SOURCE:
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/kashmir-protest-burhan-wani-killing-selective-indian-media-coverage-insensitive-residents-column-2922176/
COW's OF PSEUDO HINDUTVA
FIRST STORY
Every Hour of Prime Time TV Aggression Pushes Kashmir a Mile Westward From India
By
There is an urgent need for India to reclaim “NATIONAL INTEREST ”
from its national media.
Written by Shah Faesal
| Updated: July 19, 2016
On the afternoon of July 13, my one-year-old child was finding it difficult to sleep because the adjacent curfewed street had been rattling with a sinister medley of azadi slogans and tear-gas explosions since daybreak. In a conflict zone, introduction to violence is a part of a child’s baptism. So here I was witnessing the exact moment when my child was getting marked as a Kashmiri — the tabula rasa of his mind impacted by history, much before he would be circumcised and officially marked as a Muslim. Kashmir had knocked at his conscience much before Islam. Three decades ago, I was in a similar moment with my father stroking me to sleep while mortar shells were pounding the hills in our backyard. Interestingly, the afternoon marked yet another familiar yet bloody rendezvous between the Valley’s past and present — it was 85th [ count from 1931] Martyr’s day. But the street unrest had a rather unusual trigger this time — the death of a young militant commander at Kokernag on July 8.
Around the same time, I was alerted by an unknown caller that Zee News had been running a marathon discussion for past two days on the current crisis, and my photographs and videos were also being juxtaposed with the visuals, dead and alive, of young local militants from Kashmir, as some sort of a clash of role models.
It perturbed me a lot — not only for the sheer insensitivity and shallowness with which this was being done but also for the security risk that it posed to my life. I was puzzled because with a Rs 50,000 monthly salary and a Rs 50 lakh housing loan I was certainly not the best example of a successful Kashmiri youngster.
More so when the only measure of greatness here is the size of one’s funeral procession. Who would want to die for Rs 50,000 and die unattended, at that. My fears were proven right: Soon, I was told, there was a huge mob outside our colony, rallying against the remarks of the Zee News anchor asking the dead militants to be burnt along with garbage instead of being buried in India’s land; the studio and the street were competing with each other.
Next day, I left for my office, incognito, wearing a kurta-pyjama and a farmer’s cap, hopping across check posts like a thief, knowing well that if a group of enraged youngsters recognised me, I might be in trouble, and rightly so, for falling on the wrong side of the Kashmiri vs Indian binary at such a critical juncture. Abusive comments on my Facebook wall had the same refrain.
In the last few years, a section of the national media has been misrepresenting the idea of India in Kashmir, as part of a business strategy. It has also been projecting lies about Kashmir to rest of the country. It happened in 2008, in 2010, and in 2014. So there is nothing surprising about the tilt and the timing of this debate.
Almost all the programmes on Kashmir right now are aimed to provoke people, the coverage is selective, and intention appears to be to compound the problems for the state government. The print media, though, has always maintained balance.
What made the current round of commercial savagery by a few news channels even more tragic was that they continued to promote falsehoods, dividing people, creating hatred, completely disregarding the values of democracy and secularism, even when people were dying and the government was trying hard to calm down people’s passions. It did not stop even after appeals were made to de-escalate. This brazenness to market TRPs as national interest and do business over the dead bodies of young men was the worst aspect of these loud newsrooms.
Kashmir or no Kashmir, the biggest challenge for India, this time, is how to reclaim the custody of “national interest” from its national media, and restore communication with its neighbours and people. I have no hesitation in saying that Zee News, Times Now, NewsX and Aaj Tak are at the vanguard of a movement that will take India from a dialogical civilisation to a dumb, illogical civilization.
In the Indian tradition, the state is supposed to communicate with its people through accommodation, not harangue, and through welfare, not violence. Ashoka put together a network of pillars and edicts to communicate with his people. During the Mughal rule, Diwan e Aam also symbolised direct communication between the state and its subjects. The firmans could only be issued by the sovereign, not by scribes and minstrels, as is the case today. In the Islamic tradition, too, truth, patience and perseverance are central to communicating. As a confluence of Indo-Islamic experience, Kashmir needs a mix of honesty, truth and directness. Communication that divides will only hurt India’s case further.
When we are looking for the causes of the ongoing unrest, we must also look at how we have outsourced, or rather abdicated, communications to TV channels, which are only interested in provoking and alienating. The Indian state can’t afford to leave the Kashmir project to intellectual renegades, political turncoats, opportunists, intelligence agencies, and most importantly, to self-appointed vigilantes of the national interest.
In Kashmir, people often confuse the outrageous editorial policy of the national media with the oppressive state policy.
When Kashmiri representatives are bullied in TV debates, their aspirations ridiculed, their grievances shouted down, the symbols of Kashmiri pride insulted, or when non-issues are given precedence over the killing of the innocents, when military bravado is encouraged over civilian agony, when positive initiatives of the state government are overlooked, and truth is not shown at all, and most importantly, when cows are made to feel more important than the Kashmiri people, the frustration and anger will, expectedly, be directed against India. Every hour of prime time TV news aggression pushes Kashmir a mile westward from India.
It may not be easy to intervene or even shut down these mirror-houses of hateful journalism because there are constitutional safeguards for freedom of speech. But the unity and integrity of the country is a far bigger imperative and we will have to restore the original, traditional and additional channels of communication between Delhi and Srinagar that can cut down the noise and bile, and make newsroom nationalism irrelevant. We may as well have to convince these media houses to tone down their jingoistic rhetoric and pay heed to the feedback from the ground.
Ask teenagers in Srinagar and they will tell you how all these years India has been communicating to Kashmiris through rigged elections, dismissal of elected governments, through encounters and corruption. They will tell you how India has become synonymous with a military bunker or a police vehicle or a ranting panelist on prime time television. Is this the idea of India which can win Kashmiri hearts? Accepting what India and its symbols stand for in the eyes of a Kashmiri is the first step towards untangling this Gordian knot.
Kashmiris are very sensitive people. But they are by nature sceptics as well. Any dialogue with Kashmiris will bear fruit only in an atmosphere of warmth and will have to be done on equal terms, not as ehsan. The prime minister, who has single-handedly transformed India’s global image, should take upon himself the task of transforming India’s image in Kashmir.
(This article first appeared in the print edition under the headline “Between the studio and the street.”)
SECOND STORY
SOURCE:
[ http://nation.com.pk/columns/15-Jul-2016/disown-jihadist-freedom-fighters-in-kashmir ]
http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/kashmir-protest-burhan-wani-killing-selective-indian-media-coverage-insensitive-residents-column-2922176/
COW's OF PSEUDO HINDUTVA
FIRST STORY
Every Hour of Prime Time TV Aggression Pushes Kashmir a Mile Westward From India
By
There is an urgent need for India to reclaim “NATIONAL INTEREST ”
from its national media.
Written by Shah Faesal
| Updated: July 19, 2016
On the afternoon of July 13, my one-year-old child was finding it difficult to sleep because the adjacent curfewed street had been rattling with a sinister medley of azadi slogans and tear-gas explosions since daybreak. In a conflict zone, introduction to violence is a part of a child’s baptism. So here I was witnessing the exact moment when my child was getting marked as a Kashmiri — the tabula rasa of his mind impacted by history, much before he would be circumcised and officially marked as a Muslim. Kashmir had knocked at his conscience much before Islam. Three decades ago, I was in a similar moment with my father stroking me to sleep while mortar shells were pounding the hills in our backyard. Interestingly, the afternoon marked yet another familiar yet bloody rendezvous between the Valley’s past and present — it was 85th [ count from 1931] Martyr’s day. But the street unrest had a rather unusual trigger this time — the death of a young militant commander at Kokernag on July 8.
Around the same time, I was alerted by an unknown caller that Zee News had been running a marathon discussion for past two days on the current crisis, and my photographs and videos were also being juxtaposed with the visuals, dead and alive, of young local militants from Kashmir, as some sort of a clash of role models.
It perturbed me a lot — not only for the sheer insensitivity and shallowness with which this was being done but also for the security risk that it posed to my life. I was puzzled because with a Rs 50,000 monthly salary and a Rs 50 lakh housing loan I was certainly not the best example of a successful Kashmiri youngster.
Also by Shah Faesal, Till ‘Azadi’ comes
Next day, I left for my office, incognito, wearing a kurta-pyjama and a farmer’s cap, hopping across check posts like a thief, knowing well that if a group of enraged youngsters recognised me, I might be in trouble, and rightly so, for falling on the wrong side of the Kashmiri vs Indian binary at such a critical juncture. Abusive comments on my Facebook wall had the same refrain.
In the last few years, a section of the national media has been misrepresenting the idea of India in Kashmir, as part of a business strategy. It has also been projecting lies about Kashmir to rest of the country. It happened in 2008, in 2010, and in 2014. So there is nothing surprising about the tilt and the timing of this debate.
Almost all the programmes on Kashmir right now are aimed to provoke people, the coverage is selective, and intention appears to be to compound the problems for the state government. The print media, though, has always maintained balance.
What made the current round of commercial savagery by a few news channels even more tragic was that they continued to promote falsehoods, dividing people, creating hatred, completely disregarding the values of democracy and secularism, even when people were dying and the government was trying hard to calm down people’s passions. It did not stop even after appeals were made to de-escalate. This brazenness to market TRPs as national interest and do business over the dead bodies of young men was the worst aspect of these loud newsrooms.
Kashmir or no Kashmir, the biggest challenge for India, this time, is how to reclaim the custody of “national interest” from its national media, and restore communication with its neighbours and people. I have no hesitation in saying that Zee News, Times Now, NewsX and Aaj Tak are at the vanguard of a movement that will take India from a dialogical civilisation to a dumb, illogical civilization.
In the Indian tradition, the state is supposed to communicate with its people through accommodation, not harangue, and through welfare, not violence. Ashoka put together a network of pillars and edicts to communicate with his people. During the Mughal rule, Diwan e Aam also symbolised direct communication between the state and its subjects. The firmans could only be issued by the sovereign, not by scribes and minstrels, as is the case today. In the Islamic tradition, too, truth, patience and perseverance are central to communicating. As a confluence of Indo-Islamic experience, Kashmir needs a mix of honesty, truth and directness. Communication that divides will only hurt India’s case further.
When we are looking for the causes of the ongoing unrest, we must also look at how we have outsourced, or rather abdicated, communications to TV channels, which are only interested in provoking and alienating. The Indian state can’t afford to leave the Kashmir project to intellectual renegades, political turncoats, opportunists, intelligence agencies, and most importantly, to self-appointed vigilantes of the national interest.
In Kashmir, people often confuse the outrageous editorial policy of the national media with the oppressive state policy.
When Kashmiri representatives are bullied in TV debates, their aspirations ridiculed, their grievances shouted down, the symbols of Kashmiri pride insulted, or when non-issues are given precedence over the killing of the innocents, when military bravado is encouraged over civilian agony, when positive initiatives of the state government are overlooked, and truth is not shown at all, and most importantly, when cows are made to feel more important than the Kashmiri people, the frustration and anger will, expectedly, be directed against India. Every hour of prime time TV news aggression pushes Kashmir a mile westward from India.
It may not be easy to intervene or even shut down these mirror-houses of hateful journalism because there are constitutional safeguards for freedom of speech. But the unity and integrity of the country is a far bigger imperative and we will have to restore the original, traditional and additional channels of communication between Delhi and Srinagar that can cut down the noise and bile, and make newsroom nationalism irrelevant. We may as well have to convince these media houses to tone down their jingoistic rhetoric and pay heed to the feedback from the ground.
Ask teenagers in Srinagar and they will tell you how all these years India has been communicating to Kashmiris through rigged elections, dismissal of elected governments, through encounters and corruption. They will tell you how India has become synonymous with a military bunker or a police vehicle or a ranting panelist on prime time television. Is this the idea of India which can win Kashmiri hearts? Accepting what India and its symbols stand for in the eyes of a Kashmiri is the first step towards untangling this Gordian knot.
Kashmiris are very sensitive people. But they are by nature sceptics as well. Any dialogue with Kashmiris will bear fruit only in an atmosphere of warmth and will have to be done on equal terms, not as ehsan. The prime minister, who has single-handedly transformed India’s global image, should take upon himself the task of transforming India’s image in Kashmir.
(This article first appeared in the print edition under the headline “Between the studio and the street.”)
The writer, an IAS officer, is director, school education, Kashmir. Views are personal
SECOND STORY
SOURCE:
[ http://nation.com.pk/columns/15-Jul-2016/disown-jihadist-freedom-fighters-in-kashmir ]
Disown Jihadist‘Freedom Fighters’ in Kashmir
By
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Burhan Muzaffar Wani’s killing in an encounter on July 8 has resulted in absolute bedlam in the Kashmir Valley, with death toll rising to 39 as of yesterday evening. The 21-year-old commander of the Hizbul Mujahideen has been compared to Bhagat Singh – both to credit and discredit Wani’s struggle, depending on who’s doing the juxtaposition. But notwithstanding the often ignored evolution of the moral spectrum on the use of violence in contrasting eras, the crucial differential between the two was their ideological positions.
Wani was the offspring of the global jihadist movement that emerged in the last quarter of the previous century, hammering Muslim-majority freedom movements into Islamist struggles wherever the occupying force was ‘non-Muslim’– including Palestine, Kashmir and East Turkestan. And the problem with any Islamist ‘freedom’ movement is that it intrinsically contradicts the very idea of freedom.
Hizbul Mujahideen, whose supreme commander Syed Salahuddin had claimed responsibility for the Pathankot attack as the chairman of the United Jihad Council, is a jihadist organisation whose very vocal ambitions aren’t limited to ‘liberating’ Kashmir from India. Hizb overlaps with Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba that in turn work in tandem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to lay a radical Islamic network from South Asia to the Middle East, with Turkistan Islamic Movement and its Syrian branch combining with Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to fasten together this massive jihadist conglomerate. This expansionist jihadist superstructure feeds off movements like those in Kashmir and Palestine to discredit genuine struggles for self-recognition and battles for human rights.
The greatest partners in crime for Islamist terror-mongers masquerading as freedom fighters are often the left-leaning opinion-makers, the torchbearers of resistance against all kinds of colonialism, which (mis)use prevailing economic disparity and their dutiful obsession with demographical morality, to create alibis for violently imperialistic jihadism.
It is these same liberals – who might not have offered the same courtesy to Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar for example – that have bought the Islamist narrative making Wani the poster boy for Kashmiris’ fight. If Wani is representative of Kashmiri Muslims, their Islamic supremacist movement shouldn’t be confused with freedom-fighting. And if the Hizb commander does not reflect the average Muslim mindset, there’s no bigger disservice to the Kashmiri cause than extolling Wani’s ‘struggle’.
Wani, like countless other youngsters, unfortunately fell prey to jihadism in a land becoming increasingly fertile for radical Islam. Losing elder brother Khalid Muzaffar Wani at the hands of the Indian Army’s brutalities last year pushed him further toward militancy. Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani has reduced the probability of his relatives being victimised by Indian forces, with both his sons living hundreds of kilometers away from Kashmir in Rawalpindi and Delhi. Meanwhile in October last year, Hurriyat Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq warned Kashmiris to “beware of the expansionist plan of the Ahmadis in Kashmir” in his latest call for Ahmadis to be declared non-Muslims in India, during the Friday khutba.
With Islamists like Geelani and Umar Farooq spearheading the Kashmir movement, and Wani becoming the face of resistance, little wonder that the struggle has continued to diminish in the recent past, mirroring the Palestinian movement being usurped by jihadism as well.
Just like Kashmiri leaders’ Islamist fantasies, the Palestinian National Authority embedded Sharia as the ‘main source of legislation’ in their Constitution framed after the Oslo Accords. In fact it is the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 – a persistent remnant of Palestine’s Islamist colonial past – which paradoxically facilitated Jewish settlements in West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights.
Hamas’ takeover of Gaza has further exacerbated the plight of Palestinian Christians that have already been reduced to around 1% of the Palestinian Arab population from 8% in 1946. This is similar to the Pandits expulsion from Kashmir, with 99% of the total Pandit population (150,000 to 160,000) believed to have left the Kashmir Valley by 1990.
Both Palestinian Christians and Kashmiri Pandits have been – and many still are – strong proponents of their respective nation’s right to self-determination from Israeli and Indian occupation. But when those nations chose – and continue to choose – to define themselves along religious lines, the movement for freedom became a paradox.
The Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Turkey – oft ignored by the Muslim world owing to the identical religious identities of the occupier and the occupied – is a classic example of modern-day freedom struggles striving on political nous more than militancy. The militant Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane’s (PKK) achievements are nonexistent compared to pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP). Balochistan pragmatists have long suggested that the quest for Baloch autonomy should take a similar route.
That HDP’s gains in June elections last year were undone by ISIS bombing the Turks into voting for the right-wing, security-driven Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the November reelections, perfectly outlines the discrepancy between political struggle for freedom and jihadist expansionism. A similar story can be found in the contrasting fates of the Hui and Uighur Muslims, despite the prevalence of East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Western China.
None of this is to deny the brutalities and human rights abuse of Indian and Israeli (or Turkish, Chinese and Pakistani) occupations. But the geopolitical realities of the 21st century dictate that actual battles for freedom are fought in the political chambers, and not on the ground. Any struggle claiming to be a freedom movement would need to exhibit the ideals that it demands among its own ranks. Case in point: HDP’s persistent support for secular and liberal causes and human rights – spearheaded by women and LGBTQ rights.
And so, actual well-wishers of Kashmiris and Palestinians should be vocal in their denunciation of any form of supremacism and bigotry instead of misrepresenting jihadism as fight for freedom and summoning apologia for terror-mongering. For, armed liberation attempts aided by jihadist neighbours have failed in both territories for the past 70 odd years.
Realism dictates abandoning the gun, and battling the opposition in the political arena. For, no occupier in the history of humankind has given up an inch of territory, just because it was the ‘right thing’ to do.
Wani was the offspring of the global jihadist movement that emerged in the last quarter of the previous century, hammering Muslim-majority freedom movements into Islamist struggles wherever the occupying force was ‘non-Muslim’– including Palestine, Kashmir and East Turkestan. And the problem with any Islamist ‘freedom’ movement is that it intrinsically contradicts the very idea of freedom.
Hizbul Mujahideen, whose supreme commander Syed Salahuddin had claimed responsibility for the Pathankot attack as the chairman of the United Jihad Council, is a jihadist organisation whose very vocal ambitions aren’t limited to ‘liberating’ Kashmir from India. Hizb overlaps with Jaish-e-Muhammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba that in turn work in tandem with al-Qaeda and the Taliban, to lay a radical Islamic network from South Asia to the Middle East, with Turkistan Islamic Movement and its Syrian branch combining with Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan to fasten together this massive jihadist conglomerate. This expansionist jihadist superstructure feeds off movements like those in Kashmir and Palestine to discredit genuine struggles for self-recognition and battles for human rights.
The greatest partners in crime for Islamist terror-mongers masquerading as freedom fighters are often the left-leaning opinion-makers, the torchbearers of resistance against all kinds of colonialism, which (mis)use prevailing economic disparity and their dutiful obsession with demographical morality, to create alibis for violently imperialistic jihadism.
It is these same liberals – who might not have offered the same courtesy to Hafiz Saeed or Masood Azhar for example – that have bought the Islamist narrative making Wani the poster boy for Kashmiris’ fight. If Wani is representative of Kashmiri Muslims, their Islamic supremacist movement shouldn’t be confused with freedom-fighting. And if the Hizb commander does not reflect the average Muslim mindset, there’s no bigger disservice to the Kashmiri cause than extolling Wani’s ‘struggle’.
Wani, like countless other youngsters, unfortunately fell prey to jihadism in a land becoming increasingly fertile for radical Islam. Losing elder brother Khalid Muzaffar Wani at the hands of the Indian Army’s brutalities last year pushed him further toward militancy. Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Geelani has reduced the probability of his relatives being victimised by Indian forces, with both his sons living hundreds of kilometers away from Kashmir in Rawalpindi and Delhi. Meanwhile in October last year, Hurriyat Conference Chairman Mirwaiz Umar Farooq warned Kashmiris to “beware of the expansionist plan of the Ahmadis in Kashmir” in his latest call for Ahmadis to be declared non-Muslims in India, during the Friday khutba.
With Islamists like Geelani and Umar Farooq spearheading the Kashmir movement, and Wani becoming the face of resistance, little wonder that the struggle has continued to diminish in the recent past, mirroring the Palestinian movement being usurped by jihadism as well.
Just like Kashmiri leaders’ Islamist fantasies, the Palestinian National Authority embedded Sharia as the ‘main source of legislation’ in their Constitution framed after the Oslo Accords. In fact it is the Ottoman Land Code of 1858 – a persistent remnant of Palestine’s Islamist colonial past – which paradoxically facilitated Jewish settlements in West Bank, East Jerusalem and Golan Heights.
Hamas’ takeover of Gaza has further exacerbated the plight of Palestinian Christians that have already been reduced to around 1% of the Palestinian Arab population from 8% in 1946. This is similar to the Pandits expulsion from Kashmir, with 99% of the total Pandit population (150,000 to 160,000) believed to have left the Kashmir Valley by 1990.
Both Palestinian Christians and Kashmiri Pandits have been – and many still are – strong proponents of their respective nation’s right to self-determination from Israeli and Indian occupation. But when those nations chose – and continue to choose – to define themselves along religious lines, the movement for freedom became a paradox.
The Kurdish struggle for autonomy in Turkey – oft ignored by the Muslim world owing to the identical religious identities of the occupier and the occupied – is a classic example of modern-day freedom struggles striving on political nous more than militancy. The militant Partiya Karkeren Kurdistane’s (PKK) achievements are nonexistent compared to pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party’s (HDP). Balochistan pragmatists have long suggested that the quest for Baloch autonomy should take a similar route.
That HDP’s gains in June elections last year were undone by ISIS bombing the Turks into voting for the right-wing, security-driven Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the November reelections, perfectly outlines the discrepancy between political struggle for freedom and jihadist expansionism. A similar story can be found in the contrasting fates of the Hui and Uighur Muslims, despite the prevalence of East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) in Western China.
None of this is to deny the brutalities and human rights abuse of Indian and Israeli (or Turkish, Chinese and Pakistani) occupations. But the geopolitical realities of the 21st century dictate that actual battles for freedom are fought in the political chambers, and not on the ground. Any struggle claiming to be a freedom movement would need to exhibit the ideals that it demands among its own ranks. Case in point: HDP’s persistent support for secular and liberal causes and human rights – spearheaded by women and LGBTQ rights.
And so, actual well-wishers of Kashmiris and Palestinians should be vocal in their denunciation of any form of supremacism and bigotry instead of misrepresenting jihadism as fight for freedom and summoning apologia for terror-mongering. For, armed liberation attempts aided by jihadist neighbours have failed in both territories for the past 70 odd years.
Realism dictates abandoning the gun, and battling the opposition in the political arena. For, no occupier in the history of humankind has given up an inch of territory, just because it was the ‘right thing’ to do.
More by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a member of staff. He can be reached at khuldune.shahid@nation.com.pk. Follow him on Twitter
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