Prevented from visiting Kashmir last week, a delegation of activists lashed out at the government for seeking to project a false narrative of “normalcy” in the valley. 

“If everything is normal, then what is the need for maintaining a clampdown in the valley for two months?” questioned Sandeep Pandey, Ramon Magsaysay Award winner and head of the National Alliance of People’s Movements, a network of grassroots organisations in India, who was a part of the delegation.

Pandey was speaking at a press conference in Delhi on Saturday, a day after his delegation — including Prafulla Samantara of the Lok Shakti Abhiyan, and Faisal Khan, Mohammad Javed Malik and Musthafa Mohamed of the Khudai Khidmatgar — was detained at the Srinagar airport and forcibly returned to Delhi. 

Pandey said their intention was not to organise a protest in the valley but merely to speak with the people and understand what hardships they were facing because of the lockdown. 

“The media isn’t allowed to do their job properly,” Pandey later told Newslaundry, explaining the need for independent observers to visit the valley and report the reality. “My friend Anuradha Bhasin, editor of Kashmir Times, told me she is not able to bring out the Srinagar edition of the newspaper but the Jammu edition is published easily. There is just one media centre in Kashmir with four computers and a landline. Journalists have to wait for hours for their turn to send a story. She said her correspondent gets to use the landline once every two or three days.”

Pandey also bemoaned the “poor quality” of the Indian media’s reportage on Kashmir as compared to the foreign media. “One major reason why the Indian media is found lacking is because of its dependence on government for advertisements and revenue whereas the foreign media has no such dependence.” 

If that wasn’t troubling enough, he added, it is clear that under the BJP government there is a “clampdown on the media due to which we only get to know one side of the story”.

Speaking at the press conference, Faisal Khan said the situation in Kashmir has engendered a sense of pervasive fear. “I was on a flight with a few soldiers who were going back home for Dussehra and Diwali,” he said, referring to his flight back from Srinagar. “I was with them for an hour and 10 minutes and felt extremely uncomfortable. I was very conscious about the movements of my hands and body. What if I accidentally touch them? I might get a firm punch in my face. If this is my experience with a few military men for an hour, one can understand what the people of Kashmir have to face with six lakh military personnel in the valley.”

Khan said several Kashmiris he knows wanted him to visit the valley, so he went “for the sake of humanity”. “After all, India was celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Bapu which symbolises peace and love, so I thought nobody would stop me,” he added. It turned out that he was wrong.  

Criticising the BJP government’s abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution which provided Jammu and Kashmir a degree of autonomy, he said, “The government wants to break Kashmir at all levels, financial and political. They want to destroy apple and walnut farming, they want to break the economy, they are keeping the state’s leaders under house arrest. They’re breaking the state up into pieces.”

Samantara claimed the government “is desperately trying to open schools in Kashmir but the parents find it difficult to send children because of uncertainty related to transportation”. “It is also the case that some schools are being used as camps for paramilitary forces,” he added.

The activists demanded that the central government “facilitate the holding of the Assembly election at the earliest”, and then have the decision taken by it on Article 370 “approved by the Assembly if it believes it is in the interest of the people of Jammu and Kashmir”.