Abstract
Journalists from India-administered Kashmir have endured the psycho-social brunt of living in a militarized zone. Restrictions imposed on the media by the governing class in a neoliberal milieu function to regulate the narrative on the conflict with the help of agenda setting. This analysis identifies themes of direct, indirect and structural violence, and shows how psychological symptoms such as anxiety, alienation, hypervigilance, helplessness, depression and trauma emerge from them. Employing thematic analysis coupled with a deductive approach, the author highlights how working conditions of the journalists shape their psycho-social wellbeing. In-depth interviews with Kashmiri photojournalists, journalists and editors (print and digital) and secondary sources, such as local and international studies on the psychological wellbeing of the population in general, demonstrate the psycho-social wellbeing of journalists in the Kashmir Valley.
Background
Kashmir is the longest running unresolved conflicts at the United Nations where state violence is viewed as an agency for assertion of assimilation in this contested territory (Guy et al., 2016). In Kashmir, the Indian governing class, both at the local and central levels, has sought to discipline and punish anyone wavering on the issue of singular allegiance to the twin monoliths of state and nation (Jalal, 1990). For the purpose of this study, the distinction between the two governing structures is not pertinent as far as subjects are concerned and they should be recognized simply as power that all citizens encounter daily. Power has employed several mechanisms such as military force and unconstitutional legal structures that offer impunity to the perpetrators of state violence to crush the movement for self-determination in the disputed region for several decades (Kaul, 2018). This has resulted in killing of civilians by troops, torture, rapes and molestation, enforced disappearances and the discovery of over 7,000 mass graves – a host of indicators of a militarized society (Boga, 2019; Fatima and Mushtaq, 2016). Furthermore, impunity for mass rapes in Kunan and Poshpora, killings of unarmed civilians in the Amarnath land row mass demonstrations, protests against the Shopian rapes and murder, and the cyclic uprising of 2010, as well as massacres of civilians in Sopore and Gaw Kadal in the early 1990s to name a few, have remained etched in public memory (Boga, 2019).
Until 2019, Jammu and Kashmir had a semi-autonomous status as a state, when the governing class revoked it. After Narendra Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept to power in 2014, the party reiterated its intention to repeal Article 370 of the Indian Constitution – a special citizenship law that protected the jobs and land rights of local residents (Ahmad and Parihar, 2022). Draconian laws criminalize dissent in even a democratic space as they are used as coercive state apparatuses. Nearly every rule has an exception, raising the possibility of a different result even under a uniform rule. Therefore, the malleability and manipulation of law often favour violence by power (Parry, 2006). Over seven decades, this nature of governance in Kashmir has produced a similar pattern. The use of laws, coupled with impunity for coercive state apparatuses are obvious indicators of a militarized space. Here, Gramsci’s theory of hegemony demonstrates the means by which those in power subjugate groups or individuals in ways that are coercive, not overtly by force.
Through the structural mechanisms described above, power sets its agenda to further expand, contain information that conceals its undemocratic actions nationally and internationally, to make invisible the public’s perspectives/demand and replace them with a statist version of incidents and/or political processes. This process not only produces a simulated version of the region but also explicitly affirms the governing class’s will to build and then exploit the media through various means, turning it into its extension. The media thus ends up situating itself as a complementary factor to the existing superstructure – a secondary power-wielding mechanism that regulates public opinion. As conflict reporting focuses more on events (violence/episodic reporting) and not processes (thematic reporting) that lead to it or the intricacies of its outcome in various spheres, it becomes difficult to interpret conflicts. Not only is the information not set in historical, socio-political or economic contexts, but events are selectively reported and processes concealed, subverted, moulded, exaggerated, spectacularized, made extra important, misrepresented or propagandized to suit seen or unseen agendas. The media is instrumentalized strategically to exclude certain identities while magnifying others, with its core function of reinforcing hyper-nationalism and the emotions associated with it. It not only carves identities to suit power’s agendas but also redefines the purpose of groups that oppose the superstructure in a neo-colonial space. This covert misappropriation by power ends up achieving a refeudalization of the public sphere under a capitalistic democracy as it misrepresents reality (Goode, 2005). Those who attempt to produce a counter-narrative are either co-opted or targeted in the militarized space, both within and outside the purview of law.
The governing class has resorted to tactics to crush political dissent and the movement for self-determination through structural mechanisms which constitute unconstitutional measures and counterinsurgency tactics. Gramsci (1975) deconstructs this practice by emphasizing that unitarian fanaticism produces a permanent atmosphere of suspicion towards anything that might smack of separatism. Over time, the violence and denial of justice by the repressive governing class systematically erodes the social fabric of the society, creating and sustaining unending cycles of violence and, over time, adversely affecting the psycho-social being of the public. Militarism, accentuated by neoliberalism, since the 1990s, has had multidimensional implications – from livelihood to psycho-social wellbeing. In the process of this occupation, Kashmiri journalists who are a part of the populace are being targeted because of their crucial function of informing the public, which is also a function of power within a neoliberal governance framework. Said (1994) explains that the power to narrate, or to block other narratives from forming and emerging, is very important to culture and imperialism, and constitutes one of the main connections between them. And the hegemonic state, in order to proliferate its media narrative to win in the context of information warfare, subverts the media, which may be considered as a pedagogical, political and cultural entity as it functions as an extension of power to propagate a uniform outlook on issues that affect the public. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony describes how the state and ruling capitalist class – the bourgeoisie – use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies. In Gramsci’s view, the bourgeoisie develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, or coercion. Here, media, which are owned by the corporate class which has close ties to the governing class play a crucial role in controlling the public. In India, the media witnessed drastic changes in their ownership structures since liberalization in the 1990s and have been employed effectively by the governing class that merged with the corporate class (Rajagopal, 2017; Shahin, 2022). With hyper commercialization and growing corporate control comes an implicit bias in media content, and consumerism, class inequality and individualism tend to be taken as natural and even benevolent, whereas political activity, civic values and anti-market activities are marginalized (Spichal, 2004: 17). Because of its policies and ideologies, neoliberal capitalism increased distress and contributes to rising rates of psychiatric disorders (Zeira, 2022). It not only impacts the individual but also social networks, economy and society as it encourages individualism. This, in turn, decreases emphasis on the need for community and social connection for fulfilment, further leading to isolation and alienation. Additionally, consumerism, commercialization and materialism that are essential aspects of neoliberalism cause symptoms of anxiety and depression with poorer relationships and lower self-esteem among those who feel they have not achieved ‘success’ (James, 2008). Also, with advances in technology since the 1990s and the role of the internet, neoliberalism has even contributed to military technology and thereby violence. For example, cyber weapons are not only cheap but are also widely available to both state and non-state actors. Non-kinetic or computer network attacks, which rely on software vulnerabilities, are an integral arm of statecraft used to confuse enemy signals, shut down military attacks before they occur, orchestrate sophisticated influence and disinformation campaign and stymie communication systems in various spheres – not just the military but private citizens, businesses, government, academia, trade and commerce (Halpern, 2019). Naturally, trauma, anxiety and helplessness that stem from militarism impact mental health. In fact, Wenzel et al. (2015) found that violence has a long-term impact on mental health and even affects the second and third generation. Over time, Kokorikou et al. (2023), Eisenberg-Guyot and Prins (2022), Olivier (2015), Butler (2019), Matthews (2019) and Schmitt (2017) have made noteworthy contributions to critically assess the relationship between capitalism and mental health, and concluded that capitalism’s mental health effects need to consider other axes of power such as racism, sexism, colonialism and imperialism which exacerbate the situation and lead to alienation, exploitation and domination in the public. For example, in India, there has been a rise in ethnonationalism since the 1990s (Boga and Ranjan, 2022). In such a scenario, those who dissent against power are controlled with all forms of violence – direct, indirect and structural. Those journalists who refuse to comply with power are consequently targeted in spaces where there is habitualization of violence. As they do not partake in the agenda-setting function of the establishment to spread propaganda and speak truth to power, they end up suffering the consequences of authoritarian modes of governance.
Within such a context, agenda setting in the media by the governing class serves to control the public and becomes an essential component in maintaining a democratic façade. This mechanism is effectively used by the governing class to exercise its hegemonic power over the public and expand it. Agenda setting can occur from casual or passive exposure to media. As agendas are defined by wider ranges of content and communication channels, agenda setting is the flow of the salience of the top issues of the moment from the news media to the public agenda (McCombs et al., 2014). In regulating the Kashmir dispute’s narrative in the public domain, the governing class, nationally and internationally, target the media which is its coercive mechanism, its pedagogical tool and may be considered as a state apparatus (Boga and Ranjan, 2022). In a bid to present a one-sided statist view of the conflict in order to further their agendas and justify violence on the public, agenda setting becomes a necessary tool to crush dissent, expand hegemony and fracture the people’s movement for self-determination. Thus, media personnel in Kashmir become subjugated twice over – at one level due to their position in Kashmiri society as citizens and, at another level, due to their profession. This explains the reason for manoeuvres operationalized by the governing class against journalists in Kashmir.
Media uses power, allies with power and becomes power as it determines how conflict is generated and how it is portrayed at all levels. Media becomes a powerful apparatus for ideologies which reproduce the values and structures that are active in the maintenance of class inequality, thus making them an instrument of regimes of stratification and inequality. Kashmir thus becomes a construction of a symbolic world by media as it obliterates the suffering of the public at the hands of power. Fanon (1963) clarifies that post-colonial history must be read as the history of trauma, or as the subversive return of the repressed. In that sense, acts of subversion, in Kashmir’s case, the act of truth telling by journalists, brings them oppression and subjugation as colonial subjects who have been stripped of their rights. Therefore, it is significant to highlight the working conditions of journalists who operate in this neo-colonial heavily militarized space, firstly as citizens and, additionally, in their professional capacity of those not only bearing witness to social and political realities but also having the power to communicate these realities as a counter-narrative to the national media (Boga, 2019). After this comprehensive background on Kashmir exposing the various facets of militarization, the following section illustrates India’s position with regard to its democratic standards within an ethnonationalist neoliberal context and its impact on media since the 2014 elections.
From the world’s largest democracy to electoral autocracy
In 2021, the Sweden-based V-Dem Institute found that India had become an ‘electoral autocracy’ (V-dem.net, 2021). India, described as a ‘flawed democracy’, also slipped two places to 53rd position in the latest Democracy Index. V-dem said that the sharpest decline was visible in government censorship of the media, repression of civil society organizations and the autonomy of the Election Commission of India. There was a high degree of media bias and a fall in academic and religious freedoms, the report elaborated. V-dem added autocratization begins with ruling governments attacking the media and civil society, followed by polarization of the society by ‘disrespecting opponents and spreading false information’ and culminates in elections being undermined. Consequently, India’s ranking in the 2023 World Press Freedom Index slipped to 161 out of 180 countries, according to Reporters Without Borders (The Hindu Bureau, 2023).
This article relates the working conditions of journalists to the media theory of agenda setting, a function of the neoliberal governing class to control the narrative of the contested space for its domestic and international audience. The narratives below will reveal how anxiety, depression and trauma, among other symptoms, are a product of the governing class’s agenda setting function in Kashmir within a neoliberal context. The sections below will therefore illuminate the challenges they face.
First, I focus on psychological symptoms which reveal the impact on their psycho-social wellbeing, especially in the light of the governing class’s agenda setting function in the media sphere, thus enabling identification of the diverse implications of the hegemonic occupation. Let us begin by focusing on the working conditions of the journalists in the Kashmir Valley that indicate specific steps taken by power to set the agenda for the media narrative on the contested space. Media narratives determine how Kashmir’s freedom struggle is perceived in India and abroad – through the lens of terror or as a seven-decade movement for self-determination. Therefore, controlling its tone through agenda setting is of pivotal importance to power as a part of information warfare.
Working conditions of journalists
This section shows how media personnel in Kashmir navigate various impediments instituted by the governing class in a bid to set the agenda for the narrative of the conflict. The region’s media institutions have been under pressure from the governing class since 1947 (Boga, 2020). But now they are at breaking point with a rising number of detentions of journalists psychologically building up internal pressure for self-censorship (Barkley, 2022).
Through the ages, militarized societies often produce problems that cannot be resolved without subtracting daily violence and humiliation. A study conducted in Kashmir reveals a high prevalence of trauma due to exposure to direct violence in the general population – firing or explosion (82.4% in men and 79.68% in women), followed by exposure to combat or war zone (75.18% in men and 70.31% in women) (Margoob et al., 2006). Dar et al. (2023) also found that trauma and stress increased the risk of depression, anxiety, and behavioral problems among children and adolescents in complex ways. The prevalence of trauma was 100 percent in both males and females, a cross-sectional study of 693 students conducted on the prevalence of trauma in all 10 districts of Kashmir confirmed (Dar and Deb, 2022). The traumatic events with the highest rate of prevalence were ‘feeling stressed’ (97.3%), followed by ‘fear of search operations, crackdowns or curfews’ (89.2%); ‘witnessing a protest or being part of it’ (88.3%); ‘a family member, relative or friend being hit with a bullet, pellet, or any other explosive’ (76.5%); and ‘exposure to violent media portrayals’ (74.3%). Both studies on mental health unravel the correlation between violence and poor mental health among the public. The psychological effects of working under such conditions will be highlighted in the following paragraphs.
The media in Kashmir also circumvent structural barriers imposed by the governing class that include the use of legislative and executive power to create perceptions and behaviors to legitimize control such as the media policy 2020 which aims to replace ‘negative’ coverage of the government with positive content (Showkat and Naqash, 2023). In contrast, Kaul (2018), Pandow and Kanth (2021) and Boga (2023) term the jingoistic Indian media’s reporting of Kashmir an agenda to legitimize the governing class’s claim over the disputed region, serving the state. For example, online archives of local newspapers have been disappearing as an attempt to erase memory, impacting the historical understanding of the conflict while replacing it with a propagandistic version through a subservient mainstream media (Boga, 2019). To exacerbate matters, 22 Kashmiri journalists appeared on the no-fly list as of September 2021 (Barkley, 2022; Hassan, 2021). Commenting on the impact on journalism, Ramani (2020) elaborates that what qualifies as regular journalism in other parts of India is seen here as ‘anti-national’ and ‘glorifying terrorism’. Such ethnonationalist overtones are a product of the neoliberal system of governance within a rapidly eroding democracy. The governing class has also used internet shutdowns as part of a larger campaign to stem the demand for self-determination. India’s internet shutdown in Kashmir is the longest ever in a democracy (Masih and Irfan, 2022; Pandow and Kanth, 2021). Surveillance, another form of structural violence, has intensified with at least five journalists featuring on the list of those spied upon using the Pegasus software, and the police have set up a social media cell in which the public posts of journalists and others are scrutinized as another parameter to categorize them as ‘nationalist’ or ‘anti-nationalist’ (Pandow and Kanth, 2021: 64). Through these tools, the governing class maintains stringent control over the narrative surrounding its human rights abuses (Barkley, 2022). The next section outlines the research methodology of this exploratory study.
Methodology
For several decades in Kashmir, media personnel have been working under extenuating circumstances, negotiating with different forms of violence, along with the uninterrupted stress and trauma that accompany it (Boga, 2019). As this article is part of a doctoral thesis, eight open-ended interviews with two print journalists, two columnists, one web editor (digital), and three photojournalists employed by local, national, and international news agencies/wire services or publications (newspapers and websites) were conducted as a part of this qualitative research study.
The inclusion criterion for the interviewees was that they were regular contributors to local, national, and international publications for at least 10 years. As photojournalists are required to be on the field, their input is noteworthy compared to some reporters who interact with their subjects via telephone. The rationale for the length of their professional tenure enabled the participants of the study to have a wide range of rich experiences over time in the field which are essential for this study. Recurrent themes emerged from all eight participants after a Thematic Analysis (TA) of their responses. TA is a method for systematically identifying, organizing, and offering insights into patterns of meaning (themes) and allows the researcher to see and make sense of collective or shared meanings and experiences in the collected data. The patterns of meaning that emerge from TA allows the researcher to identify the significance in relation to a research question . The analysis produces the answer to a question, even if, as in some qualitative research, the specific question that is being answered only becomes apparent through the analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2012).
With a deductive approach, the researcher brings to the data a series of ideas that are used to interpret the data, which lend significance to the themes (Braun and Clarke, 2012). The data (interviews) were collected over one year as a part of research for a doctoral thesis on an analysis of the local, national, and international print media on Kashmir from 1990–2010. For the purposes of protecting the identity of the editors (print and digital), reporters, and photojournalists who work in the conflict zone, the interviews have been anonymized. In the in-depth interviews, recurring themes of being ‘trapped’, being under pressure by the authorities, feeling helpless, traumatized by attacks or threats and not having freedom to do their jobs were identified.
Secondary research material such as psychological studies spanning over a decade have been used to highlight the psychological wellbeing of the population of Kashmir in general. In particular, operating in an environment that endangers themselves and their families, media personnel deal with direct and indirect violence, threats, and structural violence while reporting in the Kashmir Valley. These measures enliven the theory of agenda setting in the media by power in a bid to control the narrative on Kashmir nationally and internationally (Boga, 2010; Boga and Ranjan, 2022). For the purpose of this study, I use Kumar’s (2020) definition which elucidates that psychosocial wellbeing incorporates the physical, economic, social, mental, emotional, cultural and spiritual determinants of health. Wellbeing of an individual includes coping with the various stresses of everyday living and realization of the full potential of an individual as a productive member of the society (Kumar, 2020: 676–686). The elements that constitute psychosocial well-being will be explored in connection with the journalists interviewed below. Their experiences will allow the reader to comprehend the circumstances and factors that shape psychosocial wellbeing. Let us now shift our gaze to what journalists endure as part of their profession in Kashmir.
Cost of bearing witness: Neo-colonial experiences
This section unravels the barriers the media attempt to negotiate in Kashmir. Fulfilling their function of agenda setting, the governing class institutes restrictive mechanisms that impact journalists and their output. In-depth interviews confirm that Kashmiri journalists face a host of challenges presented by various coercive state apparatuses in the militarized neo-colony, impacting their psycho-social wellbeing. To outline the mechanics of oppression and their effects, this section has been divided into broad themes. Despite the segregation of the cause and effect links, overlapping psychological symptoms appear in all sections (see the Appendix). These psychological effects may further be compounded by power’s accompanying influences in daily life.
Indirect violence, anxiety, and alienation
Navigating institutionalized violence, Interviewee 4, a freelance photojournalist from an international agency who has been working in the Kashmir Valley for 20 years, describes the restraints he functions under and reflects on the fate of the Fourth Estate in Kashmir: The government lays curbs on phones, internet and texting services. People who consider journalists to be the ‘fourth pillar of society’ do not realize that actually the profession is in a shambles, especially in strife-torn regions.
Blocking communication, an essential feature of reportage, creates barriers and prevents journalists from carrying out their function of disseminating news to the public. Unable to circumvent the information blockade, journalists fail to report events and processes that the governing class wants to conceal, compromising their professional obligations and bringing the risk of losing their jobs. Induced censorship erodes democratic principles as the governing class fulfills its agenda-setting function through the media. Within a neoliberal framework that encourages militarism, the powers-that-be have dealt with the political dispute militarily and concealed state atrocities with the help of the national media (Boga, 2019). This quote also highlights his helplessness at the structural violence that is meted out by the powers-that-be under the guise of securitization. Simultaneously, not being able to tell the story of their people also makes them enemies in the eyes of the local public who feel that the journalists are succumbing to pressure from the governing class and are not discharging their duty. This creates a fracture between local journalists and the society they come from, alienating and isolating them while inducing suspicion, paranoia, and hypervigilance. The journalists’ inability to trust society, fuels paranoia, adversely affecting their psycho-social wellbeing. At a macro level, this destroys social cohesion and creates fractures in the movement for self-determination as a divided people cannot organize and agitate to gain freedom from their oppressors.
Detrimental effects of such subjugation have widespread repercussions as shown by research. In a long-term study of 18,212 respondents from seven countries, researchers found that exposure to civil violence was associated with an elevated risk of mental disorders among civilians for many years after initial exposure (Axinn et al., 2023). This study used data from cross-sectional World Health Organisation, World Mental Health (WMH) surveys administered to households between 5 February 2001 and 5 January 2022, in countries that experienced periods of civil violence after World War II (Argentina, Colombia, Lebanon, Nigeria, Northern Ireland, Peru and South Africa). In another study, symptoms in Nepalese survivors of violence were found to be varied and not solely attributed to violent experiences and memories but also to everyday stressors related to survivors’ economic, social, and familial situations; therefore, researchers recommended the development of context-specific and holistic psychosocial interventions focusing on well-being, social determinants of health and human rights (Kienzler and Sapkota, 2020). For the study, interviews were carried out with 25 people (14 men, 11 women) aged 30 to 65 in Dang district in 2013, and they were asked about their war experiences and present-day economic and social situations. Correspondingly, drawing on the findings of recent studies that have examined the relationship of both war exposure and daily stressors to mental health status, Miller and Rasmussen (2010) extrapolate that the chronicity of daily stressors has the potential to deplete coping mechanisms, therefore directly affecting the capacity to cope with traumatogenic events and increasing the likelihood of symptoms of mental distress.
Foregrounding the neoliberal context, Boggs and Pollard (2006) maintain that increased government, military, and corporate powers bring with them more refined weapons and increased powers of surveillance. While these may be indispensable to the imperial project, the one thing they cannot furnish by themselves is the necessary legitimation, that is, ‘the ability to endorse and justify this project in the public mind’. That task is ‘the function of media culture’, which is why the governing class, through its various mechanisms surveils, makes invisible, influences and weaponizes the media according to its agendas.
Corroborating these theories, Interviewee 8, a local journalist working for a decade, cites the insecurity of his job, his life, and those of his loved ones as being a primary factor affecting Kashmiri journalists. Recalling physical intimidation on at least three occasions, he emphasizes the feeling of insecurity: Insecurity of job and life and intimidation (direct or veiled) by various parties to the Kashmir conflict. Veiled threats would also be passed through phone calls. There were times as well, when government forces pointed their guns at me during assignments. There were occasions when I had to stay at my office because of a hostile situation and an imminent life threat by the government forces during the mass uprisings of 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Interviewee 8 admits there are ‘blurry boundaries’ that journalists navigate daily and that every journalist has to ‘walk on a razor’s edge while reporting’. When authorities refuse to comment on issues of relevance, the ‘balance’ that journalists are asked to maintain is skewed because a realistic portrayal of incidents would paint the authorities in an autocratic light. Such reportage may adversely pose a risk to the security of their jobs. Interviewee 8 elaborates: A small mistake can land one in trouble. For instance, the police and the army were very annoyed with my stories on human rights violations. They would never answer my phone calls. And if by chance they picked up, they would snub me if I asked for their version.
Denial by authorities to go on record destroys a journalist’s credibility. It also affects their output as they are then criticized by their peers and the authorities for not including ‘both sides of the story’ and for being biased and/or indoctrinated by political and religious zealots. Here, discrediting is a modus operandi employed by powerful forces to conceal reality and introduce an element of insecurity to the job. The governing class creates this outcome to undermine or indirectly censor a journalist’s output and future. The tactic of denying official quotes to journalists serves to discredit journalists professionally and ensures that they do not get assigned stories by their editors due to ‘biased’ reportage, thereby inducing insecurity. This adversely affects journalists’ ability to eke out a livelihood in their homeland, perhaps forcing them to migrate.
Direct violence, insecurity, and trauma
Echoing a widespread problem, Interviewee 4 evokes the question of identity when he talks about ‘the price of being a Kashmiri in Kashmir’ and the level of dehumanization and insecurity media personnel face daily. Journalists are also ‘otherized’ by the local police who prevent them from reporting: Photojournalists face the wrath of the forces who fail to honor our identity cards. Police mercilessly beat dozens of photojournalists in the Old City and then they bundled us in a vehicle. They snatched my camera and later denied having any information about it.
Expensive photography equipment that is not readily available in the Kashmir Valley is almost impossible to replace if confiscated by the authorities during public demonstrations against the governing class while articulating their demand for self-determination. This practice of confiscation of equipment by the security apparatus of the governing class impacts the livelihood of journalists, while simultaneously censoring news coverage.
Both direct and structural violence are meted out to control the media and their output and expand hegemony in the occupied region. Interviewee 6, who works for a national news channel, comments that visible boundaries are set by the structures of the governing class when they take action against a journalist in the public sphere. Illustrating this point with an example of direct violence, he explains that when Kashmiri journalist Iftikhar Geelani was jailed for publishing information from an army website in his story, the governing class set an example for the rest of them. ‘When a photojournalist is beaten – in the way that the troops thrash a civil dissenter – the state is setting a yardstick’, he says, explaining the psychological impact on other practitioners. He explains, ‘Kashmir people as a lot aren’t trusted by the Indian state. And Kashmir press comes from Kashmir people’ (Interviewee 6).
Analyzing his location as a media personnel within this milieu, Interviewee 4 feels ‘trapped’ between state apparatuses and the local public: On one hand, the security agencies hamper the work of the photojournalists, on the other you have to save yourself from the reprisal of the protesters, gunmen or opponents.
Elaborating further and voicing his anger, helplessness and frustration, Interviewee 4 expounds that, no matter how influential one is, one has to answer ‘gun-wielding security personnel or an illiterate policeman daily’. Evaluating his own mental condition, he elaborates, ‘Naturally, this has an impact on you psychologically.’ The humiliation of navigating these contested spaces, violence, threats and the fear of loss of dignity, life or equipment converge into a feeling of being unable to control a situation or experiencing helplessness and psychological distress. Due to these circumstances, they are unable to realize their potential as this impacts their psycho-social wellbeing. Symptoms of mental distress emerge consistently from all the interviews. Exposing the longevity of distress-inducing conditions, mental health studies conducted in Kashmir over a decade ago have also reported a high prevalence of traumatic experiences and associated symptoms of mental distress in the population (Housen et al., 2019). In 2015, Médecins Sans Frontières conducted a population-based survey on mental distress in all 10 districts of Kashmir and found a strong correlation between exposure to multiple traumatic events and symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (Housen et al., 2018).
It is not just the journalist’s own reportage that is detrimental to their safety but also what the national media reports on Kashmir. Addressing a common issue that most journalists face, Interviewee 7 – a photojournalist with an international wire service with almost two decades of international experience – explains how the local media absorbs the direct impact of what the national media reports in India. He recollects how locals attacked (Direct Violence) him while he was covering protests in North Kashmir, where a man had allegedly been killed by the troops (Interviewee 7): Many national dailies had published the army’s version of the story which had complicated our situation. When we (local photographers) reached the area, the protesters chased us, snatching our cameras and threatening to kill us if we did not leave immediately. They showed us the copies of newspapers and produced the eyewitness to the killing who contradicted the published story. We somehow managed to make them understand that we were not the people who write for newspapers, we just take photos. After the intervention of some village elders they let us go.
Pinpointing various locations of power and their complex impacts, Interviewee 4 highlights the pressures he has endured during his career and its effects on his mental and physical health: Antagonists and separatists always threaten us over the phone when their popularity is defamed through our work – they’ve disrupted our sleep. Ever since I’ve had this job, I am always on tenterhooks – always caught between the devil and the deep sea.
All stakeholders in the conflict exercise power through different channels and in multiple ways. The tension created through threats manifests itself in sleeplessness and anxiety for Interviewee 4. These are some of the signs of psychological distress experienced on the field. Delving further into the feeling of being intimidated and trapped in the shifting dynamics of the disputed region between various stakeholders, Interviewee 4 cites an example of how different state agencies have vested interests and people become their prey. The authorities not only inflict trauma through direct violence but also compel journalists to collaborate by withholding their curfew passes or passport applications – all methods of state control, where power is exercised, resulting in an erosion of democratic values. Local journalists have to cautiously negotiate these spaces or face dire consequences. The governing class’s institutionalized modus operandi based on the global discourse of ‘securitization’ or ‘maintaining law and order’ through the imposition of curfew may be attributed to the overall structural militarized violence it enacts to further entrench hegemony (Boga, 2019).
Structural violence, societal isolation, and repression
Illuminating the political economy of the media in Kashmir within a neoliberal framework, Interviewee 5, a freelance writer with a decade of experience in the print medium, points to the structural violence while describing the governing class’s hold of the media with an agenda to control the narrative on the conflict: The profession is heavily dependent on money from the government, which in turn does not allow a free media or let it grow. And, most of the times, it does not allow the media to tell the real story.
Since economic wellbeing constitutes psycho-social wellbeing, monetary dependency on power gives rise to economic insecurity which is used by the governing class as a method of control. This view not only highlights the volatility of the job but also the fiscal link to the state. This instability adversely impacts the psycho-social wellbeing of the journalist. Overall, corporate or state control of media and the merging of the state and the corporate in India post-1990s has not only led to a change in the functions of the media but has also restructured it at multiple levels (Boga, 2022). As a result, the restructured media have led to emotional burnout, as well as mental health symptoms.
Security of family members also contributes to the stress that journalists endure. Interviewee 5 has to be ‘very mindful about the safety and security of family and repercussions if anything is written against the people in power, agencies (police, army, paramilitary, intelligence, counterinsurgents) and others’. Risking not only their lives in the field but also the safety of their families compounds the existing stresses and feelings of not being in control and helpless. Anxiety and depression that stem out of helplessness multiply the existing psychological burden while shaping journalists’ psychosocial wellbeing.
Summarizing concerns surrounding security and risks while reporting, Interviewee 8, who works for the print medium as an investigative journalist, comments on the effect it has had on him and his family: There are many factors, insecurity being one of them. Insecurity of job and life. Intimidation (direct or veiled) by various parties to the Kashmir conflict. As a journalist reporting on human rights, I’ve encountered some serious issues. I was, on at least three occasions, harassed by security agencies for my reportage. Veiled threats would also be passed through phone calls. There were times as well when government forces pointed their guns at me during assignments. My work has badly affected my family. Reporting in a place like Kashmir or any other conflict zone is fraught with risks. There were occasions when I had to stay at my office because of a hostile situation and an imminent life threat by the government forces.
It is not just the establishment that the journalists are acutely aware of, but it is also their public perception that not only shapes their output, but also their identity. Public perception is contoured by power in a region like Kashmir where power has established its hegemony and continues to expand. In 2022, authorities also blocked a Pulitzer prize-winning Kashmiri photojournalist Sanna Mattoo from boarding a flight to France where she was to take part in a book launch and photography exhibition displaying her work (Rahman, 2022). Interviewee 1, an international award-winning photojournalist with over two decades of experience, reflects on the public perception of journalists who work in Kashmir and its psychological impact on the media personnel: Government think we are troublemakers, security agencies think we are the ones who are responsible for the trouble, and people think we are paid by government and security agencies not to show the truth. We are caught in the middle of all, but still, we try to do our job as it is our duty to show what truth is. . . . They [national media] show the story they want to see as India. That has an effect here, because here in Kashmir, people blame us for not telling the truth and as a result don’t trust us anymore.
These statements depict anxiety, alienation and isolation due to distrust by their own population, leading to a disturbed existence and an adverse impact on their psycho-social wellbeing. Experiencing alienation and loneliness within the community is a debilitating symptom. Loneliness is a risk factor for symptoms of anxiety and depression (Cacioppo et al., 2014). This may also lead to hypervigilance and paranoia, where no one can be trusted. More investigations are required by researchers to unravel these complexities. Confirming the severity of conditions in Kashmir, a recent study divulged that traumatic events with highest rate of prevalence were ‘feeling stressed’ (97.3%), followed by ‘fear of search operations, crackdowns or curfews’ (89.2%); ‘witnessing a protest or being part of it’ (88.3%); ‘a family member, relative or friend being hit with a bullet, pellet, or any other explosive’ (76.5%); and ‘exposure to violent media portrayals’, with males reporting a significantly higher prevalence (74.3%) (Dar and Deb, 2022). All these concerns have been reiterated by the interviewees. Notably, feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, rage, frustration and grief are created. From her diary spanning a year in the Kashmir Valley in 2010, Boga (2011), a non-Kashmiri journalist, reflected on the living conditions: Just as the people mourn for one death, another one follows. They are firing at ambulances that ferry the injured. If only people in India knew what was happening here. . . . There’s no manual one can refer to about coping with non-stop spells of curfew, or being cooped up within four walls with raging emotions that extend from despair to anger and frustration to helplessness. Maybe knowing how prisoners cope within confinement might help in my case. After all, Kashmir is one big cage with prisoners where no one is allowed to speak or post comments on Facebook without being slapped by draconian laws, protest on the streets against murders or attend funerals only to get fired upon and killed by ‘security’ forces.
On a similar note, Interviewee 1, a photojournalist with a foreign agency for over two decades, describes his helplessness and says it would help to be ‘invisible’ in order to carry out his assignment. This would help avoid gaze by those in power in this militarized milieu.
. . . someone stops us then you feel helpless, things are happening in front of you and you can’t shoot. That time you realize it is better to be invisible so that you can cover the thing when you are stopped by the other party.
These answers not only reveal the impact of the conditions that journalists in Kashmir endure but also illuminate the psychological aspect of working as a journalist to highlight the people’s perspective through a medium that is structurally controlled by the neoliberal governing class to suit its agenda and expand its hegemony. Issues surrounding helplessness, safety and security of not only their own being, but also their families due to the nature of their job, feelings of being trapped between the various mechanisms of the governing class and a hostile population that believes they serve the establishment, surveillance, psychological control (threats by various stakeholders of the conflict) – all exponentially contribute to their levels of depression, anxiety and stress, as well as the cumulative trauma of growing up in a militarized locale in their formative years. According to the latest estimates, there is one soldier for every 30 civilians, according to the Armed Conflict Survey (2020), higher than wartime Afghanistan. In 2015, a study revealed that, among the traumatogenic events witnessed or experienced in Kashmir, 47 percent of survey respondents had witnessed the violent death of someone they knew; 12 percent reported having had thoughts of ending their life in the four weeks prior to the survey, indicative of high levels of mental distress in the population (Housen et al., 2018). In another study where 5,519 adults were interviewed between October and December 2015, Housen et al. (2017) found the prevalence of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in Kashmiris.
As recently as 2022, Dar and Deb (2022) found that the prevalence of trauma was 100 percent in both males and females in Kashmir.
In Kashmir, depression, anxiety and trauma are a by-product of reporting in the strife-prone region as journalists are routinely summoned by the police, interrogated and threatened with charges such as income tax violations or terrorism or separatism – several prominent journalists have been detained or sentenced to jail terms (Mugloo, 2020; Parvaiz and Yadavar, 2020). Trauma is defined by Onderko (2018) as the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness and diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences. This response to trauma can occur both immediately after a traumatic event has occurred and even several months or years after that event (Kaur and Jaggi, 2023). Qualities such as personality, vulnerability, stress disposition/tolerance, resilience and coping ability are factors that influence how a person manages the situation (Englund, 2019). The cumulative effects of living under militarization for decades affects an individual’s psycho-social wellbeing. The long-term consequences of violence can be severe and partly treatment-resistant, according to Wenzel et al. (2015). For example, in the context of the 1947 India–Pakistan Partition, Kaur and Jaggi (2023) discovered that the children and grandchildren of intergenerational trauma survivors exhibited medium levels of intergenerational trauma. Since Kashmir is a frontier region with an ongoing conflict, intergenerational trauma needs to be studied. Intergenerational trauma, as well as accumulated trauma impacts the mental health of the Kashmiris and may present itself in hyper-vigilance, mistrust, high anxiety, insomnia, low self-esteem, nightmares, aloofness and panic attacks. As most of these symptoms are already visible in the population in the Kashmir Valley through this study and many others, this aspect may require further investigation as it compounds the existing crisis for journalists who operate in this region. As the work of a journalist is intrinsic to maintaining a functioning democratic society, it is of tantamount importance that they are not only allowed to function without constraints but are enabled to improve their psychosocial wellbeing.
Conclusion
This work highlights the conditions that Kashmiris encounter daily in the contested space. On the one hand, as journalists are a part of the same social fabric and because their job entails bearing witness and disseminating information, they are targeted by the coercive state apparatus that attempts to control them to set their agenda. On the other hand, the local public ‘otherizes’ and ‘enemizes’ them as they see them as part of the oppressive state apparatus. This endangers the psychosocial wellbeing of journalists. As the governing class attempts to control the narrative on the conflict in the public sphere through violence, it destroys social cohesion and encourages suspicion and alienation among the public and fractures the freedom movement .
This study, with the use of thematic analysis coupled with a deductive approach, not only outlines the long-lasting effects of militarization but also highlights the outcomes of the three key themes – direct, indirect and structural violence – that journalists experience. These tools of violence have been employed by the governing class for the purpose of agenda setting and controlling the media and public narratives on the international tripartite dispute. Conditions that produce depression, isolation, anxiety, hypervigilance, insecurity, fear and trauma, as well as their accompanying symptoms, have emerged from primary and secondary sources. In-depth interviews of the Kashmiri journalists reveal how they negotiate complexities emanating from exercises by power within this heavily regulated space. Direct, indirect and structural violence are tools employed by the governing class, both in the personal and political spheres, to achieve its sole objective of hegemony.
In addition, these tools also crush dissent and ensure a gaze of the conflict through a statist lens. In order to perform its function of agenda setting, it is also in the interest of the governing class to expand hegemony, uproot the freedom movement and deter journalists from reporting. The effects of agenda setting through the employment of the tools mentioned above have also, over seven decades, adversely affected the psycho-social wellbeing of journalists.
Summarizing the argument, the practice of agenda setting through tools of oppression is engineered to control the narrative on the conflict, impact the psycho-social wellbeing of the public in general, and media personnel in particular. The far-reaching implications not only present an alternative reality of the conflict in Kashmir but also destroy societal cohesion among the public for self-determination and justice. This alternative perspective through the media also shrouds the nature of the conflict in national and international imaginations, and aids the governing class to justify violence. For these reasons, it is essential to highlight the consequences of state actions on the psycho-social wellbeing of journalists in Kashmir.
Footnotes
Appendix
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author has worked in Kashmir in the capacity of a journalist for local, national and international publications over two decades.
Funding
This article has not been funded by any agency.
