Unprecedented media suppression in Pakistan as journalist's critical interview is silenced amid a government crackdown. Concerns rise over threats to free speech and expression.
A disquieting thing happened yesterday.
Three days back a Pakistani journalist Ali Hasnain Shah, who works as researcher/producer with Khabarhar Team of Aftab Iqbal, called me on whatsapp and said he wants to take my interview about the recent judgment of the Pakistan Supreme Court depriving Imran Khan’s PTI party of its symbol.
I immediately agreed, and shortly thereafter my interview of about 10-12 minutes wes recorded in which I criticised the judgment. I had written an article about it earlier too.
After the interview was recorded I asked Ali Hasnain Shah when will he send me a link so that I can post it on my fb page and twitter. He said it will be sent the next day, after it was edited.
I waited the next day, and messaged him a few times. He replied it was still being edited.
Yesterday morning ( i.e. 2 days after the recording ) I received his message that the editing was complete, and the video link will be sent to me between 9 and 10 a.m.
I waited till 10.30 a.m. and when the link did not come I messaged Ali Hasnain asking as to when was he sending it ? He gave no reply. I messaged again several times, but there was no response. I tried to call him on his whatsapp number, but he would not take my call.
In the evening I received a text message on whatsapp from him that in view of a government notification forming a JIT ( Joint Investigation Team ) to investigate ‘malicious criticism’ of Pakistan Supreme Judges and launch criminal prosecutions against the ‘offenders’, it had been decided not to air my interview, and the link would not be sent to me.
This government notification was evidently issued because there had been tremendous criticism of the Supreme Court judgment in the media and elsewhere. The notification is contained in the article below
This notification, which threatened criminal prosecution of those who criticised Supreme Court Judges, evidently so scared and petrified the team to which Ali Hasnain belonged, that they decided to suppress my interview ( which I had given at their request ).
I responded to the text message of Ali Hasnain by saying that another Pakistani journalist had taken 2 interviews in which I criticised the 3 judges who had given the bat symbol judgment, so what was there to be frightened and terrified about ? I whatsapped these 2 interviews to him.
However, despite several more messages by me, and attempts to call him on whatsapp, there was no response from him and stony silence. I got only one message of only one word from Ali Hasnain ‘busy’.
So evidently at the behest of Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa and some of his colleagues, the Pakistan Government has decided to silence people who ‘maliciously’ criticise them.
There is already power in the Court to punish for contempt and send to jail those who maliciously criticise judges. So where was the need of this notification ?
Moreover, what is ‘malicious’ ? The word is vague, and susceptible to any number of meanings.
In a democracy the people are supreme, and have a right to criticise judges, who are only their servants (,like all state authorities ).
Abu Dhabi: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been named as the social media capital of the world, according to a new study by Proxyrack.
The study analyzed the average number of social platforms and the percentage of the population using Facebook in each country to reveal the social media capitals of the world.
“With an almost perfect score of 9.55 out of 10, the UAE takes the top spot as the social media capital of the world. People in the UAE have an average of 8.2 social media platforms, the third highest in the world, joint with the Philippines,” said Proxyrack.
The study said that the UAE is the most connected country in the world, with a connected score of 7.53/10.
UAE residents also have social media accounts on several platforms, notably Facebook and TikTok.
The study found that the internet in the UAE is expensive, but 100 percent of the population use the internet, and 108 percent use Facebook.
The study revealed that UAE users spend an average of seven hours and 29 minutes on the Internet per day.
The UAE is followed by Malaysia/the Philippines with both countries scoring 8.75.
According to the ProxyRac report, India stood on the 19th spot with only 29 percent of the population using Facebook but spending nearly nine hours on the internet every day.
New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Tuesday highlighted the violation of provisions of promoting electronic cigarettes during a business summit here and asked the media to ensure that it does not happen again.
In a notice to all media organisations, including print, electronic and digital, the Ministry said: “It has been brought to the notice by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare that in a recently organised Business Summit in New Delhi by a prominent media house, the forum was apparently used to promote electronic cigarettes.”
“Such an action was in violation of Section 4 of the Prohibition of Electronic Cigarettes (Production, Manufacture, Import, Export, Transport, Sale, Distribution, Storage and Advertisement) Act, 2019 which prohibits advertisements that directly or indirectly promote the use of electronic cigarettes,” it said.
It said that the print, electronic, and digital media entities are “accordingly advised to ensure that the aforementioned statute is not contravened either by way of advertisement or any promotion or other campaigns etc”.
What’s lacking here is any assurance that those being surveyed are familiar enough to accurately rate the outlets they’ve been asked to judge. Almost nobody — not even press critics — keeps a close enough tab on 56 outlets, at least a dozen of which are paywalled or require a cable subscription, to render a fair appraisal of all of them. We all consume media in our own bubbles. And even though the survey, to its credit, has removed from its calculations responses who say an outlet is neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy, or answer that they don’t know, we have no way of knowing how many of the 1,500 respondents took wild, uninformed stabs at rating the outlets.
In times like these, there’s value in measuring trust, but this poll, which is destined to become the talk of cable news and op-ed pages, does a poor job of putting a yardstick to how outlets are perceived. Allowing respondents to judge the trustworthiness of outlets without determining how often they consume them is like asking a kid to rate the flavors from the Baskin-Robbins library he’s never tasted.
For instance, PBS and the BBC rank at the top of the trust chart, just under the Weather Channel. But the survey gives us no way of knowing whether the poll respondents ever watch PBS news or sip from the BBC faucet. Maybe they’ve expressed “trust” in the BBC because its prestige hangs like vapor in the cultural air we all breathe, and they reflexively say they trust the BBC even though they rarely read BBC News or tune their TVs to it.
Scrolling down the chart, another flaw emerges: Legacy outlets like Forbes, Time, the New York Times, the three broadcast networks and Reuters collected higher ratings than relative newcomers like the Hill, Axios, Slate, Yahoo News and the Washington Examiner. It’s fair to ask, as with the BBC example, what question respondents are answering.
Are low-sophistication news consumers merely expressing name recognition, not an assessment of trustworthiness? A perfect example of this would be Newsweek’s rating, which is higher than that of Bloomberg News. Newsweek was a storied news brand when owned by the Graham family, but its reputation has rightly suffered under its new owners. (See Daniel Tovrov’s piece in the Columbia Journalism Review and Alex Shepard’s in the New Republic.) No impartial, informed judge of news would ever rank today’s Newsweek over the data-rich pages of Bloomberg News. But there it is.
How much trust is locked up in how the outlets’ names sound? The Economist calls to mind a place where business experts working in an ivory tower measure supply-demand curves with a micrometer. POLITICO, which rates lower than the Economist, might have gotten docked a couple of points because it sounds to the naïve ear like a trade association magazine for invidious politicians (which it isn’t, trust me!). A different impression would surely result if a new reader were exposed to several months’ worth of each.
The survey does produce some results that seem self-evident. Democrats trust MSNBC more than Republicans, and Republicans trust Fox News more than Democrats. But does it make sense that Democrats trust Infowars more than Republicans do CNN? What exactly is being measured here? Please send an explanation to the email address below.
Another unsurprising result is that, in general, Democrats appear to trust news media more than do Republicans. This might reflect the fact that so many of the 56 outlets under examination are liberal or relatively centrist in their orientation.
But then there are weird outliers, such as Democrats giving the conservative Daily Caller a higher trust score than their Republican kin do. Likewise, what does it mean that Democrats give trust scores to conservative outlets like the Federalist, Infowars, the National Review and the New York Post that are within shouting distance of Republican scores? Maybe it’s a function of Fox News’ decades-long coaching of its audience not to “trust the media,” and therefore that outside of the established TV brands of Fox News, Newsmax and OAN, Republicans refuse to automatically bestow trust on any media, even outlets that appeal to their prejudices.
As this column has expressed before, the general decline of trust in media is somewhat paradoxical. News reporting has never been more precise, easier to check and criticize, or more timely. What has changed since the early 1960s, when trust peaked in the polls, is that the press covers many topics today that went left unassigned back then: stories about race, gender, sex, equity, foreign intervention and religion, just to give a few examples.
To be sure, recent decades are chockablock with media misfires that actively damaged trust, as scholar Michael Socolow recently wrote. “Measured skepticism can be healthy and media criticism comprises an essential component of media literacy — and a vibrant democracy,” is how he puts it. So some of this distrust is well-deserved. But in other cases, expressions of “distrust” in media polls are just another way for people to say the contemporary subject matter in the news makes them uncomfortable.
That the Weather Channel rarely broadcasts anything more controversial than flood, blizzard, hurricane, fire and tornado coverage and forecasts goes a long way in explaining its high trust quotient. But as the channel’s bosses deliver on their promise to produce more climate change coverage, expect the usual dark clouds of distrust to gather there, too.
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Send your news weather reports to [email protected]. No new email alert subscriptions are being honored at this time. My Twitter feed is a low-pressure zone. My Mastodon and Post accounts have gone all foggy. My Substack Notes account needs a rainmaker. My RSS feed is a fast-moving storm front.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Thousands of youth, adults and children are consuming tons of animations and the consumption is only going up. Muskan Fatima reports the trend and the factors pushing the new fad
Two Kashmir animated characters – Meem Laaleh (L) and Kashir Shinchan (R). While the former has gone into oblivion, the latter is still in circulation.
In 2019 fall, when Meem Laaleh, a Kashmiri comic feminine character appeared on social media with impressive social messages, it was a huge sensation. Operating with a tagline – Balai Lagai, Yuth Ni Mushkil Gaczvev (Forgive me, do not take it otherwise), the caricature was a hit with its brief satire on social issues that its creator termed ‘sit down comedy’. Almost on a daily basis people would wait for Meem Laaleh to take potshots on the life Kashmir was living. By early 2021, Meem Laaleh went silent, perhaps forever.
This inspired many others to follow suit. A young boy launched Keashir Shinchan in June 2019. It is a young Kashmir lady telling interesting tales about the people around, making fun of things and using puns to send the message around.
Tragically, however, neither Meem Laaleh nor Keashir Shinchan is part of the estimated US $28.61 billion that the animation industry cloaked in 2022. Anime is primarily Japanese animation characterized by colourfully vibrant graphics and action-filled plots that more than 100 million people watch globally. Right now more than 6000 anime shows exist and the majority of them are made in Japan.
= While the new generation has skipped looking at the sector as content creators, they are huge consumers of animation. In most of the homes, kids require animation shows at breakfast, lunch and dinner and now even parents are addicted to these shows. Asks anybody in nursery or kindergarten, they are well aware of Pokemon, Naruto, Dragon Ball Z and Shin-chan. It is their butter if not the bread. Off late, even adults like the animation. In Kashmir, Doraeman was virtually in politics for years.
Hyder, an MBA from the University of Kashmir has been watching anime for a while. He fell in love with Naruto in 2017 when the comic character somehow popped up on his timeline.
“It was a blessing in disguise I would say,” Hyder admitted. “I was doing a lot of binge-watching as I lacked focus. Suddenly Naruto popped up so I thought I should give it a go and the way it kept me inclined towards itself was mind-blowing.”
It is not just the plot and the graphics that connect people to Anime. Some people say they feel a personal connection with the characters and they can relate to the emotions portrayed by them.
Hyder said that watching the animation has helped being become responsible because most of the shows convey a message “I suddenly used to care about everyone no matter how bad they seemed. This was a thing I gathered from Naruto,” Hyder said. “It taught me nobody is a villain. Another anime Haikyuu teaches you that if you are passionate about something it does not matter whether you have the skills or not. Hard work is the key. I would say anime made me a better person.”
A ‘Misconception’
Anime is linked to stereotypes. People see them as merely cartoons and caricatures, not essentially meant for grown-ups. That may not be necessarily true. anime and cartoons differ from each other in target audience and themes. Unlike cartoons, anime touches upon more serious themes with teenagers and adults as the target audiences.
“I made no difference between anime and cartoon till I watched Death Note,” Haroon Riyaz, a student with a keen interest in anime’s, said. “The plot twists, suspense and mystery factor of this anime were really appealing to me. Now I believe anime is a slice of life and portrays life issues and emotions that are mostly meant for the mature audiences, unlike cartoons.”
Animation watchers are so drawn towards the anime culture that many of them go out of their way to get anime merchandise, learn Japanese slang and dress up like anime characters. In recent years Japanese pop culture including anime and video games gained immense popularity worldwide due to global media exposure. Despite the language barrier people have resorted to subtitles to understand the storyline.
Mother Culture
This is something new in Kashmir. The elder generations did not grow up surrounded by this wave of anime culture and most of them are barely familiar with the term anime. Even after TV’s entry into Kashmir, Doordarshan, till recently was the only source of entertainment.
Then, people used to read books, comics, listen to radio and just play around with friends. Now, the newer generations avoid books and prefer watching things on the cell phone, TV or computer. “Youth watch movies based on novels and then claim they have read it not knowing that films are adaptations of the text, not the exact novel,” a parent said. “It is the fashion now that students prefer pdf of books rather than the book.”
Binge Watching
Globally, the use of motion pictures in educating the new generation is a preferred choice of educators. However, a huge section of the younger generation binge-watches anime shows. Some see it as addiction and many think it is an escape route.
The content creators are aware of this human weakness. So they push their characters to survive for a long time link India TV soap operas. One Piece is an anime based on the Manga by Eiichiro Oda and as of March 2023, it has more than 1000 episodes. Anybody wishing to watch it would require more than 400 hours. Data available in the public domain suggest that an average person spends 6.58 hours every day on screens connected to the internet. This is impacting the health of a generation.
Farhana Wani is pursuing her BSc (Nanoscience) in Srinagar. Her journey towards anime started when, one day, she came across a reel on social media about how Itachi, a character from Naruto sacrificed everything and how he killed his entire clan, his parents, and his love just to save the leaf village but was not able to kill his brother. That made her curious about the character and she wanted to know the whole story.
While Farhana loves anime she recognizes that it had a negative impact on her as well.
“As much as I hate to admit it, anime has become an escape route from reality for many people especially students,” Farhana said. “I sometimes also feel like I am addicted to it and that instead of studying I prefer to watch anime because it gives you that dopamine rush for a short period of time.”
German Psychologist Erich Fromm in his book, To Have or to Be? writes: “Pleasure and thrill are conducive to sadness after the so-called peak has been reached; for the thrill has been experienced, but the vessel has not grown. One’s inner powers have not increased. One has made the attempt to break through the boredom of unproductive activity and for a moment has unified one’s energies-except reason and love. One has attempted to become superhuman, without being human. One seems to have succeeded to the moment of triumph, but the triumph is followed by deep sadness; because nothing has changed within oneself.”
The Flip Side
This is the other side of anime binge-watching. People say they live in a world of joyless pleasures where it is hard to draw a line between the two.
Pleasure usually does not lead to an intrinsically adequate solution to the human condition and does not lead to greater human growth or bring an individual closer to their authentic self. Joy, on the other side, is what people experience in the process of growing nearer to the goal of becoming oneself. The lack of joy is what makes seeking pleasure necessary. People may say watching anime brings them joy but often it is pleasure they refer to.
A legitimate question remains: why Kashmiri youth are drawn towards anime? Japan, after all, has a different language and culture.
Wasim Kakroo, Consultant Clinical Psychologist at the Centre for Mental Health Services at Rambagh Srinagar has his views about the psychology behind it.
“It can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, anime offers an escape from the realities of everyday life, providing a unique and immersive world of fiction and fantasy that can be engaging and entertaining, especially for youth who lack guidance. Anime often contains themes and motifs that resonate with young people, identity struggles, and social commentary. This helps them connect with the characters and storylines. Its easy availability may be another contributor,” Kakroo said. “The psychological reasons behind this transition can be attributed to the fact that young people are seeking new forms of entertainment that offer a sense of escapism, social connection, and cultural identity. Anime provides a combination of these elements, making it an attractive option for many young people.” At the same time, anime addiction is part of the globalisation that permits individuals to make their choices.
New Delhi: The Election Commission on Monday asked Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge to clarify and rectify the party’s social media post on Karnataka’s sovereignty remark attributed to Sonia Gandhi.
The EC letter to Kharge came following a complaint by the Bharatiya Janata Party regarding a tweet which appeared on the official Twitter handle of the Indian National Congress on May 6.
In its complaint, the BJP has alleged, “Karnataka is a very important member state in the union of India and any call to protect the sovereignty of a member state of the Union of India amounts to a call for secession and is fraught with perilous & pernicious consequences.”
The BJP also alleged in its complaint to the EC that the tweet is violative of the mandatory oath undertaken by the political parties under section 29A (5) of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 at the time of registration.
“In view of the above, you are requested to clarify and take rectification measures in respect of the social media post which has been put up on the INC Twitter handle and attributed to Chairperson, CPP,” the EC letter read.
A former Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi is currently the Congress Parliamentary Party (CPP) chairperson.
After Gandhi addressed a campaign rally in Hubballi in Karnataka on Saturday, the Congress tweeted from its official handle: “CPP Chairperson Smt. Sonia Gandhi ji sends a strong message to 6.5 crore Kannadigas: ‘The Congress will not allow anyone to pose a threat to Karnataka’s reputation, sovereignty or integrity’.”
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP have attacked the Congress over the remark.
Thane: A minor was detained by the police in Maharashtra’s Thane district for allegedly posting derogatory remarks about warrior king Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj on social media, an official said on Sunday.
Based on a complaint, a case under sections 153-A (promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion, race, place of birth, residence, language, etc.) and 295-A (deliberate and malicious acts, intended to outrage religious feelings) of the IPC was registered, the official from Shanti Nagar police station in Bhiwandi said.
The complainant, who is an autorickshaw driver, alleged that he came across a post by the minor accused on Instagram on Friday, which contained derogatory remarks and images of Shivaji Maharaj, he said.
The complainant claimed that the remarks had hurt the sentiments of citizens who revered the warrior king, he said.
The minor accused was detained by the police on Saturday, he said, adding that further probe is underway.
Successive rulers before and after 1947 have remained reluctant in encouraging English journalism in Jammu and Kashmir. Fighting odds, restrictions and outright denial of permissions, the English media always existed in the erstwhile state but never became the mainstay. It only started getting visible, popular and vibrant by the turn of the century, writes Nayeem Showkat
Kashmir newspapers from the 1930s and fifties. Images: Nayeem Showkat, Collage: Malik Qaisar
Unlike the evolution of the Urdu press in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir, little effort has been made to assess the English press in the region.
The beginning of the English press in Jammu and Kashmir was marked with the publication of Kashmir Times, a weekly newspaper from Srinagar. Baldev Prasad Sharma and Pandit Gawsha Lal Koul are credited to have pioneered the establishment of English press in the region with the launch of Kashmir Times on November 26, 1934. Baldev Prasad Sharma co-edited the publication along with Janakinath Zutshi.
For lack of substantial evidence, it is unclear if the Kashmir Times was started by Sardar Abdul Rehman Mitha after purchasing it from BP Sharma, or was started afresh. However, what came to the fore, later on, was that a declaration in this regard was filled by Mitha. Filing a declaration is mandatory for a fresh newspaper and every time anything changes in the main declaration, owner, publisher, printer, cost, pages, language, and place of publication.
A December 18, 1937 clipping from a Srinagar newspaper decrying the classification of newspapers. KL Image: Nayeem Showkat
Pre-Partition Kashmir Times
Settled in Kashmir with his chaperone private secretary GK Reddy in 1944, Mitha – a Bombay Congressman – started Kashmir Times after he purchased his own press. Reddy was also operating as a Kashmir-based correspondent for the Associated Press of India. The newspaper ceased its publication during partition, as Reddy was served a notice by the District Magistrate Kashmir to leave the State of Jammu and Kashmir. Mitha and Reddy left the State on October 15, 1947, when they were halted near Domail Post, and their pockets were searched.
The government claimed they recovered some objectionable papers about a conspiracy from Reddy’s pocket and suitcase. The two men were arrested, brought back to the State and handed over to the military.
Not only Mitha, previously, Prem Nath Bazaz and Prem Nath Kana were also alleged to be involved in the conspiracy. Arrested by the police on the intervening night of October 21 and 22, 1947, both the journalists were suspected of hatching a conspiracy on the directions of the Kak administration. It was also pondered that Bazaz and Kana would be deported from the State.
Prior to this, an unknown gunman also shot at and injured Bazaz near Maisuma Police Station in April 1947. Inculpating National Conference for concocting the attack, police arrested as many as 60 people including Ghulam Nabi, a reporter of Khidmat.
In response to the attack, a meeting of members of the All–Jammu and Kashmir Press Conference was held in the office of Kashmir Times in April under the supervision of Mitha, in which the National Conference was accused of the attack.
Mitha was very critical of National Conference. Prior to this incident, Mitha and Mir Abdul Aziz of Millat and Jauhar were attacked and the blame was put on the National Conference.
In that era, the media operated in factions. In fact, a camp of newspapers was up in arms against Mitha and Reddy. When the Editor-in-Chief of Khidmat, Allama Kashfi, was arrested, the staff of Khidmat sent a memorandum to the prime minister blaming Mitha, Reddy and Aziz Kashmiri for the arrest. The issue was also discussed in the meeting of the Journalists Association.
The deportation of Mitha and Reddy could also be understood better in the backdrop of a news article published in The Khalid Kashmir on May 17, 1947, detailing that a law was passed by the Legislative Assembly of the State of Jammu and Kashmir allowing the outsiders residing in the State for 20 years to be eligible to file a declaration for starting a newspaper.
In light of this regulation, the case of the owner of the Kashmir Times newspaper and Kashmir Times Press, Abdul Rehman Mitha’s declaration being accepted by the District Magistrate Srinagar created much furore. When the declaration papers of Mitha, a resident of Bombay who had been living in Kashmir for some time, were forwarded to the Publicity Office, they were received with scepticism and the case was forwarded to the Prime Minister’s office. The papers took many years to return to the Publicity Office, following which the issue was brought to the notice of the High Court.
The court asked the District Magistrate Srinagar to state the reason behind the acceptance of Mitha’s declaration as Mitha had been residing in Kashmir for not more than five years. When the press came to know about the issue, the Kashmir newspapers started a trial against Mitha and demanded his deportation along with Reddy, his secretary, from Kashmir.
The Post-Partition Kashmir Times
Within less than a decade of the cessation of the Kashmir Times, a different one with the same title was instituted by Ved Bhasin from Delhi in the years ensuing the partition, for which, he solicited one of his friends to file a declaration. Initially, a few issues of the Kashmir Times reached Kashmir, but soon its entry was barred into the State invoking the then Customs Act and copies of the newspaper were detained at Lakhanpur.
On this, Bhasin was left with no option but to return to Kashmir to file a fresh declaration from Srinagar for the Kashmir Times. The district magistrate ordered him to furnish a security deposit of Rs 2000, an amount which was considered too much in 1954. Unable to pay the money himself, Bhasin persuaded his contractor friend in Jammu to file a declaration on his behalf.
This is how the Kashmir Times was revived as a weekly from Jammu in 1954 at the behest of Bhasin. The newspaper that turned into a tabloid for quite some time was afterwards relocated to Srinagar and then once more to Jammu.
The newspaper was converted into a daily in 1964, with Bhasin remaining to be the longest-serving editor of the newspaper for a period spanning around five decades between 1954 and 2000. JN Wali was also associated with the newspaper as an editor.
Sher-e-Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah
The Kashmir Chronicle
As early as 1939, an English weekly Kashmir Chronicle started publishing from First Bridge (Amira Kadal), Srinagar. It was managed by ML Koul. The newspaper belonged to Pt Gawsha Lal Koul who assumed the charge of an information officer in the government.
Koul who edited Kashmir Chronicle was alleged by the government for misusing his official position to clear the pending bills of his newspaper and using government stationery and stamps for his lengthy correspondence for the same. The newspaper was converted into a daily, but couldn’t sustain for long. The newspaper became defunct before October 1949.
According to three different articles published in the Khidmat (November 2, 1943), the Khalid Kashmir (November 19) and the Khidmat (November 11) , the editor of Kashmir Chronicle was arrested under Defence Rules in October 1943 for publishing certain allegations against an officer of Petrol Rationing. The case was brought in the court of City Munsif. He was handcuffed and paraded through the main thoroughfare.
The English Khidmat
Towards the end of 1944, the conductors of Khidmat also started an English edition of Khidmat, which couldn’t survive for long owing to certain factors. It was done in the same year when the Khidmat got converted into a daily on January 5, 1944.
A March 27, 1946 clipping of Khidmat (English) newspaper that Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah founded. KL Image: Nayeem Showkat
Initially associated with Khidmat, ON Dhar became Assistant Editor in Khidmat (English). He later joined the state government as an information assistant and further rose to the post of secretary.
For some time, Dhar also worked as an editor in Kashmir Post, a newspaper from Jammu. It was started by Janki Nath Zutshi, an English language journalist of the erstwhile State.
Zutshi later rose to become the first Director of General Information and Broadcasting of post-1947 Jammu and Kashmir. Zutshi also edited the English weekly Kashmir Sentinel which he launched in 1941 but could survive for only two years.
As per an article published in the Khidmat on September 2, 1943, Zutshi was thrashed by a police constable near Numaish in August 1943. The editor was scheduled to meet the secretary, but the police constable refused. When Zutshi told him to inform the secretary about his arrival for a meeting, the cop lost his cool and started lashing out at him, to which Zutshi reacted, triggering a scuffle. Later, All J&K Editors’ Conference also embroiled themselves in the issue.
The Kashmir Sentinel, which was published in English till the end of 1943, changed its language to Urdu. Evading every logic, the newspaper was blacklisted in November 1943 for not registering any progress in the English language. It is in this context that the newspaper had to change its language to Urdu.
Besides, Shambhoo Nath Kaul of the Vakil also intended to make his newspaper a bilingual publication. It was on January 31, 1945, that Kaul impetrated the consent of authorities to add a few English pages to the contemporaneous volume of the Urdu weekly. The editor was granted permission as he also beseeched that he won’t demand extra newsprint for the same.
Retorting to the editor’s letter, the authorities specified that as far as the price of a single issue of the newspaper was Re 1, and the number of pages not exceeding 26 in a week, no permission was required for such a case. In addition to this conditional permission, it was also communicated to the editor that the consumption of newsprint should not exceed the allocated quota of the newspaper.
Further, the weekly Vitasta was re-launched by Bazaz in English in 1945 but it is said to have ceased its publication within a year or two. However, the name of the Vitasta is found to have been listed in the regularity statement of the local newspapers published from Srinagar for the month of August 1969.
In addition to this, another English newspaper germane to mention New Kashmir was also in circulation. The English weekly New Kashmir edited by Pt SN Tikku and owned by Pt NN Raina was published from Srinagar. It was the same time when the English newspapers emerged to flourish.
Limitations For English Newspaper
Initially, Urdu journalism flourished exponentially, though the English press was quite slow to pick up. Palpably, there were several factors behind the minimal presence of the English press in the State at that time, among which few are more conspicuous than others. The key impetuses were; the absence of a lingua franca, the literacy rate which was almost negligible, inter alia.
A clipping of October 19, 1951, from Srinagar-based Khalsa Gazette about the government’s changed policy on media. KL Image: Nayeem Showkat
By then, Jammu and Kashmir was the most backward state of British India. With as less as 65,000 literates across the state, the Jammu district was comparatively better than other parts of the state, according to the Census Report of India, 1911. The literacy rate of males was 38 per mille as against one female, it is further delineated that there were only four English literate males per mille with no female.
As the Second World War ushered in, a prevalent problem of hyperinflation ensued, sparing none. The journalistic fraternity was in a state of anxiety, vis-à-vis the government’s impassive stance on their plight.
Needless to say, the prices of newsprint were skyrocketing, recording a fivefold increase within 19 months of the war. A newsprint ream selling at Rs 2 before the war cost Rs 12 during the war. So massive was the inexorable increase in the cost of newsprint that soon, the prices escalated to Rs 36 per ream, further marking an increase in the price of almost five hundred per cent and even more than that at a specific time. The enormous increase in the prices of newsprint not only resulted in its shortage, but soon the circumstances befell so worse that newsprint became utterly non-existent in the State. It had a direct bearing on the newspapers hence making the situation difficult for small newspapers.
Besides, the Jammu and Kashmir administration started classifying the newspapers of the state in 1937 during Ayyangar’s period into two categories – ‘Whitelist’ and ‘Blacklist’ – which were further classified into three groups – A-list, B-list and C-list. The advertisements and government press notes were distributed among newspapers accordingly.
Despite all these factors, according to a news article published in The Khidmat on December 18, 1937, it is estimated that there were three dozen newspapers in Jammu and Kashmir till the month of December 1937. The number, according to the Census of India 1941 increased to 44 in the spring of 1941.
The Handbook of Jammu and Kashmir State 1947 complied by the Publicity Department has recorded that Jammu and Kashmir had over 60 newspapers in 1947. However, owing to events in the backdrop of partition, all the existing English and Hindi newspapers in the erstwhile state ceased to survive. Only a dozen or so Urdu newspapers could pull through this afresh irrepressible era of un-freedom of the press.
Around 1947
Unfortunately, the pre-1947 upswing of the English press lost its vigour. By January 1, 1951, only 24 newspapers were published in the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. In its flabbergasting feature, all 23 newspapers, except Jyoti, which was bilingual, were published in Urdu which included; four dailies, 16 weeklies and others. There was no English daily newspaper in Kashmir by this time. The English newspapers established earlier had left off owing to varied inexorable factors.
It was the same time when the amendment in section 5 (A) of the Press Act, Samvat 2008 in October 1951 was brought with an aim to curb the growth of “dummy” and “mushroom” material passing out as a newspaper. Further, the amendment was made to bring the newspapers published in the state to a minimum regularity, volume, size and standard. Notwithstanding its good intention, this amendment hit hard the sundry newspapers which were economically weak but impeccable, to the degree that most of them ceased publication for these ineluctable exigencies.
The newspapers were left with no alternative but to discontinue in the backdrop of the amendment. It was implemented by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s government without seeking any suggestion from the journalist fraternity. Calling it a Black Bill, journalists across the state strongly opposed the legislation when it was still under consideration.
The Act was amended by the government at a time when only a few newspapers were able to publish, and the majority succumbed to the emergency. The amendments stated that a newspaper would be considered to have ceased printing and publishing if it printed and published less than 24 separate issues (each with a minimum of four pages and 896 square inches of printed space) for daily newspapers, and less than four issues per calendar month (each with a minimum of ten pages and 1344 square inches of printed space) for weekly newspapers.
Moreover, with the amendments to 5 (A) and the rules listed in the background, the absence of electricity during winters became a tool of censorship, leaving newspapers with no choice but to submit a new declaration as required by the prevailing press law.
A November 17, 1951 clipping from Noor newspaper about the amendemnts in the press act. KL Image: Nayeem Showkat
The government believed that certain weekly newspapers were unable to meet their publication deadlines, particularly during the winter months. This was due to the fact that these newspapers did not own printing presses and the supply of electricity during winter was often unreliable.
As a result, newspapers sometimes remained unprinted for several days due to the lack of electricity in the press. This lack of electricity, which was often caused by the challenging geography of Kashmir, became a crucial tool for authorities to force newspapers to cease publication for not publishing enough issues in particular time frames. Primarily, it was the reason for the conversion of four to five daily newspapers into weekly newspapers.
Tragically, the Act had no saving clause which was a major issue. Later on, the government realized that section 5(A) doesn’t provide any saving clause as the newspaper has to cease publication directly and file a fresh declaration in case it wants to re-appear. There might be some other unavoidable reasons beyond the control of the printer and publisher of the newspaper for not abiding by the rules.
As a delayed follow-up, it was decided that newspapers that do not comply with the provisions of Section 5(A) will not be considered to have ceased to be printed or published, and no legal action will be taken against them until the law is amended. However, these “irregular” newspapers were barred from receiving government advertisements, court notices, and other facilities enjoyed by regular newspapers. Interestingly, the officials would “convey” to tens of thousands of tourists, mostly foreigners, that Kashmir lacks an English newspaper!
The Kashmir News
This sorry state of affairs eventually led the administration to jump in and fill the gulf. It conceived an idea to publish Kashmir News, a 4-page English daily morning newspaper from March 15, 1952. The newspaper was supposed to print the government’s publicity material, which then was perdurable in the form of pamphlets, and special and annual numbers.
This newspaper was to be issued from a hand press as no linotype machine was yet available in the erstwhile State – as per the government record – and was expected to initially follow the pattern of evening news published in Delhi. Accordingly, a proposal was moved to Prime Minister’s Office for consent.
The idea, however, could not follow the script. On November 14, 1951, the cabinet suggested information department start a four-page or less government news sheet without editorials from March 1952 for a period of nine months as an experimental measure.
The approval was entirely different from what had been proposed. With this, the idea of commencing an English daily, which would bridge the communication gap between English speakers, through the agency of the government in the State couldn’t take shape.
A Survival Issue
In 1954, newspapers like KashmirTimes, and Kashmir Post, were hitting the stands. Despite that, what makes the region quite a peculiar case in this regard is that it lacked periodicals in lingua franca for quite a long time.
The report of the Enquiry Committee on Small Newspapers, 1965 saw that the number of newspapers in the State remained almost steady during the last 10 to 20 years. The report revealed that it was only recently that owing to the easiness in filing and acceptance of declarations, new publications have emerged.
The Committee further noted that by virtue of the existing Press Law, a non-resident of Jammu and Kashmir was not permitted to file a declaration to initiate a newspaper in the State. However, it asserted that the state government at that time was ready to provide all the reasonable facilities to a bona fide non-resident Indian who wished to institute a newspaper in English or in Urdu from Srinagar or Jammu.
The Committee estimated that there were 76 periodicals being published mostly from Srinagar and Jammu in the category of small newspapers and periodicals. Barring one Hindi and one English, all the remaining newspapers of different periodicities in circulation at that time in the state were Urdu. The daily newspapers were mostly 20x3e0 cms four-sheets. The prices of the dailies varied between 10 paise and 15 paise.
The First Verification
Data available with the Registrar of Newspapers for India (RNI) reveals that the first-ever verification of a title from Jammu and Kashmir was made on December 19, 1957. As per the record, there were some 15 verifications made on the same day.
Ved Bhasin in his last days. KL Image: Masood Hussain
It was eight years after the establishment of RNI when noted Kashmiri historian Rasheed Taseer became the first to register a newspaper from Jammu and Kashmir. Taseer registered Muhafiz, an Urdu weekly from Srinagar in 1964. The next year, 1965, witnessed the registration of 21 new publications. Thereupon, English newspapers started hitting the stands frequently.
The following decade saw an upswing in the registration of English press in the region. The number of English newspapers and periodicals increased to 19 in 1977, according to the report of Press in India, 1977. With a total of 143 periodicals, 13 were bilingual and multilingual, five were Hindi two each were Kashmiri, Dogri and Punjabi and 100 were Urdu.
The English periodicals included; Economic Post, Srinagar; the fortnightly Education News and Views, Srinagar; Excelsior, Jammu; Jammu and Kashmir Agriculture Newsletter; Jammu and Kashmir Legislature; Jammu Express; Jammu Times; the weekly Kashmir Herald, Srinagar; the weekly Kashmir Post, Jammu; the daily Kashmir Times, Jammu; Sports Columns, Jammu; the weekly Student Express, Jammu; the weekly Student Times, Jammu; the weekly Voice of the Day, Jammu; the weekly BT-LITZ KRIEG, the weekly Young Era, Jammu, etc.
Post-1990s could be considered the golden period for the development of English journalism in Kashmir. The beginning of the twenty-first century saw English journalism become as popular in Kashmir as Urdu was.
As per the data retrieved from the official website of the RNI on March 8, 2017, 1,326 titles have been verified from Jammu and Kashmir since 1957 till the aforementioned date. The data analysis shows that out of a total of 1,326 verified titles, 1,176 periodicals have been registered so far from the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh.
The RNI
The RNI was established on July 1, 1956, based on the recommendation of the First Press Commission of India. Dividing the time into six decades until 2016, the data reveals that 34 periodicals were registered in the first decade between 1957 and 1966, 169 in the second decade – 1967 to 1976, 105 in the third decade, between 1977 and 1986, 117 in the fourth decade – 1987 and 1996, 200 in the fifth decade, between 1997 and 2006, and 551 in the last decade – 2007 to 2016.
Nayeem Showkat (Media Scholar)
Among these 1,176 titles, 485 have been registered in English, while 447 in Urdu and 10 in Kashmiri. Out of 485 registered English newspapers, 302 were located in Jammu, 180 in Kashmir, and the remaining three in Ladakh.
The Press in India report of 2013-14 puts the cumulative circulation of the periodicals in Jammu and Kashmir at around 10 million – 9627424. Out of this, the cumulative circulation of English newspapers was more than five million – 5393275, while Urdu newspapers had a circulation of more than two and a half million – 2682839.
(The writer is a Post-doctoral Fellow in Media Studies at the Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi.)
Pratapgarh: Lovelesh Tiwari, one of the accused in the murders of gangster Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf, is active on the social media despite being lodged in the Pratapgarh jail.
The Banda police are said to have taken serious cognisance of the contents posted on Tiwari’s social media accounts over the last two weeks.
The posts are inflammatory and hateful in nature, according to the police.
One of the accounts with the name “Maharaj Lovelesh Tiwari ChuChu” has been locked.
SP Banda Abhinandan said the police were trying to look for the person handling Tiwari’s social media accounts.
“We have started an investigation. This is serious,” he said.
Tiwari is one of the three hitmen who eliminated the brothers, who were in police custody, on April 15 in Prayagraj.
One of the posts shared on April 19 asked if people supported Tiwari. The post elicited 326 votes, with 42 likes and six comments.
In another account, a picture of Tiwari with his parents was shared on April 24.
A similar picture was posted on April 19 in another profile that is locked.
On Monday, eight posts were updated in quick succession on what is said to Tiwari’s primary account.
They were hateful in nature.
Officials said it appeared that others have access to Tiwari’s accounts and were posting on his behalf.
Bareilly: Police in this Uttar Pradesh district arrested a village head on Monday for allegedly hurting religious sentiments by uploading an objectionable video on a social media platform, an official said.
According to police, Mohammad Arif alias Guddu, the “pradhan” of Bhikampur village located within the Bhojipura police station limits, had uploaded a video on Facebook that showed a temple flag being brought down and the hoisting of an Islamic flag there.
Superintendent of Police (Rural) Raj Kumar Agarwal said the social media cell of the Bareilly police sent the video to the Bhojipura police station, which found out that it was Arif who had uploaded it.
Based on a complaint from Sub-Inspector Modi Singh, a case was registered against the accused under sections 295A (deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs) and 153 (wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and provisions of the Information Technology Act.
The SP said acting on a tip-off, police arrested Arif, who confessed that he had uploaded the video on Facebook.
According to police, a number of cases are registered against Arif.
