Locating Counterinsurgency in Media on Kashmir in a Post-Neo-Liberal Framework

Abstract

Using critical media theories of framing, propaganda and agenda-setting that intersect, the author attempts to unravel the links between counterinsurgency (COIN) and media in India-administered Kashmir against the backdrop of a post-neo-liberal framework as an example of hegemony armoured by coercion. The author will reframe COIN as a state response to a people’s movement for self-determination. An analysis of the effects of the post-neo-liberal framework on the governing class that enacts COIN strategies through the media will not only illuminate the machinations of the media but will also unravel its social and cultural effects and their role in perpetuating an unjust social order in a contested space. An examination of the roots of ethnonationalism will expose the media’s nexus with power and the nature of COIN operations through the media in Kashmir.

Keywords

Counterinsurgency media Kashmir hegemony power ethnonationalism civic nationalism framing agenda setting propaganda

Background

In The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (McLean and McMillan, 2009), the term counterinsurgency (COIN) is defined as ‘armed uprising or rebellion against government. The term has been used variously to describe revolutionary movements, civil wars, anti-colonial struggles, and terrorist agitation’ (p.125), as well as ‘military strategy, aimed at undermining anti-government forces within a territory. In particular, it is associated with attempts to undermine popular support for insurgents through the use of propaganda’ (p.263). As media, a pedagogical tool for society, is also considered to be a coercive medium for power to disseminate information, it is imperative to not only study the intersection between COIN and the media but also the impacts of their location in a post-neo-liberal environment in order to analyse the consequences of hegemonic discourses (Boga and Ranjan, 2022b).

In his definition of COIN, Krawchuk (2006) considers it as a form of warfare and a competition between ideologies and distinct socio-political movements which can be diffused by drawing on a full spectrum of communication methods and thoughtful actions that encompass programmes across many agencies and non-governmental entities. Thus, COIN strategies may be directed against oppressed communities (Adivasis/Tribals, Kashmiris and Dalits in India, Black Panthers in the United States), class-based movements (anti-war movement in the United States, Farmers’ movement and Shaheen Bagh protests in India) or armed rebels. Hence, one may suggest that COIN, a coercive state apparatus achieves multifaceted aims and objectives in local, national and international milieus around an issue in order to dominate. However, COIN is neo-imperialistic, counter-developmental, anti-democratic, severely damaging to individuals, societies and environments in the immediate and longer-term, and is ultimately unsatisfactory and unsuccessful (Bach, 2010).

Since one of COIN’s aims challenges the political legitimacy of freedom movements and discredits the root causes of violence through propaganda, media becomes a medium for propaganda, opinion formation and building and manufacturing consent. Experts opine that intelligence combined with coercive force against dissenters, along with no appeasement policy benefits the ruling class through divide-and-rule. Here, knowledge production is important as the governing class, through media, shapes the representation of political violence for the public while attempting to fracture civic resistance that stems out of civic nationalism. Since media is used as a pedagogical tool locally, nationally and internationally, skewed coverage of prominent issues shapes global debates around conflicts (Boga, 2018; Boga and Ranjan, 2022b).

Since the 2019 elections, India has transformed ‘into a de jure ethnic democracy’, causing social and economic upheaval (Jaffrelot and Verniers, 2020: 143). In a deliberately polarised post-neo-liberal society, the need to control narrative for the public arises as the governing class and the corporates have merged and militarism and ethnonationalism are at their peak with rebellion from the oppressed and the marginalised (Boga and Ranjan, 2022b). COIN strategies through the media dismantle this cohesive network of people’s resistance against the governing class/power, using the power of propaganda and values, ideologies, socio-economic mechanisms, culture, identity and other important societal components such as development to alter status quo. Thus, COIN strategies aim to adversely affect what is known as vertical cooperation, which involves perceiving the self as a part of the collective but seeing all members of the collective as the same (Singelis et al., 1995).

Operationalising knowledge produced during years of colonial occupation, military experts like David Petraeus advocate for cultural sensitivity and ‘winning hearts and minds’ (WHAM) (Machold, 2022). With its experience in managing conflict since 1947, India too is one of the most skilled countries in COIN operations. Such operations signify a shift for the governing class from a constitutive form of governance to a hybrid form, where the military is deployed among the public in democratic set-ups. The use of coercive apparatus begins when the state is unable to alter the course of the conflict in its favour. Naturally, friction is generated in society and perception management through the media for the national and international audiences becomes a crucial component of its strategy of Machiavellian politics. This step away from a constitutional framework form of governance creates alienation among the dissenting public, who seek fundamental/political rights.

For decades, Kashmiri Muslims’ alienation festered under heavy surveillance, restrictions on freedoms, a premium on counterterrorism over enfranchisement efforts, the continued immunity of security forces from legal accountability for human rights violations in India-administered Kashmir (Lalwani and Gayner, 2020: 4). Hence, Kumar (2020: 6) posits that support for self-determination emanates out of a shared sense of wrong.

With its roots in colonialism and racism, COIN operating through media labels and vilifies those countering the governing class’ narrative.

Impacts of neo-liberalism, post-neo-liberalism and saffronisation

In the early 1990s, Giroux (2005) refers to neo-liberalism as a virulent and brutal form of predatory capitalism, which allowed the market to transform social and political domains while the state voluntarily reduced its role in the economy and gave corporations total control. As corporations design and shape legislation and policy, this affects all levels of government. Politics became empty as it was reduced to following orders, shaming those who made power accountable and shutting down legitimate modes of dissent (Giroux, 2004). This led to the destruction of the welfare state, the emergence of a prison-industrial complex and a new autocratic state that is largely used to regulate, control, contain, vilify and punish those who are not privileged by the benefits of class, caste, ethnicity, language, colour and gender (Cole, 1999). Ultimately, these processes shaped the media.

Despite Kashmir’s centuries-old struggle for self-determination, the effect of India’s liberalisation, along with the beheading of a foreign tourist in Kashmir, the September 11 attacks, the ‘War on Terror’ and the Mumbai attacks consolidated Kashmir’s position in connection with pan-Islamic violence globally (Boga, 2018). Islamophobia propagated by the global media encouraged India to seek the position of a victim of terror, along with the Anglo-Saxons, making India’s geopolitical dreams of forging close alliances with Western war economies and contribute significantly to the global military–industrial–media–state–corporate complex (Boga and Ranjan, 2022b). Hence, with a rise in authoritarianism, jingoism and ethnonationalism, political culture was replaced with a global master narrative of national security based on fear, surveillance and control rather than critical questioning in the public sphere. However, there has been a marked difference between the neo-liberal (1990–2010) and the post-neo-liberal (2011–2022) phases.

The author would like to use the term post-neo-liberalism for questioning the previous forms of liberalism and neo-liberalism and the challenges they currently pose (Davies and Gane, 2021). The result of the nexus between the media, capital, the governing and the transnational class became evident during the post-neo-liberal phase in India (Boga and Ranjan, 2022a). Post-neo-liberalism has also accentuated intersectional class, caste and gender gaps with a detrimental effect on the oppressed groups and minorities in India, leading to violence and starker social inequalities. Naturally, this percolated to the media, where large sections of the population have been labelled, sensationalised, invisiblised and demonised. Racism, ethnonationalism, sexism, patriarchy, militarisation, transnational exchange of sophisticated technology for surveillance and mass control are some of the by-products of this authoritarian governance framework within democracies.

After India’s neoliberal reforms in the 1990s, the country veered towards being a neocolonial state. Following the imperial policy of divide-and-rule, COIN strategies were employed to break people’s resistance movements in various parts of India where histo-political conflicts existed before India’s independence. Since the early 1990s, the ruling class has used ethnonationalism to divide-and-rule. Analysing the military of the 1990s through a sociological lens, Khalidi (2003: 38–40) observes the impact of right-wing politics on the military. Decades later, in the context of heightened ethnonationalism and hegemony in a post-neo-liberal period, the saffronisation of the armed forces and the growing intolerance of their criticism in the last few years during BJP rule, Banerjee (2021) highlights how no Indian army chief in the past had participated in religious ceremonies. Religion is weaponised as a motivator in the army in some ethnic-based regiments, reiterates political scientist Harish Khare (Sheoran, 2010). Overall, this trend of fundamentalism is a continuous distancing from civic nationalism towards religion-based ethnonationalism.

COIN in Kashmir

Indian state has conducted COIN operations in Kashmir since the 1980s, as the political prong of managing the political conflict has never been the dominant one in tackling the protracted international dispute (Ahmed, 2020; CIA, 2022: 82). Since 1947, the socio-political and historical facets of this international dispute have been misrepresented and at times, concealed through the media under the influence of governing power, both locally and centrally (Boga, 2020). In the 1990s, the army’s Operation Sadbhavana (Goodwill) encouraged a cohesive civil–military approach in a bid to win over the dissenting population. Simultaneously, the fallout of the state violence against the public required a COIN technique to manufacture, regulate and control the narrative via the media. For these purposes, perception management through the media became an essential part of COIN for Kashmir.

Bhonsle (2009) identifies three core elements of the (WHAM) strategy – people-friendly military operation, civil action/development work and public information and perception management operation. This approach was employed simultaneously with repressive tactics to counter the political rebellion. It was the use of the classic concept of Gramscian hegemony, based on hegemony armoured by coercion and (manufactured) consent (Nabi and Ye, 2015). Funding for COIN operations have drawn in Indian corporates who have worked with the state on issues of education, youth and women empowerment, vocational training, healthcare, coaching for competitive exams, tours for youth outside the state, conservation, community development and development of infrastructure (Noorani, 2013; Press Trust of India (PTI), 2018a; Wani, 2020). However, COIN efforts have largely faltered due to poor coordination, misutilisation and cooptation by local elites and corporations (Sundar, 2009). These efforts have bred corruption in military and have corrupted politicians, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media through disbursal of ‘secret funds’ or ‘source funds’ (Nabi and Ye, 2015: 63).

India’s strategy fixated on kinetically degrading militant organisations to improve security, which fed local militant recruitment and depressed faith in democratic institutions (Lalwani and Gayner, 2020). Since 2010, the COIN baton has been passed on to the local police in Kashmir due to the hostility against the centrally deputed forces. Let us now shift focus to COIN strategies operationalised through media on Kashmir.

‘Force multiplier’: role of media in COIN in a post-neo-liberal framework

The media, largely consolidated through corporate power, routinely provide a platform for high-profile right-wing pundits and politicians to reinforce the central neo-liberal tenet that all problems are private rather than social in nature (Giroux, 2005). This shift in rhetoric from civic nationalism makes it possible for advocates of neo-liberalism to implement the most ruthless economic and political policies without having to open up such actions to public debate and dialogue. The dissent that emanates from such practices becomes the content that the media covers. Hence, it becomes essential for the media to disseminate narratives that align with power and fortify it. For example, good media relations can also effectively ‘showcase’ COIN operations, providing increased comfort to the local population and even intimidating insurgent groups. Active and continuous interaction with both local and international media groups can serve as a force multiplier. Keeping the population informed can only help to alleviate any alienation within it (Rabasa et al., 2007).

Citing a different nature of media intervention, one may argue that the media weaponises disinformation to help certain sections of power (remote) located elsewhere to expand and hegemonise. Weaponising the media through negative propaganda is what Vahabi (2015) refers to as purposeful power and it may thus be viewed as a force multiplier (Rabasa et al., 2007). Extensive research on the CIA’s media manipulation using propaganda methodology in countries such as Chile, Nicaragua and Jamaica also shed light on the effective use of the media machinery to set the agenda that favours the hegemonic state (Landis, 1982). Carroll (2012) also argues that people’s revolt against the governing class in Palestine and Ireland since the advent of modern media are reflective of the impacts that modern worldwide media has provided.

Media in India

State control on the media has become more stringent in the past few years and the press is not free (The Indian Express, 2022). During the post-neo-liberal era, ethnonationalism and militaristic jingoism have emerged due to altered governance both among the public and the urban articulate middle-classes through mainstream media, which is a medium subservient to the ruling class (Banerjee, 2017). Presently, ethnonationalism coupled with jingoism is all pervasive. At a national scale, talk shows, news channels and interview panels are flooded with warmongering former generals comparing neighbouring Pakistan with a ‘rabid dog’ (Stone, 2021). Furthermore, global incidents such as 9/11 cemented the global anti-Muslim perception of minorities and had a significant impact on the subcontinent. Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination was reframed by the mid-1990s as a pan-Islamic struggle by the Western media and it is during this phase that the reportage on Kashmir of the Western and Indian media converged through the lens of Islamic terror (Boga, 2018). Cumulatively, these phenomena translate into a partisan media which increases polarisation and prevents conflict resolution (International Federation of Journalists, 2022).

The Kashmiri Muslim is further stigmatised due to the frontier region’s proximity to Pakistan and is denied his agency of articulating his centuries-old demand for self-determination as the media attributes his calls for freedom to his ‘allegiance’ to the neighbouring theocracy. This reinforces the ethnonationalist governing class’ notions, fuels the public’s fears and breeds an Islamophobic cycle that demonises the minorities while justifying unconstitutional manoeuvres. The governing class uses culture, including media, to shape people’s imagination. Chopra informs how the Indian Armed Forces use the Bollywood film industry as a tool to disseminate propaganda as they churn out blockbusters which glorify or whitewash Delhi’s brutal occupation of Kashmir (Stone, 2021). Let us now explore the link between media and COIN strategies and then critically examining the operationalisation of media in COIN operations in Kashmir.

Media theories in coverage of Kashmir

Traditionally, an element of WHAM is to ‘have some form of control over the media so that the masses can be informed about the military’s plans’ (Nabi and Ye, 2015: 59). Bhosale (2009) stresses the need for bringing editors on board to propagate positive stories about the role of the military in Kashmiri society. Simultaneously, Anant (2011) emphasises on the media’s function to spread the message of ‘hope’, ‘peace’, ‘development’ and ‘employment opportunities’ under the military regime. Since the 1950s, the state patronised coverage of events in dailies as its involvement in manufacturing consent, targeting the intelligentsia, producing a simulated version of the region through techniques of constructing, institutionalising, mainstreaming and organising propaganda in Kashmir (Boga, 2020). Through such techniques hybrid assemblages of ‘development’, ‘normalcy’, ‘economy’, ‘peace’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘tourism’, which are hyperised by media, nationally and internationally (post-liberalisation), were constructed (Boga, 2018).

In this section, the author links critical media theories of framing, agenda-setting and propaganda to the coverage on Kashmir to expose how the state employs COIN strategies and weaponises media as a coercive mechanism in the theatre of power. In attempting to answer the question of whether media coverage fortifies the state’s narrative or counters it, the author investigates the nature of Kashmir’s media representation and finds resonance in the governing class’ perspective on various processes. It is crucial to grasp the intersectionality of these critical media theories and understand their achievements as COIN strategies.

Reporters insert the events of political life into narrative frameworks which allow them to be told as news stories:

Over time, competing frameworks are narrowed down and eliminated until one dominant framework remains. Although always subject to challenge and revision, the dominant framework, once established, provides the structure within which subsequent events are allocated news value, reported and made sense of. (McNair, 2011: 67–68)

Therefore, media framing plays a crucial role in the portrayal of individuals or groups through a lens that benefits power. Let us now examine the importance of framing in news.

Framing theory

Framing simply means ‘how the media choose to portray what they cover’ (Wimmer and Domnick, 2011: 442). Kashmir is perceived by the majority of Indians as a territorial issue between India and Pakistan. Over decades, its media reinterpretation has affixed different frames such as nationalism, ethnonationalism and patriotism to the tripartite international dispute and has invisiblised the struggle for self-determination. This has divided the people of the sub-continent and has stood in the way of a collective demand for the right to self-determination. These factors have nullified the role of media as the Fourth Estate in a democracy. Mostly, political agency frames the media, which, in turn, convey these frames to their audience (Entman, 2004). Of late, in an electoral autocracy such as India, how media frames political violence, be it reactionary violence to state violence or coercion of violence by the state, is central to the understanding of any issue (Democracy Report, 2022).

Political violence may be understood differently by different stakeholders, depending on one’s own prejudices and biases, whether or not one views a cause as legitimate, one’s histo-political knowledge and a willingness to tolerate the use of violence to achieve political goals (Miller, 2019). In Kashmir’s case, the media’s framing is superimposed on the ruling dispensation’s understanding of political violence and conceals what James Scott (1990: 19) refers to as ‘infrapolitics’ in the ‘hidden transcripts’. This is the nexus between COIN and media. For example, stone-pelters in Kashmir are portrayed as being sponsored by Pakistan and are termed as ‘white-collar terrorists’ by government agencies through the media (Boga, 2018; PTI, 2018a). Resultantly, this representation serves to dehistoricise the conflict, invisiblise its stakeholders and criminalise the public’s traditional form of political dissent (Press Trust of India, 2018b). Contradistinctly, their portrayal in international media explains the psychological alienation and loss of dignity that the Kashmiri youth feel because of humiliation that stems out of the habitualisation of violence in the highest militarised zones in the world (Boga, 2009; Geyer, 1989; Kak, 2022; Singh, 2016).

In Kashmir, militarism or hybrid form of governance has been used as what Rosa Luxemburg (Bagchi, 1994) terms ‘an instrument of colonialism and imperialism’ (p.25) to ‘integrate’ the disputed region to India after 1947. Kohli (2020) reiterates that ‘the use of coercion is especially significant for assessing a relationship as imperial’ (p.392). The superimposition of the state narrative, its subsequent transformation into a media narrative invisiblises the people’s perspective, turning the media into a state apparatus or a COIN tool. This relationship is further explored by Randle (1980), who proposes that militarism contains an ideological element, that is, the mobilisation of nationalism for political purposes, correspondingly close to the ‘instrumentalist use of nationalism’, that must be understood as ‘a reaction to the growing impotence and declining legitimacy of the state and the struggle on its part to neutralise this challenge’ (Kaldor, 2001: 35). This unconstitutional framework of governance results in public alienation.

Often the dominant nationalistic narrative refers to the contested region as India’s ‘inseparable part’ to galvanise jingoistic public sentiment and to justify the military’s rights violations that aim to crush mass political dissent that is visible on the streets and hard to conceal with the prevalence of social media. Post-mid-1990s, stereotyping and demonisation of Kashmiris through the national and international media has been an essential step in that direction, especially, after the September 11 attacks in 2001 (Boga, 2018). Contrarily, reframing the dispute as a political struggle for self-determination, enables one to explore the causes for the tripartite conflict within a historical framework and investigate sentiments seeking social justice, instead of one being led by ‘expansionist jihadist groups’ from Pakistan (Swami, 2017).

Delving deeper, it becomes crucial to understand the symbiotic relation between the media and the state within the context of COIN and hegemony. For example, J&K police press releases (March–August 2019) collected by the author before the abrogation of Article 370 show how the media was encouraged daily to report on soft COIN operations as ‘outreach measures’ undertaken by security forces. The ‘humane face’ of the occupation attempts to further entrench itself in a bid to improve its image among the public, dissuading them to rebel against the governing class. The resonance between the narrative of the governing class and the media is visible. Resultantly, this space excludes the people’s perspectives and enables power to expand its hegemony, driving a wedge for the public between what is real and what is manufactured.

According to the press releases emailed by the J&K police (2019) to journalists between March and August 2019, some examples of the endeavours undertaken by the security forces include youth programmes, plantation drives, police–public meetings, sports events, cultural events, workshop on personal hygiene and sanitation, police interaction programme with differently abled children, distribution of stationary items among needy students, awareness programme for youth on use of social media, police interaction with tribal students in hostels and family members and dependents of Police martyrs, talk shows on Solid Waste Management, a counselling cum interactive session with youth and their parents, construction of schools by police that facilitated Police Community Partnership Group meetings, Talent Hunt programmes, scholarships for wards of police personnel, felicitation of students and research scholars and Awareness programme on the Prime Minister’s Employment Generation Programme and National Art Workshop.

Optics surrounding such endeavours in the public domain enable the governing class/the security apparatus to prevent homophily by shaping society’s consciousness and altering their ideology, familiarise itself with the overground and underground stakeholders and neutralise them. This impedes vertical cooperation or social cohesion and organising against anti-public policies. Media’s reportage of COIN exercises in Kashmir outlined above are undertaken by the local police, who are a part of the same societal structure, as the force is perceived in a benign light by the public. The local police that are aligned to the central governing superstructure are not only viewed by the public as the occupation’s collaborators but are also used by the neo-colonial state because of the high level of public distrust on the Centre’s security forces. With COIN strategies being played out through the media, Scott (1990) explains that ‘the more menacing the power, the thicker the mask’ (p.3). Therefore, one may say that the media are used to control public discourse through framing, thus exposing the coercive medium’s agenda-setting abilities which are controlled through COIN measures.

Agenda-setting theory

Issues pertaining to defence, national interest or security, particularly those relating to foreign policy, insurgency and human rights, are portrayed from a state-security perspective, relegating the priorities and concerns of the people to invisibility and the Indian press is no exception to this practice (Joseph, 2000). This exercise in agenda-setting limits the discourse on Kashmir and shapes an understanding about the nature of the conflict, preventing its resolution.

Furthermore, the conflict has not been viewed from a vantage point of the consequences of colonisation and neo-colonisation within a neo-liberal framework. The agenda-setting function of the media is argued by many observers to be their main contribution to the political process (McCombs, 1981). McNair (2011) explains that the media not only provide cognitive knowledge, informing us about what is happening, but they also order and structure political reality, allotting events of greater or lesser significance according to their presence or absence on the agenda of the ruling class. For example, news reports on rescue operations by security forces in Kashmir in the 2014 floods dominated the headlines (Akhzer, 2014; Dutta, 2014; Kulkarni, 2014; PTI, 2010). However, what was happening on the ground was contrary to what was being hyperised by the Indian mainstream media (Boga, 2014a, 2014b; PTI, 2014). The media highlighted the army’s positive role in a bid to produce cognitive dissonance among the population in Kashmir and build a positive image of the security forces for the national and international audiences (Boga, 2014b).

Similarly, the flood of 2017 was reported with headlines glorifying the troops and vilifying the pro-freedom leaders whom media call ‘separatists’ – for example, an article was titled, ‘Indian Army Rescues Kashmiris Stranded In Floods, Stone Pelters & Separatists Nowhere In Sight’ (Saksena, 2017). One may deduce that the agenda in the cases illustrated above was to induce a sense of obligation and create cognitive dissonance in the Kashmiris towards the neo-colonists. For the audiences in India and elsewhere, the agenda was to project how the forces helped people who were rebelling against them, thereby curating a positive image of the ‘selfless’ soldiers rescuing demonstrators who resisted hegemonic occupation. News articles do not state causes for people’s actions but project power’s agenda, be it the military or the ruling class. Some of the agendas that have been realised are labelling, stereotyping and racialisation of dissidents or unarmed street demonstrators with an aim to amplify the state’s version of the dispute, dismantle the resistance network, erase historical memory and concealing the frontier region’s diverse and multicultural social history, as opposed to the media’s representation of homogeneity in a bid to justify state violence. Such representations aid power and hegemony, promoting a view of the conflict through binaries, ethnonationalism and War Journalism. As media’s narratives correspond to that of the governing class, one may say that this convergence is a product of hegemony and COIN strategies.

It is crucial to understand that framing and agenda-setting are intersectional because power determines the frame through which an issue should be represented and the levels of its dissemination in order to elicit a favourable opinion from the public, which is its agenda. This frame is adjusted on the basis of power’s requirements. This exercise may sever people’s perception of reality at multiple levels – locally, nationally and internationally. Such machinations also counter collectivism and encourage divisive politics based on race, ethnicity, caste, class, gender and nationality. For example, if one examines the abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution that granted autonomy to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, we observe how media narratives concealed the illegal nature of the act (agenda-setting) as well as misrepresentation of what Kashmiris thought about the government’s controversial move (Framing). Article 370, which was enacted in 1952, limited the Centre’s authority to external affairs, defence, finance and communication.

When Article 370 was repealed in the Parliament on 5 August 2019, Union Home Minister Amit Shah stated that it ‘was at the root of terrorism’ and that ‘full state status will be restored to Jammu and Kashmir at an appropriate time when normalcy returns’ (Express Web Desk, 2019). Reframing the tripartite international dispute and (labelling the struggle for self-determination as terror, Shah used manufactured constructs of ‘normalcy’, ‘peace’, ‘tourism’ and ‘development’ for the world’s most militarised zone (Boga, 2018; Press Trust of India, 2021a). Artificial assemblages injected into the public sphere through the media by the governing class at times of heightened state violence are essentially frames that have been constructed to conceal mass discontent and justify unconstitutional measures while dealing with dissent (Boga, 2018). Here, the control over the media narrative assumes critical significance if power aims to achieve its agenda.

Contradistinctly, the people’s perspective from the grassroots level is invisiblised and/or misrepresented (Murukesh, 2019). Stringent conditions including an indefinite curfew, media blockage, mass illegal detentions, severed Internet connections among other undemocratic measures in Kashmir followed this unconstitutional move translating it into a state of exception that was systematised for several months through hybrid governance (Amnesty International India, 2020). These conditions disrupted the people’s network of resistance. In this environment, the media, instead of presenting a people’s perspective valorised the state for repealing the Act, in an article titled ‘Abolition of Article 370: Why Kashmir is Amit Shah’s Sardar Patel moment’ (Chaturvedi, 2022; Suresh, 2019). Such conditions are accentuated by power in conflict zones. This brings us to the final theory of propaganda, which adds another dimension to framing and agenda-setting in COIN operations in the media.

Propaganda theory

Media theorists argue that practices of exploiting emotions and manufacturing consent are prevalent in all forms of governing – from totalitarian to democratic regimes. Anchored in that claim, Chomsky (1991) conjectures that propaganda is to a democracy, what the bludgeon is to a totalitarian state. The ruling class controls people’s minds as people cannot be controlled by force alone. There is a limited ability to control, oppress and marginalise them by force, turning them into ‘spectators of action’, not ‘participants’, for which one has to resort to propaganda (Chomsky, 1991). Using a propaganda model, we would expect the news stories about ‘worthy and unworthy victims’ or ‘enemy and friendly states’ to differ in quality (Falcone, 2018). We will now shift our focus to the media’s representation of Kashmir’s movement for self-determination through various propaganda techniques.

When the media either portrays Kashmir as an ‘internal conflict’ through politicians and figures of authority who are a part of the establishment, or the region as ‘an integral part of India’, it is using White Propaganda (Hasnain, 2021; Patel, 2019; Press Trust of India, 2019:). White Propaganda differs from Black Propaganda, where the true source is falsely attributed for deceptive measures, and Grey Propaganda, where the correct author of the source is unknown (Kelly, 2014). White propaganda openly identifies the source and uses gentle persuasion and public relations techniques to achieve a desired outcome (CIA, 2016). Kashmir is a region occupied by Pakistan, China and India and the international media refer to it as Indian-administered Kashmir (BBC, 2019). But such terms are considered anti-national and seditious and are excluded from the Indian media obfuscating the basic nature of the political conflict determined by power. Kohli (2022) argues that power is the means by which imperialists consolidate their near-total control and domination of the lives of the imperialised. As India has transformed into a neo-colonial state, the expansion of hegemony percolates to all facets of life through its ‘various tentacles’, despite movements for self-determination in regions of Punjab, Kashmir and Tamil Nadu (Kohli, 1997: 352–344). The country’s autocratisation since 2010 in the post-neo-liberal phase has further tightened its control on the public as hegemony has been achieved (Grahn et al., 2021; Serhan, 2022). According to V-Dem Institute’s Democracy Report, anti-pluralist parties such as the BJP have been responsible for this autocratisation (Democracy Report, 2022).

The second type of propaganda found in Kashmir’s media representation is Black Propaganda, which is presented by the propagandiser as coming from ‘the inside’ and is directed at groups as a subversive rumour (Becker, 1949). This disinformation or false information enables power to achieve its objectives and fulfil agendas through the adjustment of frames. For example, the media on Kashmir constructs the conflict as a racialised conflict, stereotyping the dissenters under the larger ambit of ethnonationalism, as well as propagandising a version of history that suits the neo-colonists (Boga, 2018; News 18, 2022; Outlook Web Desk, 2022; Singh, 2017; The Times of India, 2017; Zargar, 2020; Zee News, 2022). In the context of media’s portrayal of Kashmir as a pan-Islamic and a jihadist struggle, the Muslim versus non-Muslim polarising binary leads to the conflagration of the conflict and cements the non-existent divide into the national and international imaginations, while aligning with the mega-narrative on Islamophobia post-9/11. Such binaries also criminalise dissent, placing civilians in the ambit of revolting pan-Islamic sympathisers that are negatively stereotyped globally (Boga, 2018).

The binary isolates the self-determination movement from larger rights struggles in the nation. Raising the boogey of nationalism and ethnonationalism, this misrepresentation also allows for the justification of violence on dissenting unarmed civilians, granting impunity for the perpetrators as the governing class plays the victim of terror and consolidates its position with other superpowers (Falcone, 2018). Citing the example of Kashmir’s political resistance leader, the late Syed Ali Shah Geelani, one may deduce the centrality of the media in image building and/or demonisation. Geelani, who headed the Hurriyat, a 30-party pro-freedom amalgam, was often referred to by the Indian media as a ‘separatist hardliner’ who was ‘anti- India’, a ‘hawk’ and ‘pro-Pakistan’, when in fact, he was a pro-freedom political representative of the people of Kashmir who did not succumb to the will of the Indian state (Boga, 2018; DNA, 2017; Masood, 2020; Press Trust of India, 2010, 2015, 2021b; Wani, 2007). The media labels the regressive elements in society as progressive and vice versa.

Media, thus, become a powerful tool deployed to maintain and expand what Gramsci (Jessop, 1997) refers to as ‘hegemony armoured by coercion’, which is a significant component in shaping knowledge, social consciousness and ideology, constantly functioning to polarise society and expanding militarism (Boga and Ranjan, 2022b). Other methods such as subliminal propaganda specifically target officials to discredit their authority and also semantically associate them with heinous crimes through the use of pictorial or graphic insinuation more effective than a direct attack (Landis, 1982). On the contrary, grey propaganda keeps the source of the propaganda unidentifiable (CIA, 2016). For example, artificial assemblages of ‘tourism’ and ‘normalcy’ frequently surface in the media in order to conceal the violence and the people’s political demands for freedom in Kashmir (Dastidar, 2022; Murukesh, 2019; Press Trust of India, 2021a). However, the situation on the ground is contradistinctive to the media’s representations cited above (Amnesty International India, 2020). This can also be confirmed through in-depth accounts of several local journalists about the prevailing situation (Boga, 2018).

Most importantly, diverse types of propaganda conceal the will of the people that violently explodes on the street as a form of resistance against state violence and unfulfilled political aspirations over decades. The street violence by the public is a culmination of what Scott (1990: 37) refers to as ‘choking of rage and bile’ and ‘a systemic reciprocal action’ which emerges from ‘frustration in the presence of domination’ in areas of prolonged conflict. This reveals that the vast majority of people in Kashmir have been and continue to be subjects that are controlled, not citizens. In such a scenario, ‘each form of disguised resistance, of infrapolitics, is the silent partner of a loud form of public resistance’ (Scott, 1990: 199–200). Acts of symbolic defiance such as street demonstrations and militants’ funeral processions that have an overwhelming number of participants have ominous consequences for power relations and are impossible to conceal, especially with the advent of social media since 2010 (Scott, 1990: 204).

For example, in Kashmir, funeral processions with mass participation by the people are not televised as they show public support for resistance and counter the state’s narrative of imported jihadism (The Indian Express, 2016). Contradistinctly, killing of security forces goes viral, along with interviews of family members ‘seeking revenge’ (The Times of India, 2018, 2019). This reveals how the media chooses both ‘worthy’ and ‘unworthy victims’. War journalism is used to deepen the faultlines between those embedded in the conflict in order to prevent civic nationalism or support for freedom struggles outside the conflict zone. Such ‘Us vs Them’ reportage fuels ethnonationalism and jingoism by depoliticising and dehumanising the international dispute. Consequently, there are differences in the coverage of the international (geopolitical compulsions), national (national interests) and local (local politics) coverage of media (Boga, 2018). Because information is a resource for power, its astute deployment plays a key role in the management of public opinion (McNair, 2011). As Denton and Woodward (1990) emphasise, ‘information is power, and the control of information is the first step in propaganda’ (p.42).

Power does its best to conceal reconfigure or reframe the narrative via the media that it controls. For a more in-depth view on the role of the state in the media, refer to an interview with a whistle-blower, who was employed with the Information and Broadcast ministry in Kashmir, who shed light on the types of state influences on the local and national media (Boga, 2018: 253–258). From the explanations presented above, official interpretation consequently merges with reality – a general and all-embracing lie begins to predominate,·people begin adapting to it, and everyone in some part of their lives compromises with the lie or coexists with it under difficult circumstances (Havel V, 1987: 81, interview in the Times Literary Supplement).

Conclusion

In an attempt to balance power relations, the governing class transforms the media into state apparatus through COIN techniques in its ideological war and to expand its hegemony coercively. Traditionally, COIN has always been used by power to disrupt the resistance network and erase civic nationalism within occupied territories. In such a scenario, the media play a central role in the agenda-setting exercise as well as in disseminating propaganda to multiple audiences. In Kashmir, a combination of framing, propaganda and agenda-setting has etched out a narrative that favours the state and invisiblises people’s resistance against the ruling class. Narratives through the media are propagated to isolate the Kashmiris, prevent homophily and vertical cooperation which internationalise their struggle for self-determination and social and political justice

A coalescence of media and state-engineered COIN thus becomes a multi-pronged coercion if one examines the media functions of framing, agenda-setting and propaganda. While COIN is a strategy to control dissatisfaction and rebellion which emerges out of hegemony, political suppression, oppressive post-neo-liberal policies and uneven development, media become an institution or the medium through which these strategies are put into practice. Both are not only employed with specific aims to alter public perception without violence to dismantle civic nationalism and propagate ethnonationalism among the population in order to prevent a collective resistance. Symbiotically, COIN and media entrench hegemony, are regulated as per the needs of power and are used to distract, conceal, label, hyperise, stereotype and manufacture consent through combinations of techniques. Therefore, one needs to examine the media as a powerful pedagogical tool in order to unravel its influences, function and impact on society.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I, Dilnaz Boga, hereby acknowledge the invaluable contributions of Rohit Ranjan from the Indian Institute of Technology (Patna) for offering invaluable insights.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Dilnaz Boga

Author biography

Dilnaz Boga is a Professor, freelance journalist, filmmaker and researcher based in Mumbai, India. As a journalist, for over two decades, she has written and taken photographs for The Guardian, L’Humanite, Al Jazeera, Frai, Dawn, New Internationalist, Asia Sentinel, Himal, IndiaSpend, Hindu Business Line and The Hindustan Times. In 2019, Dilnaz completed her PhD at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai) on the local, national and international print media’s coverage of Kashmir from 1990 to 2010, and has been teaching journalism.

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