Dateline Kashmir: With #Article370 gone, few in media have bothered with voices in the Valley

It’s been close to 48 hours since Union Home Minister Amit Shah dismantled Article 370 and there’s finally some semblance of ground reporting from Kashmir that has snuck into the national media coverage.

Yesterday, morning newspapers while informing us about the proceedings in Parliament, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s legal masterstroke and the political ramifications, were eerily silent on the ground situation in Kashmir. The less said the better about the evening primetime news offerings. Zee News had reporters on “ground zero” in Srinagar telling us that they spoke to a number of people and that everyone is happy. The anchor at some point spotted two children on a cycle and declared that there’s no curfew.

A News18 anchor sat on a shikara in the news studio declaring that it was now time to take over Pakistan Occupied Kashmir.

At this point and time of the news cycle, it is important to ask whose lives are actually touched by the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir and the scrapping of provisions of Article 370, and why they have been invisibilised by a big section of the Indian media and indeed the Indian state.

For about 24 hours since Shah’s announcement, we saw no bylines from Kashmir, even as an ANI feed showed us jubilatory images from Jammu and parts of Leh. TV news channels like Republic TV, Times Now and ABP News had videos of people, some of them presumably BJP supporters, feeding barfis and laddoos to portraits of Shah and Prime Minister Narendra Modi across the country. TV news anchors told us that the average Kashmiri was happy but there wasn’t a single ground report to show us how happy she is. “Sources” were at play again.

In all of this, NDTV reporter Nazir Masoodi managed an interview with Farooq Abdullah yesterday. Masoodi mentions that reporting has been difficult with the Police not granting permission even though Zee News seems to have no problems relaying its “All-Is-Well” reporting from “ground zero”. A visibly emotional Farooq Abdullah in a message to the people of India says, “We have been with you through thick and thin. I hope you be with us through thick and thin…”

NDTV also spoke to Kashmiri students at Hyderabad’s Maulana Azad National Urdu University where students are worried about not being able to contact their family members back home. One of them stated that it appears India wants Kashmir, without the people of Kashmir. They spoke of the job situation being dire in Kashmir and had questions on the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir: How will it help us?

This however was negated on a Twitter thread by Open Magazine journalist Rahul Pandita.

The ground situation, however, shouldn’t come in the way of reporters reaching out to Kashmiris outside the Valley and speak to them about their concerns and anxieties. Last evening’s Mirror Now primetime news show did exactly that. Anchor Faye D’Souza had a student from Kashmir who lives in Pune and a Kashmiri columnist from Mumbai on her show. “I have never seen such kind of nervousness…” said one of them.

Another report speaks to two residents of Baramulla one of whom says the scrapping of Article 370 is like a marriage coming to an end. “If there is a lockdown … it means that this is a move against us…” Another says they could have done this after Eid.