mentioned and of which the UN is already aware of.
The focus of Indian media on a goof up by the Pakistan’s Ambassador while ignoring the fact mentioned in a way shows the Indian way of reporting when it comes to the issue of Kashmir, where the violence on the people of Kashmir is never reported or highlighted. Even if the matter comes at the UNGA the media choosing to highlight a goof up shows its way of reporting the issue of Kashmir.
On the 24th of June, 2017 a prestigious national newspaper The Indian Express on its front page carried two disturbing news coming from India and India occupied Kashmir on two ends. But the way the two news were worded and presented was quite disturbing and revealed a certain kind of bias.
On the left end was the report on 15 year old Junaid being beaten to death in Haryana while he was travelling back home by train from Delhi after a heated debate on train turned violent where Junaid and his brothers were called “beef-eaters.” On the right end was the news from the summer capital of India occupied Kashmir of Mohammad Ayoub Pandith (DySP) was beaten to death by a mod outside Jamia Masjid, Srinagar after he loitered around the Masjid while thousands were observing Shab and was apprehended for his suspicious presence by people which lead him to fire at the mob which left three injured and the mob angered.
The earlier incident was reported under the headline, ’15 year old killed, brother says were called beef eaters’ and the latter under the headline, ‘J&K police officer lynched in Srinagar, body dumped in drain.’
While the latter headline was published in bold letters the earlier wasn’t, drawing the attention to the earlier with urgency and also making it appear more significant through highlighting it with bold letters. If the earlier incident became an act of ‘killing’ the latter was an incident of ‘lynching’, making the latter incident sound more gory, barbaric, inhumane and cruel.
A year ago following the assassination of Burhan Wani, I visited J&K. It was already two months since the valley had turned violent when I started from home and more than 50 Kashmiri civilians had died in the hands of Indian army and hundreds injured and blinded because of pellets. Everyday, during my JK visit, my mother would call me to ask how I am, how my work is progressing and if I am eating properly and eating at time.
But the day after the Uri attack took place I started receiving several calls from friends and extended family asking me if I was safe and fine!
That night I wondered why all those friends and relatives felt I was in an unsafe zone only when 18 soldiers were killed and not when over 50 Kashmiri people were killed and hundreds of them injured with pellets! The answer was clear, the media which all my friends and relatives consume, had not reported the deaths of Kashmiri people in the hands of Indian army but had reported the attack of Uri in an amplified manner depicting a war situation and created an atmosphere of panic!
The day after the Uri attack the national newspapers carried the Uri attack in bold letters on the front page with the image of the children of the dead soldiers now orphaned. And the local newspapers though carried news of the Uri attack on the front page their main news was of a teenager dying because of cardiac arrest caused by teargas hurled by the Indian army. If the editorials of the national media spoke of terrorism and Pakistan the editorials of the local newspapers while speaking of Uri attack invoked the memory of Chattisinghpura.
So if the Indian media chooses to see and highlight only a goof up ignoring what was said by Ms. Lodhi, a fact which has not even covered properly by the media, then it isn’t surprising because that is the Indian way of reporting Kashmir, like it has done always.
Gauri Lankesh’s unfulfilled Kashmir dream
One night in April 2017, my phone rang. It was the middle of the night and my heart skipped a beat when the phone rang at that ungodly hour but on seeing Gauri Lankesh’s name flashed across the screen, I settled down. Gauri was the one who always burned the midnight oil and I knew it wasn’t odd for her to call me at this hour.
“Thank you so much,” Captain blurted out when I answered the call. Her voice was filled with immense gratitude. I wondered why she was thanking me while she continued, “I just finished reading Curfewed Night. Thanks for recommending it,” she said and added, “It is so sad that I hadn’t read this book for so long.”
Captain then went on to tell me how the work of her weekly Gauri Lankesh Patrike, her activism and the cases against her – a strategy of her opponents to exhaust and harass her – leave her with very less time to read good books. She told me that she had taken an oath to read at least three books a month. When I heard about her oath, I suggested she read Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? in the month of May. By the end of May, she had read the book.
It all began on the 9th of October when Captain was in Udupi, close to my home town Manipal, for the historical Chalo Udupi rally. I had just returned home after a brief but intense visit to Kashmir. So when Captain and I met at the rally she insisted I be with her and share with her my Kashmir experience.
That noon, when we were finishing lunch, Captain asked me if I would be ready to go to Kashmir with Shivasunder (another comrade of ours) to do a series of reports for her weekly. I immediately agreed.
That noon Captain told me how she has been trying to argue from over a decade about Jagmohan being the orchestrator of the Pandit exodus but nobody cares to listen. She also told me about her one interview with Syed Ali Geelani. When I told her about the people displaced from the other side of Kashmir living in Jammu she honestly said, “I did not know about this,” and added, “Actually, neither the state nor the media wants us to know.”
Gauri was willing to listen to what the state and the media did not want us to listen and she was willing to speak that which the state and the media did not want us to speak.
Since that day in October 2016 the conversation between me and Captain was majorly about Kashmir.
After some weeks when I reminded her about the plan Captain said, “Shivasunder seems to have other commitments. We both can go together.”
I did not hear from Captain about our Kashmir visit plan for the next few months and I started doubting if it was ever going to happen. Though I never doubted her concern about Kashmir and her longing to give her readers a true picture of Kashmir, I was becoming quite impatient because of the delay.
Later when Captain called me in April 2017 saying she had read Basharat Peer’s book and followed it up with reading the spine chilling book on Kunan Poshpora, I knew the plan was still on. By then I had learnt from a common friend and a senior activist that demonetization had hit the circulation of Captain’s weekly and she was in a financial crunch. The information made me realize why the Kashmir plan was not materializing and I stopped asking her about it.
Captain herself spoke of the financial crunch when in August 2017 she called me to say how a particular article by someone in Kashmir thrilled her and how badly she wanted to meet the writer. When I said, “We can meet the author when we go there,” Captain, who by then had taken loans to run her weekly, explained the economic crunch and said, “Let me recover a bit and then we can go.”
Now Captain is no more with us and I fear with her unfortunate killing – the weekly also will breathe its last. After this calamity, I am afraid that neither the visit to Kashmir nor reporting on Kashmir for the readers of weekly will ever happen.
On that April night when Captain called to tell me she had read Curfewed Night she had asked me if I could translate the book and assured me that she will publish it. I told her that during my interaction with the author Basharat Peer I had asked him if I could do the translation and he had verbally permitted me to do so. She took his email address from me saying, “Then let me write to him as a publisher and avail rights for publishing the translation.” I don’t know if she ever wrote to Basharat Peer. But this too, like our Kashmir visit and writing about Kashmir for the readers of her weekly, remains unfulfilled.
I recollect these interactions, our jointly made but unfulfilled plans while writing this because I believe I am bound by responsibility for letting the friends from Kashmir know that Captain, who stood in solidarity with every struggle across the globe, of the right against the might, understood the struggle of occupied Kashmiris and also longed to meet them and hear their stories and chronicle them for Kannada readers.
I am writing this story of Captain and our plan of Kashmir also because it speaks of how a person is perpetually chained at various levels by the order of things from fighting the system and yet how some determined people like Captain were continuously making efforts to make the world stand on its legs and change this order of things.
(Originally published in Wande Magazine on 11 Sep 2017)
Clips of the Same Chain
The board outside the Main Theater (MT) at my Alma mater Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) serves the purpose of announcing the daily screening at MT and National Film Archives of India, which is associated to the Institute. On happy occasions like some alumni winning a prestigious award or on sad occasion of some alumni’s demise the board speaks of it.
Few days ago the board carried the name of Gauri Lankesh. The announcement said a condolence meeting was being held at the Wisdom Tree that evening.
Under that very tree around 4 years ago we had gathered to pay tribute to Narendra Dabholkar, who was murdered just a couple of kilometers away from the campus.
A day after Dabholkar’s murder when some members of the Akhila Bharateeya Vidyarthi Parishad attacked Kabir Kala Manch members and students of FTII, I had got a call from Gauri, who I fondly called Captain, asking for details. She had expressed her solidarity with all her heart.
Later when FTII went on strike against the appointment of Gajendra Chauhan by the new Government at the center, Captain had spoken to me a couple of times regarding the same with great concern.
It was during the same time that M.M. Kalburgi was murdered in Dharwad and Captain was one of the leading voices to protest against this and demand justice. She drew connection between all these incidents.
Now I see in photographs Captain’s name in that very campus and on that board.
I recollect all these because all these incidents scattered over time and spaces are all, as I see, clips of the same chain.
All Has Turned Red: Remembering Gauri Lankesh
It was the monsoon of 2004. Handful of journalists had entered the ‘naxal infested forest’ in Karnataka to meet the Naxalites and do ground reporting after being invited for a meeting as such by the then leader. Gauri Lankesh was one among the few journalists from different media houses.
In the following issue of Lankesh Patrike (she had not yet started her own weekly then) in her editorial and report Gauri spoke of Comrade Prem, who was spearheading the naxalite movement in Karnataka, being her senior in college years before he moved into armed rebellion. Gauri had interviewed him and in her editorial (kempaadavo ella kempaadavo | All has turned red ) quoted a poem by Comrade Prem. A poem penned in 1995, where Prem is responding to the judicial murder of the human rights activist of Nigeria- Ken Saro Viwa saying, “It was a lesson you learned too late. Your pen playwright should have been backed by the gun alright?”
Ken who was fighting for the Ogoni tribe and against the multi-national Shell oil company was hanged to death by the the then Nigerian regime.
The lines of Comrade Prem sounded so convincing to me back then when I was a naive teenager.
But then in 2005 when Comrade Prem was hunted and gunned by the star machinery I was shocked to learn that Comrade Prem was Saket Rajan, an author of two volumes of Karnataka History titled Making History and also a gold medalist from IIMC, Delhi.
Those days when the Naxalite movement of Karnataka and especially Saket Rajan was being discussed by the media and public, I kept recollecting his poem fondly and juxtaposed it with what I read in newspapers: Saket Rajan being killed in an encounter and how next to his body was a gun that he was carrying. I told myself that Saket Rajan was proven wrong by history.
So when Gauri initiated and toiled to bring naxalites to mainstream years later in Karnataka, I was not just proud of her I also did express my solidarity with her.
Now in 2017 after seeing Gauri being killed I wonder what is Saket going to tell her if at all there is an afterlife and if the two good old friends are to meet in a world beyond this world? Will he say what he had told Ken Saro Viwa: “it was a lesson you learned too late. Your pen should have been backed by the gun alright!”?? To be honest, I dont know what he would say, what Gauri would respond to it and to begin with I dont even know if there is an afterlife or not. But I know for sure that those who sweat and toil to make the world stand on its legs will be crushed and smashed by the state by the system and it doesn’t matter if they are backed by the gun or not!
But then when Ken’s murder did not stop or silence Saket and Saket’s murder did not stop or silence Gauri, we shouldn’t be stopped or silenced by the murder of Gauri. Because with or without the gun what all these three fighters, rebels forming a diverse yet connected and continuous history are propagating through their lives is to keep fighting and keep speaking to make the world stand on its legs.
Numbed by the murder of a comrade of concern and an understanding friend, trying to digest the fact that she is no more physically, I recollect a line of Pablo Neruda: “True life is without silence. Only death remains dumb” from his poem titled Communication from the collection Isla Negra. I also recollect a graffiti that I used to cross every day during my days at JNU. The graffiti read: “Let life be dead, but death must not be allowed to live,” a quote attributed to Karl Marx.
People like Gauri are not silent even in their death and even in death they fight death and ensure death will not be allowed to live.
(Originally published in Kashmir Times dated 12 September 2017)
Crazy Mind's Eye 