The Boot in the Cracked Mirror

Raoof Mir

“Freedom isn’t free! Freedom isn’t free! /You gotta pay a price/You gotta sacrifice/for your liberty…” Paul Colwell

“Media in India enjoy absolute freedom” Prakash Javadekar I&B minister

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aris-based Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF), or Reporters Without Borders recently produced its ratings of 182 countries on the 2020 World Press Freedom Index. Where did the world’s largest democracy figure on this index? With a ranking of 142 India stood behind South Africa (31), Bhutan (67) Nepal (112) Sri Lanka (127); even United Arab Emirates ranked higher (131) But, and here’s the consolation if one needed it, after slipping two points from last year, India still outranked Pakistan (145) Bangladesh (151) Russia (149) and all those nation-states like China, Saudi Arabia et al that have never pretended to any democratic tradition. Numbers also tell stories. And what the index and in particular India’s ranking or place among the comity of nations tells us is that the world’s largest democracy sits not at the high table with other democratic nation-states but among those that appear proud of their authoritarian regimes.

The Indian government was quick to respond. India’s Information & Broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar tweeted on World Press Freedom Day no less that “Media in India enjoy absolute freedom. We will expose, sooner than later, those surveys that tend to portray bad picture about Freedom of Press in India.” On 11th May, 2020, in an interview with one of India’s leading dailies, Javadekar again vigorously defended existing press freedoms in India and also claimed that media in India already enjoys absolute freedom. In response to a question about the rating and the arrest of three Kashmiri journalists the minster said this:

“The biggest weapon of freedom is to tell the truth. This is not only freedom of press but also the public’s freedom to get information… information meaning the ‘right information’. We (the ministry) just point out that a particular news item was wrong and provide the right information. They (the fact-check unit) correct it and write back to us.

Reporters Sans Frontieres has attributed to India’s poor performance on world press freedom index to the “tightening grip on the media” by the current government. Per the report, the media in India has been pressurized to “toe the Hindu nationalist government’s line”. This pressure was ratcheted up through recourse to several laws frequently invoked to criminalize opinions at odds with the government’s own. Over the past several years, the State has frequently used laws such as Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), National Security Act and Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act (PSA)  to “purge all manifestations of “anti-national” thought from the national debate.”

The second crucial and significant reason attributed by the agency for India’s abysmal performance on 2020 world press freedom index has to do with the situation in Kashmir. On August 5, 2019, the BJP government unilaterally revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, cancelling article 370 of the country’s constitution. While revoking the constitutionally- guaranteed autonomy of J&K through a rushed presidential decree, the Indian government also suspended many other civil rights of the people in Kashmir.

To rein in the reaction of the people, additional troops were deployed in a region already known for being one of most militarized zones in the world. The government imposed communication blackout, suspended phone and internet services, shut down schools, banned right to assemble, and also house arrested a clique of its client politicians in the region. The long shutdown in Kashmir disrupted every sphere of life and it was only in late February that schools in Kashmir started to reopen after a gap of seven months. According to the RSF report this situation made it “virtually impossible for journalists to cover what was happening in what has become a vast open prison”.

Just as things were slowly beginning to be get better, a nationwide lockdown was declared in March to restrain the spread of covid-19 infection, resulting again in restrictions on the movement and assembly of people in Kashmir. The lockdown on account of the pandemic together with an existing extremely vulnerable atmosphere has turned the entire valley into a military garrison again. While in these times of safe distancing, the entire world depends on internet as a means of entertainment, work, communication, and information, in effect to lead a normal life under the circumstances, eight million people in Kashmir are denied such access; access that constitutes their right to hassle-free information with the government restricting the internet speed to 2G (second-generation technology). Many reports in the media have indicated that such restrictions on internet have created problems for doctors to access the information on methods and procedures related to Covid-19. On May 11, News18 reported that the suspension of internet services was hampering the work of doctors and students. The Supreme Court it reported had passed an order “to look into restoration of 4G services in Jammu and Kashmir even as the Valley is reeling under a mobile internet ban since the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Riaz Naikoo on May 6.” An extended report published by Caravan magazine, highlighted the plight of research scholars, students and teachers due to slow internet speed.

And why the slow speed? An article in The Wire attributed the reasons for internet restrictions in Kashmir to the Indian government’s malicious intention of purging the opinions and ideas that are contrarian. In an another article, it was reported healthcare professionals in Kashmir are intimidated by the authorities with dire consequences of incarceration, if they speak against the administration and complain about the problems whilst performing their duties.

Over the past few years, the suspension of mobile and internet services has become a regular trend in Kashmir. One of the reasons cited by the authorities for suspending such services is the possibility of the dissemination of “anti-social, anti-national” content through social networking sites. The other reason frequently cited to justify the internet ban is that these bans help them quell “unsubstantiated rumors”.

The structure of functioning of traditional communication patterns in the Kashmir Valley shows us that no matter how comprehensive the state mechanisms attempting to control the flow of information in the Valley, people have always managed to access alternative platforms to transmit and share information. Therefore, the attempt to tamp down “unsubstantiated rumors” through internet bans continues to remain an abortive exercise. This reality uncannily echoes what a stalwart of the very government that imposed interdictions on the internet had to say about this very subject. Addressing his audience at the year’s National Press Day awards in 2018, the late Arun Jaitley went so far as to assert as reported in The Economic Times that if the Emergency was ever to be imposed “it would collapse as technology does not permit press censorship.”

But the nation-state does not give up. In the past also, every attempt was made to fabricate a narrative that could win over the memories of the masses in the Kashmir Valley. Almost every media technology in Kashmir (radio, television, print) has been employed by the Indian state to propagate its own version of the truth about Kashmir. For the local Muslim population of Kashmir valley, this state sponsored narrative is a flagrant violation of truth and their lived reality. And the fact is that despite the monopoly of the state over media forms such as radio, television and print, the people of Kashmir valley have always been able to create alternative spaces for sharing and communicating the content they themselves characteristically identify with.

This ability of the public to produce, circulate and consume their versions of reality has contributed to the formation of an epistemology that routinely repudiates the nationalist Indian narrative on Kashmir.

That’s the tragic irony of life in Kashmir amidst the double whammy of state-led militarism and the pandemic-driven lockdown. In times such as these, the state can take advantage of contemporary channels of communication to encourage informed decision making by the citizens through transparency and dialogues. Instead, the central government assumes that a lockdown of communications and the fear it is meant to generate will result in a calm submission. In reality, people often become vulnerable to more rumors when an information black hole is created. For example, when the government recently suspended phone and internet services in Kashmir after the Riaz Naikoo encounter, people were interpreting the details of this encounter sharply in contrast to what was later established when internet services were restored.

For India to  improve its ranking on the freedom of press index  it must first accept the findings of the RSF report in good faith instead of bristling mistrust and xenophobic fear and then devise a mechanism to expand the scope of freedom of speech and expression enshrined in article 19 (1) (a) of the Constitution. The colonial era restrictions on freedom of expression such as sedition, defamation strongly need to amended or done away with. On paper at least, the Indian Constitution can be viewed as one of the most liberal constitutions in the world; one that has helped to sustain what is often considered the world largest democracy.  However, like the constitution of the Weimar republic (1919-1933) in Germany, the weakness of the many provisions in the Indian constitution can be exploited and can give rise to an authoritarian administration. The subversion of the Weimer Constitution took place with the invoking of Article 48 by Adolf Hitler, in order to curtail fundamental constitutional rights. As is well known, the Indian Constitution has ‘borrowed’ that article of suspension of fundamental rights during national emergency from the Weimar constitution. The boot on the human face: that scenario should not be repeated in the world’s largest democracy.

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Raoof Mir teaches at Delhi School of Journalism, University of Delhi. He has a PhD in Media studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University.  Raoof has also been a visiting scholar at University of Colorado and University of Gottingen