To preempt mass protests against its dismantling of Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy, the Indian government put the Valley on lockdown and under a communications blackout. The lockdown, in place for over a month and a half now, has been so severe that even journalists have been finding it difficult to do their work. 

Not that it was easy to report from Kashmir before. Since the armed insurgency broke out in 1989, journalists covering the region have often had to negotiate tricky situations. 

In this series, “Reporting from Kashmir, 1989 to 1994”, Madhu Trehan and her former Newstrack colleagues Manoj Raghuvanshi and Alpana Kishore recount their time reporting from Kashmir, and what they learned from their experiences.

Alpana recalls covering the Hazratbal Siege and the matter of what she describes as “feeding biryani to the terrorists”. The siege exemplified, she says, that “there is a place for deflating and calming down situations rather than going all guns blazing”.

Manoj remembers interviewing K Doraiswamy, the Indian Oil official who had been abducted by Kashmiri militants and released in exchange for nine of their comrades. “Doraiswamy spoke a language that was shocking,” Manoj says, suggesting the official suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. “He said Azad Kashmir for PoK, etc.”

At the time, Madhu recalls interviewing Sudhir Kakkar, a psychoanalyst at the University of Chicago, US, about Doraiswamy. Kakkar explained how captivity affects the psyche of a hostage.

Madhu asks Alpana about interview of Mast Gul, the central figure in the Hazratbal Siege whom she describes as the “first Pakistani militant to be captured on camera in Kashmir”. 

Recalling her first encounter with Gul, Alpana says, “His chest was full of grenades. He was a flamboyant character, he thought he was a filmstar.” They talked about Gul’s “fight for Islam” and the militancy, she adds.

Madhu, Alpana and Manoj share a laugh about how they were never honoured for their journalism by any government. “It’s honourable that none of us got any awards because we riled up every government that was in power and that’s our biggest award,” Madhu says.

Also watch: First and second parts of the series.