Repression
newal of his passport was true, the scribe’s voice quavered before he regained control of it and then, ironically, he defended the authorities. “Things move in their own pace in Kashmir,” he said. Frontline, however, has information that his application has been forwarded to the Counter Intelligence Wing Kashmir (CIK), which is not a routine practice. There is a murmur that another senior journalist, who works with a national publication, abandoned the idea of renewing his passport after friendly government officials hinted that the police would give him an adverse report.
The controversy surrounding passports comes as no surprise. Soon after Jammu and Kashmir’s special status was revoked in August 2019, a few journalists and political activists were barred from travelling abroad. One of them, Gowhar Geelani, an independent journalist, was prevented from boarding a flight to Germany in September 2019. He told Frontline at the time that the authorities did not give him any explanation for this either verbally or in writing. “It appears that New Delhi and the J&K administration are paranoid and probably think that anyone with articulation and voice who travels abroad, even on a professional or personal assignment, would expose the government’s Goebbelsian propaganda with respect to the current situation in Kashmir,” Geelani said.
Several Kashmiri journalists who reached out to Frontline said they had received calls from the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) and, in several instances, were asked to fill up forms giving details about their assets, bank accounts and kin. Frontline has a copy of the questionnaire. It requires journalists to declare whether they have any political allegiance, first information reports filed against them and a case of conviction and whether they have relatives or acquaintances living in Pakistan. The questionnaire also requires them to draft a note on their “present and past activities”.
Although it is impossible to gather documentary evidence about what is transpiring in Kashmir given its reputation as a black box when it comes to any security-related information, this reporter through his sources has compiled a list of more than 30 journalists who were either summoned to various police stations or received calls for background checks. At least four well-known journalists embedded with national dailies and weeklies were summoned to police stations. Ostensibly, this was an investigation into stories they had done, but essentially, it was about sounding a note of warning.
In August, one journalist who had been summoned to a police station in Srinagar asked the officer what the motive behind routinely calling members of the fraternity and interrogating them was. “Have you read George Orwell?” the man on the other side of the table asked with a smirk. “Have you heard of thought policing?”
Few have been forthcoming when asked about their experiences inside police stations, at least not on record. Naseer Ganaie, who works with Outlook magazine, is an exception. “They took our [Ganaie and an
other journalist] front and side mug shots. Not once but four times. It was like a blitz. People kept coming and took our photos…,” Ganaie told a Turkey-based publication. “What pained me the most was that they took my phone, briefly though, and scanned it in another room. A phone is a very personal thing. There are pictures of your spouse, kids, family. These are intimate things.”
The surveillance is so expansive that even an innocuous conversation with a relative or friend over the phone could land one in trouble. Sometime in May, a senior journalist working with an English weekly was summoned to a police station. It was alarming for him as he had already had his share of parleys with the police and had even filled a lengthy form dishing out every minute detail about his family, income and assets. What could be the trigger, then, he wondered. It turned out that one of his cousins, who telephoned him often, was on the agencies’ radar. The cousin sometimes enquired of him whether convoys were moving around in his neighbourhood. The senior scribe always readily answered, thinking that these questions were commonplace. What he did not imagine was that he would one day have to sit inside a police station and explain this conversation to suspicious and implacable uniformed men.
He was lucky to be let off with a warning but others were not. In the Modi years, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has earned notoriety for booking journalists under laws meant for terrorists and often raiding their premises. In April 2020, the police overreach in Kashmir made headlines the world over when two Kashmiri journalists, Masrat Zahra and Gowhar Geelani, were slapped with charges under the dreaded Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. After August 2019, instances of manhandling of reporters are not at all uncommon. In December 2019, Azaan Javaid and Anees Zargar, reporters who work for national news portals, were reportedly beaten up in Srinagar while they were covering a protest at the Islamia College of Science and Commerce.
In June 2020, in a move that many averred was aimed at stifling independent and upright journalism, the Jammu and Kashmir administration came up with the Media Policy 2020, a 53-page document that accorded the government unbridled powers to control the flow of news by empowering it to decide what constituted “fake, anti-national or unethical” news.
STATE’S IMPUNITY
A series of events in September and October 2020 brought to light the impunity with which the state was acting against journalists who were not willing to bow down to its diktats. In September 2020, Auqib Javeed, a reporter with a local English daily, was slapped by a masked man inside a police station in Srinagar. The police had summoned him there after he published a report saying that the cyber branch of the police had been intimidating Twitter users who voiced their opinion against the police and the administration at large. Around the same time, the Kashmiri reporters Fayaz Ahmad, Mudasir Qadri and Junaid Rafiq were beaten up in south Kashmir while they were in the field. On
October 19, 2020, officials from the Estates Department, Jammu and Kashmir, forced the employees of Kashmir Times out of its premises and sealed it without any prior intimation of the move.
The atmosphere is now grimmer. In August 2021, the police in Srinagar thrashed several journalists who were covering Muharram processions. In photographs and videos shared on social media, a policeman was seen chasing away the journalists at Jehangir Chowk and thrashing them with a baton. On September 9, the police questioned the journalists Showkat Motta, Hilal Mir, Azhar Qadri and Shah Abbas in Srinagar after their homes were raided and documents, laptops and mobile phones belonging to them were seized. The police maintain that the raids were done in connection with an ongoing investigation into a website that is accused of making threatening posts against journalists. The police said all four would be arrested “as and when the evidence is collected”.
What were earlier sporadic episodes of ill treatment have now metamorphosed into a kind of “star chamber” that systematically targets and harasses journalists, without any regard to procedure. According to several scribes based in Srinagar, the police routinely seize their mobile phones and laptops in the name of investigation. “This is unprecedented. They bump into us, take our mobile phones, ask us for the password and scroll through our picture gallery. We have no option but to cave in,” rued a journalist who writes for an international publication.
Fahad Shah, editor of The Kashmir Walla, said his entire staff got calls from the CID around April-may and were asked to fill in a two-sheet questionnaire. “Nobody objected,” he said, betraying the element of fear prevalent in the valley. In the words of Anuradha Bhasin, a senior Kashmiri journalist and the executive editor of Kashmir Times, the state is attempting to “impose silence even on our whispers”.
“SOME people say if you can’t beat them, join them. I say, if you can’t beat them, beat them, because they will be expecting you to join them, so you will have the element of surprise.” This oft-quoted wisecrack attributed to an anonymous source, best describes the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) current mood in Jammu and Kashmir.
After the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, the BJP embarked on a mission to rename schools, colleges roads and buildings in Jammu and Kashmir, much the same way as it had done in the rest of India since 2014 to erase Mughal imprints.
In October 2019, the Chenaninashri Tunnel was renamed as the
Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee Tunnel. Thereafter, the Public Health Engineering, Irrigation and Flood Control Department was renamed as the Jal Shakti Department. The Sher-e-kashmir police medal for gallantry and Sher-e-kashmir police medal for meritorious service were renamed as the Jammu and Kashmir police medal for gallantry and the Jammu and Kashmir police medal for meritorious service, by a January 26, 2020, order.
While there has been no official communication, news reports indicate that the Sher-e-kashmir Cricket
Stadium and the Sher-e-kashmir International Convention Centre are likely to drop the Sher-e-kashmir part of their names with the former being renamed as Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium.
SHER-E-KASHMIR
Sher-e-kashmir, or Lion of Kashmir, is a sobriquet given to Sheikh Abdullah, former Chief Minister and founder of the National Conference. He led the Quit Kashmir movement and is well respected for his resistance to the Dogra ruler Maharaja Hari Singh as well as for introducing
a radical land reforms policy. Despite being one of the finest leaders produced by Kashmir, the 1975 Indira Gandhi-sheikh Accord, under which he accepted the terms set by India, is viewed by many in Kashmir as a betrayal.
Others like Mushtaaque Ali Ahmad Khan, a theatrician, filmmaker and festival director, consider this as a move of Sheikh Abdullah to mark him as a great son of the soil of India.
Regardless of which position Kashmiris hold vis a vis Sheikh Abdullah, reports that his name will be removed from facilities and landmarks in Kashmir, has upset everyone. Mushtaaque Ali Ahmad told Frontline over the phone, “Generally, adding the names of visionaries and educationists to our schools and colleges is a welcome move, and I appreciate it. But removing Sher-ekashmir from places is not a great idea. He [Sheikh Abdullah] has done a lot for our great India.”
Anuradha Bhasin, Executive Editor of Kashmir Times, echoed Mushtaaque’s views, saying that if the idea is to rename places after local heroes, then striking off Sher-ekashmir does not make sense. She told Frontline, “Sheikh Abdullah was one of the tallest leaders because of whom Kashmir continues to be a part of India. He should, in fact be eulogised [by the Indian government].”
The National Conference said it was another attempt at distorting Jammu and Kashmir’s history and a calibrated effort to trim every single symbol of its political individuality.
It said in a statement, “The present ruling dispensation in New Delhi, heaving with subjective prejudices and complexes against ideals revolving around the Indian Constitution and the spirit of its accommodative federalism, hasn’t ceased its witch-hunt against everything recognisable with Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah. The present ruling dispensation still fears a leader who has physically left the world three decades back.”
The Congress, the Peoples Democratic Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) were unanimous in condemning the move to remove Sheikh Abdullah’s name.
Some of the other proposals in the pipeline include renaming the Government College for Women, Srinagar, after Prof Riyaz Punjabi, and the Boy’s Higher Secondary School Jawahar Nagar after Prof Hamidi Kashmiri. The Government Degree College, Hyderpora, is proposed to be named after Padma Shri awardee Moti Lal Keemu and Lal Mandi Road is to be named after Sahitya Academy awardee poet Zinda Koul, or Masterji.
Mushtaaque pointed out that some of these changes could not be termed as ‘renaming’ but as adding a name to institutions that did not have an iconic name and which used to use the generic terms such as ‘government college’. But Anuradha Bhasin wondered why a women’s college should be named after a man? “There are several illustrious women who were part of the college. Ms Shaw was the first principal, Ms
Mehmooda Ahmed Ali Shah was a distinguished educationist and very popular; why not name the college after our own cultural personalities, writers and saints who are revered by both communities? There is no dearth of local heroes in that sense,” she said. According to her, this is one more attempt at erasing history and memory.
Interestingly, the first time an attempt was made to change the name of the Government College for Women Srinagar was in 1973, by the Syed Mir Qasim government. People’s opposition to the move caught the administration on the back foot. The proposal was to rename the college as Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial College for Women. Recalling the incident, the historian Khalid Bashir Ahmad records the role played by Sheikh Abdullah in his book Kashmir: Looking Back in Time (Politics, Culture, History). “On 5 November that year, a function to announce the name change was organised at the college where the guest of honour was Sheikh Mo
hammad Abdullah who was then inching close to wrap up a deal with Nehru’s daughter, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, for his return to power two decades after his unceremonious sack in 1953. However, a fierce protest by students, during which Abdullah had to make a hasty retreat from the college gate, foiled the government plan. For the first time, slogans were raised against the ‘most popular leader’ of Kashmir and his retreating car was hit by several stones hurled by agitating students.”
In the post-independence era, several such attempts were made to change names, sometimes to even remove the names of British imperial legacy and replace them with Indian or local heroes, according to Anuradha Bhasin. She said: “There was euphoria about independence, particularly in the Jammu region. Right now, there is no such euphoria. It is simply the BJP wanting to hoist its flag of victory [to show] that it has incorporated Kashmir into the Indian territory. It is being done at the cost of superimposing on local cultures and aspirations. It is an unnecessary attempt to deflect from real issues on the ground. In reality, the BJP has nothing to show for more than two years after Article 370 was abrogated. In fact, the problems in Jammu and Kashmir continue to persist and deepen. In both these regions and Ladakh, there is this great disappointment. This move is targeted at the right-wing constituency of India where elections will be contested in the name of Kashmir. Since
The move to name institutions after security forces personnel has sparked discontent throughout the region.
they are not able to integrate the people of Kashmir, but only the territory, the BJP has to showcase its victory over the people.”
A July 29 notification from the administration added fuel to the simmering debate. The Divisional Commissioner’s office in Jammu directed all Deputy Commissioners of the region to identify government schools in villages and municipal wards that could be named after martyrs from the Army, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the police force. The letter that went out to the District Commissioners in Kathua, Doda, Poonch, Ramban,
Samba, Kishtwar, Rajouri, Udhampur and Reasi said that a committee would be created at the district level comprising the SSP [Senior Superintendent of Police], the DPO [district police officer], the ADC [additional deputy commissioner], the AC [Assistant Commissioner] Panchayat [administrative council] or a representative of the Army.
It is a well-known fact that the Army has had anything but a clean image in Kashmir. So the move to name institutions after security forces personnel has sparked discontent throughout the region, including in the pro-india camp. The move increases the sense of humiliation that is prevailing and adds to the arsenal of discontent for Kashmiris, Anuradha Bhasin says. Many people in the Kashmir valley have suffered personal losses under the long military presence, which they see as an occupation. Victims of abuses by the
forces view this move with immense foreboding.
The allegations of human rights violations by security agencies are numerous and disturbing— the Gawkadal massacre in 1990, mass rapes in Kunan Poshpora by soldiers of the Rajputana Rifles of the Indian Army in 1991, mass shooting in Bijbehara by the Border Security Force in 1993, and the Kupwara massacre in 1994. In recent times, several human rights bodies and international organisations, including Amnesty International, Red Cross, Human Rights Watch and the United Nations, have taken note of extrajudicial executions, enforced disappearances, fake encounters, mass graves, mind-numbing torture, sexual violence, killing of teenagers and blinding of people, including children, with the use of pellet guns. Some official investigations have indicted personnel from the police,
Army, the CRPF and other agencies for involvement in rights abuses.
Explaining the everyday relationship of ordinary Kashmiris with security force personnel, Arif Ayaz Parrey, law graduate and writer, wrote in his article titled “Kashmir: Three Metaphors for the Present”, which appeared in Economic & Political Weekly (November 2010), “The disproportionate number of security personnel and the disproportionate amount of power and impunity they wield under the AFSPA [Armed Forces Special Powers Act] and other laws means that the everyday life of ordinary Kashmiris is turned into living hell. There is a bunker every few hundred metres and a camp for every few villages. There are so many security checks and so many orders to produce id proofs that the whole of Kashmir is transformed into a jail for the natives. There are regular killings, rapes, molestations, beatings and an unrelenting dose of threat to life, honour, family and property, resulting in constant fear and humiliation. To an ordinary Kashmiri, even when the security forces are not indulging themselves in their privileges, the nature and the memory of the relationship the people share with the security forces is such that in a common space the former are reduced to an inferior class, further enraging the natives who see such degradation in their own land as one of the worst possible disgraces.”
Given this situation, the term ‘martyr’ has different connotations in Jammu and in Kashmir. On Twitter, some commentators termed this move as “another nail in the coffin of Indian oppression”.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
When a long view of the history of Kashmir is considered, the reign of Sheikh Abdullah and the abrogation of Article 370 will be seen as some of the significant events that shaped the politics of the region. By comparison, the recent spree to change names will be a pale blip on the horizon. Nevertheless, this unilateral action of the Indian government is seen as one more in a series of attempts to rewrite the political history of the region. A septuagenarian, born in Srinagar, told Frontline that even the name Srinagar was a sanskritised version. “Names that end in nagar, such as Jawahar Nagar, Indira Nagar, or nag, such as Anantanag, or the more obvious Maharajgunj, Mandir Bagh, Sangam, Ramghat or Bhadrkali are Hinduised, but still very much in vogue. Or the Amar Singh College, Sri Maharaja Hari Singh Hospital, named after Hindu autocratic rulers, have been there for a long time,” he said.
Reflecting on name change, Khalid Bashir Ahmad writes in his book, Kashmir Looking Back in Time: “Kashmir is not new to distortion and change in its place names. It is an old story. The very name ‘Kashmir’ is a misnomer, never accepted by natives as the name of their land. A Kashmiri calls it Kasheer, and himself and his language as Koshur instead of Kashmir, Kashmiri people and Kashmiri language, respectively. However, we are told of Kashap Rishi, a mythical character who lived for ‘thousands of years’.”
Khalid Bashir Ahmad states that Kashmiris as a people have generally exhibited a lack of concern for change or distortion of place names or for their corrupt forms to suit others’ phonetic convenience. Such cultural distortion has received public approval by silence. He admitted that one could understand a place name getting corrupted where it was difficult for a non-local ruler or visitor to pronounce it, but he asked where was the need for distorting Varmul to Baramulla, Panpar to Pampore, Pulwom to Pulwama, Vejibror to Bijbihara, Kopwor to Kupwara, Badgom to Budgam, Nayut to Nowhatta, Razay Kadal to Rajouri Kadal, and so on, especially when Kashmiris use these names in their original form in their speech.
Some members of the BJP and the Kashmiri Pandit community justify the renaming of places, viewing it as a move to de-islamise the valley. Khalid Bashir says that renaming places, structures or institutions is a favourite weapon used by unpopular regimes to distort history.
THE Jammu region reacted with caution when the Narendra Modi government revoked the special constitutional status of Jammu and Kashmir and downgraded the State into two centrally administered Union Territories on August 5, 2019. Apart from stray celebrations stagemanaged by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), some prominent traders’ organisations welcomed the unilateral move of the Central government, hoping that it would end regional discrimination.
Today, two years later, most of the local businessmen, who traditionally vote for the BJP, are struggling to reconcile themselves to the new economic realities in the Union Territory.
Resentment has been brewing in the region owing to a combination of factors that have primarily stemmed from changes brought about in administrative laws. But the trigger for the September 22 Jammu bandh was the reported opening of 100 stores by Reliance Retail Ltd, which claims to have the largest nationwide network of retail outlets. Although the company came out with a clarification hours before the bandh
was observed in the region, it could not pacify the agitated business community.
The bandh was led by the Chamber of Commerce and Industries Jammu (CCIJ) and backed by 22 trade and industry lobbies, opposition parties and the Jammu and Kashmir High Court Bar Association Jammu, besides civil society groups. Incidentally, it was the first mass protest held in the region since Jammu and Kashmir came under the Centre’s direct rule after the BJP withdrew from the Mehbooba Muftiled coalition government in 2018.
The bandh was held to highlight issues such as the downswing in the local industrial sector, problems with the new excise policy and the geology and mining policy, restrictions on banquet halls, the imposition of new passenger taxes on commercial vehicles, the new land laws that reportedly debar members of certain local communities from purchasing agricultural land, the “Kashmir centric approach” of the Central government, and the scrapping of the biannual Darbar Move, which is a 149-year-old tradition and involves the shifting of the Secretariat from Kashmir to Jammu for six months during winter.
After Jammu and Kashmir became a Union Territory, resentment has grown among residents at the manifold increase in tariffs for power and drinking water for both domestic and commercial use; a sudden spike in the prices of construction materials such as sand, gravel and stones; the setting up of toll plazas on the national highway; the increase in passenger tax (the Jammu and Kashmir Passengers Taxation Act, 1963, provides for levying a tax on passengers carried by road in motor vehicles); and growing unemployment. In 2020, the Union Territory administration had to withhold its proposal to impose a tax on immovable properties in municipal areas in view of the public opposition to the move.
Deepak Gupta, president, Traders Federation Ware House
bidders. Now the government has gone after local bar owners with the formulation of new rules,” he said.
Requesting the Union Territory administration to revisit its policy, Charanjeet Singh suggested: “Either the administration should rehabilitate us or issue new licenses in the unserved areas. At least four wine traders have died so far owing to stress over financial liabilities after losing their business.”
Citing unhealthy competition from non-local industrialists, owners of the small- and medium-scale industries in Jammu maintained that the non-availability of the Central government’s fiscal incentives had led to massive retrenchment of industrial workers in the past two years.
They also regretted that departments of the Union Territory administration failed to accord preference to local small-scale industries in the Government-e-market for procurement of goods and services which was set up in January last year under the new industrial policy.
Rattan Dogra, president of the Association of Industries Jammu, said: “Before Jammu and Kashmir became a Union Territory, micro and small units were protected by the grant of price purchase preference as per the industrial policy, 2016. But everything changed suddenly. They should have kept supporting the local industrial sector for some time to help it compete with others. Oth
erwise also, we can’t compete with outsiders as far as production cost is concerned in view of the geographic location of Jammu. Of the total 8085 per cent functioning units [in August 2019], currently only 35-40 per cent remain functional owing to one or the other reason. For want of government intervention, remaining 30-40 per cent units will also get closed by March 2022,” he said.
He added: “While the Union Territory administration has been making best efforts to invite investors and industrialists from outside, it should not let the local industrial units die.” In a written representation to Lt Governor Manoj Sinha on September 12, 2020, the association had requested the readoption of Jammu and Kashmir’s industrial policy of 2004.
UNPOPULAR DECISIONS
Many decisions taken by the Union Territory Administration have not gone down well with civil society organisations. M.K. Bhardwaj, president of the bar association, said: “We supported the bandh call in keeping with our tradition of upholding the regional aspirations of people of Jammu.”
He stressed the need for restoration of rights bodies that were shut down by the government soon after Jammu and Kashmir was made a Union Territory in 2019. These bodies included the Jammu and Kashmir State Human Rights Commission, the State Information Commission, the State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission, the State Electricity Regulatory Commission, the State Commission for Protection of Women and Child Rights, the State Commission for Persons with Disabilities, and the State Accountability Commission.
Lawyers in Jammu have opposed the government’s decision to divest them of the power to register immovable property. The authority to register immovable property has been transferred to revenue officials as per Central laws. “We want these powers to be restored to the lawyers as it has affected the income of several young lawyers besides causing problems to the people at large. We also want the Central Administrative Tribunal within the premises of the high court,” he said.
The newly launched Jammu and Kashmir film policy has evoked scepticism among local artists. Many feel that the policy is aimed at attracting “outside” film-makers and is bereft of any benefits for the local industry— which could not grow for want of investors and government patronage.
A recent decision of the Union Territory administration to develop the Mubarak Mandi Heritage Complex into a heritage hotel has evoked sharp criticism. The Mubarak Mandi Heritage Society has reportedly invited Expression of Interest as per the public-private partnership model on design, development, finance, build and operate basis.
Additionally, there is growing resentment among local residents over the imposition of a heavy fee for the registration of new motor vehicles and renewal of existing ones. Farmers have been hit hard by heavy taxes on agricultural implements and an increase in the registration fee of tractors.
Local residents associated with the business of river mining along the Punjab border have complained that the big players from Punjab are encroaching on their business. Similarly, brick kiln owners have complained in recent months that their business has suffered immensely as there is no check on trucks loaded with bricks entering the region from Punjab.
Maintaining that the Jammu Hotel and Lodges Association supported the bandh call over the discontinuation of the Durbar Move tradition, its president, Inderjeet Khajuria, said: “With this government move, the entire tourism sector [of Jammu and Kashmir] has collapsed. The tourism sector of Jammu was already on ventilator.” An official in the Estates Department of Jammu and Kashmir said about 8,000 government employees and their families would migrate between the two capital cities, Jammu and Srinagar, during the biannual shifting of the Secretariat.
Khajuria said: “While performing back-to-back experiments on Kashmir, they [the Central government] have ruined Jammu. The discrimination of Jammu, which started in 1947, continues to date.”