What it means to be a journalist in Kashmir?

By: Gowhar Nazir Shah Geelani

Journalism is an exciting profession. A journalist is considered, more often than not, an adventurous person. I’m thrilled to be one. The place I work in is referred to as “Paradise on Earth”. Yes, Kashmir. That way it should have been a ‘double’ joy for me. But it is not.

In early days, the profession attracted me to the hilt. It seemed glamorous and challenging. Hearing cricket commentators on radio and watching television anchors at home would always give me a satisfaction of a different sort. Imitating few among those, clandestinely, almost became a hobby.

Every word that went on air seemed sacred to me, as if it was all gospel of truth. In fact the last word. Finally, I made entry into this field. I started my career with writing snippets and some odd middles in a local English daily and soon switched over to reporting events concerning a common man.

It was not a smooth journey though. That really shouldn’t have been a problem.
But the problem was something very serious. With a sudden change in the circumstances in Kashmir during 1989, the media here too suffered a severe jolt, rather a shake.

In Kashmir reporting events means walking a tight rope. Caught between two guns and two deadly swords hanging on your heads, always, sometimes one writes what one doesn’t want to, and hides what one wishes to share.

It didn’t take me long to realize what I had to do and how. The journalism lectures about 5 W’s and 1 H “objectively” started waning from memory. Not because of amnesia though. Only because of ground realities.

No journalist in the world can better understand the real logic and essence behind using the word “allegedly” in a news report. This word here means bread and butter. Rather a survival for a scribe reporting events of death and disaster, day in and day out.

When one sees with naked eyes a person firing volley of bullets over the body of an innocent on a street, one has to write “unidentified gunman”, and when innocents are killed in broad day light by persons in uniform the safest word is “allegedly”.

Denial and rebuttal are most “sacred” words in Kashmir. Issuing condemnation statements and denouncing incidents of violence “selectively” is a routine. In times of war, they say, truth is the first casualty. Very true. I say the second casualty in conflict zone like Kashmir is woman. It is she who loses her husband, brother, son and father. Her only fault is she is a woman in conflict. Dare I add, the third casualty in times of conflict is a journalist who reports truth?

And that is why Kashmir has seen funerals of journalists too. I have seen a senior colleague battling for his life in a pool of blood in year 2002. He survived, miraculously. Soon after the horrific incident some of my relatives and friends suggested me to switch to some other profession. I refused. Don’t know why!

'So You are Back to Your Nasty Ways'

For obvious reasons mediocrity is patronized here and the professionalism discouraged. Government does not want the services of professional journalists to report facts but need illiterate nodding goats to support hate campaign and official propaganda. That is why when a trained journalist here writes about the human rights excesses committed at the hands of Indian forces he receives an SMS from the Army PRO which goes like this: “So, you are back to your nasty ways.”

In this particular case I will prefer hiding the names of both, the journalist as well as the PRO. And reasons you better know.

The other party is not pious either. If one considers a press note of any separatist group unfit to publish that amounts to inviting wrath and the result is obvious. There have been numerous attacks on newspaper offices in conflict-ridden Kashmir. The latest example is the attack on the largest circulated English daily “Greater Kashmir” being published from Srinagar.

Gowhar Geelani is a Kashmiri journalist based in Bonn, Germany.