In July I received a mail from a journalist who wanted to pitch me an interesting story idea from Kashmir. The mail was directed to an account I hardly check. Not that it would have made much difference since Newswatch carries only content that has something to do with the news media. I gather she pitched the story to many publications.
The story, let me tell you, never saw the light of day anywhere in this country where Kashmir is such an emotively jingoistic issue. Close to a month later, the story has appeared, but not in an Indian publication. I happened to stumble across it quite perchance in the New Internationalist.
Yet I am not surprised that no Indian publication wanted to carry the story despite the fact that the journalist, Dilnaz Boga, writes well. And more than anything else, it was a good story.
Read the blurb. If it doesn't make sense to you, you probably need to see a shrink:
In the strife-torn valley of India-controlled Kashmir, the decades-long conflict continues to take its toll, especially on its young. Dilnaz Boga has met some of them.
So, the blackout of Kashmir from the Indian media landscape continues. It has been so since the massive pro-freedom protests that took place in Kashmir about a year ago. What we get to read, hear or see is hardly worth writing home about. Yes, except for those sex scandals and the consequent political fallouts.
You get to hear all that the Omars and Mehboobas have to say about each other. Or ridiculing the hopelessly splintered separatists. Or you read of stories planted and sponsored by the defence and home ministries. One somehow gets the feeling that it is quite in the Indian government's interest to ensure that voices of the ordinary people of Kashmir remain unheard elsewhere in India. And the media stays on the politically correct side.
Last year, we had wanted to do a comprehensive content analysis of the news media coverage of Kashmir. It would have been a big project. But it fell flat because no one was willing to sponsor it. This fact itself says a lot, doesn't it?
For the moment, we will have to stay content with reading stories about Kashmir in non-Indian publications. And if you too have not read the Dilnaz piece, read it here: http://www.newint.org/features/special/2009/08/06/cry-for-freedom/
