Iftikhar Gilani, Editor of Strategic Affairs at DNA, recently visited the city on the occasion of National Press Day. The son-in-law of Kashmiri separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Iftikhar has faced police excesses several times. He was arrested in 2002 on false charges of violating the Official Secrets Act. A decade later, he was again detained after Afzal Guru’s execution. But nothing could change the soft-spoken but determined Kashmiri and the lopsided system in the country could not invoke an iota of hatred in him. Daiaphira Kharsati caught up with the renowned journalist at Shillong Club on his first visit to any northeastern state. He shared anecdotes on the ongoing chaos in Jammu and Kashmir and the transformation of journalism. He also commented on the freedom of expression in an atmosphere where there is a government which has its own ideology on the Kashmir issue and separatists who have different ideology. Excerpts:
How the Jammu and Kashmir problem can be solved?
The problem in Jammu and Kashmir is not something which is only 70 years old and the main problem in Jammu & Kashmir had been that for the last 400 years, people have not identified themselves with the rulers as there have been occupations by Mughals, Dogras, Sikhs and Afghans. After 1947, there should have been a kind of a sense given to the people that now onwards they are not under occupation but under democratic rule. That unfortunately, has not happened in Kashmir which is a main and much bigger problem. It has been given a kind of a political, social and economic disempowerment, ingrained in the minds of the people and that actually need to be settled down.
There had been successive hijacking of the elections and then the systems in the country like the media, Election Commission, Supreme Court and other system did not come to the rescue of J&K, which has given the some kind of impression in Kashmir that there is nobody in India listening to them not even the national media.
That is why I mentioned that in 1987 elections where there was mass participation of youth and it is those youth who have come to vote for a particular candidate or a particular political party but their mandate was hijacked, elections were rigged, counting halls were hijacked, persons who won were declared defeated and then thrown into jail for many years. This incident threw J&K in a tailspin as people who had chosen the ballot instead chose the bullet, went for training and started the arms movement which is continuing till now and it has consumed more than 1 lakh lives now.
Gun is never a solution. It was not even a solution, gun in Kashmir were taken out by youth under compulsion. If you had removed the compulsion, they would not have taken up the gun. The issue is that what exactly compels a person to take up the gun? Once he takes up the gun, he knows that he will be killed. The problem for those who rule the country/state is to remove those issues where a young man finds himself compelled to be killed. They have a far greater responsibility than the one taking up the gun. Connectivity and movement of people from place to place can address the problem of insurgency, despondency and issues of the gun.
What are the difficulties you face working in a trouble-torn area where there are varied views on the Kashmir issue? How do you define freedom of expression in the current situation?
The separatists’ ideology is not in a vacuum. When Sheikh Omar Abdullah, who was the biggest separatist in Kashmir and the tallest leader of Kashmir, became chief minister he tried to address some things. That was a peaceful period in Kashmir. If Sheikh Abdullah who is a separatist can come into the mainstream, others can also come but you need to address the issues that make them separatists.
Role of media…
The role of media is important. Look at the 1987 elections in which the media did not report that elections were rigged, they did not make a kind of an issue.
You are the son-in-law of Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani who is opposing forcible Indian occupation of Jammu and Kashmir. Has this affected your profession?
I became a journalist first and after many years, became the son-in-law of Geelani. You can ask anybody who have worked with me in Delhi. I have tried my best to be objective, fair, to be at least fearless as well and I spent almost one year also in Delhi Tihar jail in between 2002 and 2003. (Gilani’s stint in jail prompted him to write a book after his release, My days in prison, published by Penguin in 2005 and in 2007, he won the Sahitya Akademi Award for the book)
How has journalism changed?
Journalism has undergone technological transformation. But the technological transformation has brought some issues also in which journalists to not adhere to those standards in which journalists should. Sometimes, they go overboard. Some reporters, mostly of electronic media, tend to support one group or the other and become a tool of that system. The governments have become very clever and tend to make the media a forced multiplier. I think we should desist and resist from becoming a forced multiplier.