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La-La land of military bravado!

By Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal. Dated: 4/23/2017 11:29:59 AM

Pigeons and pigeon trainers may soon be in demand in Kashmir for delivering messages, if rumours and unverified reports of gagging social media, coming close on the heels suspension of 3G and 4G broadband services, are true. Would these avian creatures then meet the fate of Manto's "Teetwal Ka Kutta", tagged as spies and informers, humiliated, roughed up and finally shot dead as part of some militaristic bravado? In a place as unpredictable as Kashmir one never knows - this Kafkaesque fantasy may as well become a reality.
The idea of clamping down on social media draws its inspiration from the belief that violent protests in Kashmir are an outcome of provocation aroused by vested interests through social media. Last year, while the government imposed an internet ban in Kashmir for several months, it also brought the media industry under the ambit of its gag. The newspaper publications were banned for several weeks. The rationale used was that some content in newspapers can be cause for provocation. Neither the internet ban nor the shutting down of newspaper offices could help check the outrage that continued to pour out into the streets. Both peaceful and violent protests continued to be staged across the Valley, majority of them handled with utmost brutality by the army, paramilitaries and the police. Moral of the story: Bans on legitimate platforms of interaction and sources of information do not serve any purpose other than allowing other forms of rumour mongering to have a field day with no authentic source to verify them. Both the word of mouth as well as rumours have been part of the Kashmiri society for long, even in the days preceding the present day conflict.
Back in the 90s, when newspapers disappeared from the scene or became rather silent, other than those that came from outside the Valley to hit the stands in the evening, and there were no television news channels or internet, people still had their unverified sources of information. The word of mouth, authentic or otherwise, spreads like fire. With poor connectivity and constant acquaintance with curfews and restrictions, Kashmiris have never been exceptionally and totally reliant on the social media or other sources of information. It is also human nature to become extremely creative in days of adversity and crisis. In the early 90s, when telephone transmission tower in Banihal was allegedly bombed by militants, the STD lines between Jammu and Srinagar were completely snapped for a few weeks. All the latest systems of transferring news and information were consequently jammed. Newspaper offices and reporters, however, continued to function. In our own head office in Jammu, news was collected at the end of the day via the trunk call dialing which was poorly audible and limited to 5 minutes during which reporters from Srinagar would dictate their stories. The Kashmir stories continued to be told as they did last year - despite curfews, despite gags on media, internet bans and excessive violence on the streets.
The latest mesmerisation with bans is driven by the circulation of a slew of videos in the social media. The videos necessitate scrutiny and analysis. The first of videos to be circulated caught the attention of the television channels which picked up the convenient focus of security personnel heckled and manhandled by Kashmiri youth. The video shows about four security personnel returning after duty in some unspecified town amid a crowd of people. Some young boys start pulling and tugging at them, one snatches the helmet and yet another starts hitting him on the head and voices in the background say in Kashmiri, 'Do not hit them'. The personnel walk on unhindered. They do not react. The boys follow them hooting and jeering. The video is undated and one does not know the context of this scene. Security personnel are posted across the Kashmir Valley and bunkers and camps dot its entire landscape. Outside the capital city, as one moves along the highways, one or two security personnel standing in vigil in towns and villages flanking these roads. Are they all as vulnerable as the video suggests?
The other videos arouse even more curiosity. The most defining of them is of a man tied to the bonnet of an army vehicle as a human shield. A report published in The Indian Express, claims that on April 9, Dar was paraded for nearly four hours and he was driven around 25 km from Utligam to Sonpa, Najan, Chakpora, Hanjiguroo, Rawalporam Khospora, Arizal and finally the jeep made its halt at the CRPF camp of Hardpanzoo. The army has ordered an inquiry but at the same time also sought to justify it as a move of self-defence to allow safe passage for the vehicle amidst a huge crowd of stone pelters. The army jeep to which the 26 year old man, Farooq Dar, a shawl weaver returning after casting his vote on the polling day, is followed by a truck with the army warning the stone pelters that they will face a similar fate if stones are pelted on the Indian Army. Is this a reflection of self-defence or vicious vendetta to terrorise public? How does this fit into the image of the Indian army as valourous and one that is a protector? Is this video a precursor to the ugly probability of every camp, bunker, military installation and military asset being protected by picking up unsuspecting men and tying them as human shields? The video shows no hostile crowd around as the vehicle moves. Not a sound of a huge mob gathered in the area. Were they on a silent protest? If they were omitted in the video as a matter of coincidence and actually existed, did they disperse after seeing the horrifying sight of a civilian being humiliated so and put in the most vulnerable position? Did the sight of watching a fellow Kashmir caught in such a situation made them leave their stones and go back to their homes? Would such a sight not further enrage a mob, if it had the potential of sparking outrage on the social media, which is now being looked upon as an evil? These questions would be worthwhile to grapple with, if one wishes to take the debate beyond the whatabout-ery of 'army jawans facing stone pelting mobs' to provoke anti-Kashmiri sentiments across India and allow ministers to shout from roof tops that stone pelters should be countered with bullets.
It is also important to question how these fresh set of videos went viral. One video shows Kashmiri boys captured in an army vehicle and being beaten up, one of them profusely bleeding, abused and asked to say 'Pakistan Murdabad'. Several other videos were similar. The common thread binding them together is of captive civilians. Were the captive civilians making a video of themselves or did the men in uniform happily pose for such brutal display of machismo, and not valour, while they allowed someone else to record these videos, say for instance from inside their own army trucks? This props up two very vital questions: Who shot such videos and why were they circulated in the first place? What was the point being driven through these videos? The answer to the question would open the key to the next question: Who provokes the Kashmiris to vent out their anger and frustration on the roads?