Neo-colonial visuality and India-Israel relations

By controlling visuality of Kashmiri life, India is engaging in an effective enforced disappearance of the narratives of people’s trauma, suffering, resistance, political agency, and identity. In another context, Gil Z. Hochberg argues that the “uneven distribution of visual rights” between Israeli armed forces and the occupied Palestinian people creates uneven forms of visibility, where Palestinian civilians are simultaneously made invisible through law while undergoing forced visibility in the form of surveillance.[18] [open endnotes in new window] In addition, Hochberg demonstrates how the Israeli state controls images of Palestinians and the contexts within which they appear in order to conceal its status as a the settler-colonial ethno-state.[19] Neo-colonial occupation in the twenty-first century thus pivots upon visual occupation of the people where the images and narratives of the colonized people are controlled and manipulated by the occupying forces. This occupation operates in two ways: both images which emerge from and are allowed into the territory are severely controlled. Visual occupation is an assault meant to isolate colonized people and turn their struggle invisible on the global stage.

By controlling the visuality of those they oppress, neo-colonial countries like India exert diplomatic soft power on the global stage. As Joseph Nye explains, the term

“soft power” refers to the manipulation of geopolitical influence beyond military control, especially through “instruments such as communication, organizational and institutional skills, and manipulation of interdependence.”[20]

Included here too are digital dimensions of security as well as media representations that form the basis of regimes of visuality in neo-colonial contexts. Through a performance of democratic values on the global stage that is orchestrated upon the invisible forms of oppression and surveillance, neo-colonial states like India and Israel use their soft power to manipulate and erase diplomatic outrage over their actions.

It’s important to acknowledge here that that the connection between India and Israel go beyond similarities in manipulating neo-colonial visuality. As Azad Essa documents, India and Israel have longstanding geopolitical and diplomatic ties which translate into transference of weapons, surveillance technology, and occupational tactics between the two states.[21] In the post 9/11 world, measures to exponentially increase defense and surveillance technology influenced India as well as the United States, especially after it underwent two major attacks: the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament and 2008 Mumbai attacks (or the 26/11 attacks). By 2004, India had purchased radars, night vision devices, and jamming devices to be used in Kashmir from Israel.[22] After the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, India authorized the use of Central Monitoring System (CMS) on its people, a program akin to America’s NSA’s PRISM. CMS shifted surveillance from storing and gathering data to real-time surveillance of phone calls and Internet activity. Sangeeta Mahapatra explains this shift in surveillance as transitioning from targeted surveillance to mass surveillance, which can legally be utilized to curb dissent and protests in the country as CMS does not require court or parliamentary approval (unlike NSA) and has no mechanism in place for redressing violations of rights.[23]

The extent of Israeli and Indian collaboration on surveillance technologies was exposed by the 2021 report on the Pegasus Project.[24] Pegasus is a hacking and surveillance software program developed by the Israeli private intelligence firm NSO that works with government organizations of different countries. It came as a solution to the data encryption by various websites and apps that protected data from surveillance. Pegasus circumvents individual use of encryption by giving unrestricted access to the device itself to foreign governments.[25] According to the 2021 Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project report,

“More than 2,000 Indian phone numbers appeared on the leaked Pegasus list, indicating that they were potential targets of the software. They include hundreds of human rights activists and academics, as well as diplomats from neighbouring countries.”[26]

At least twenty-five Kashmiri activists, journalists, politicians, historians, and separatist leaders were targeted using this software by the Indian government. Several Indian journalists who have previously shown solidarity with Kashmir also appeared on the list.[27]

Ultimately, the technological, defense, and diplomatic ties between India and Israel establish an important context within which to understand the shift in the visual representation of Kashmir and Kashmiris in Indian media. This is especially the case since the authoritarian pivot of the Modi government impacts artists, creators, and filmmakers both in Kashmir and India. In what follows, I examine how the transformation of media representation about Kashmir before and after the abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019 creates new forms of neo-colonial visuality that enact the disappearance of Kashmiri struggle. These shifts in media representation complement the expansion of state surveillance in Kashmir used to curtail dissent, protest, and solidarity.

Visual control through media representation

The control over visuality has historically influenced the nature of images which are allowed from Kashmir and Kashmiris to be displayed and broadcast. Mapping the trajectory of commercialized fetishization of the Kashmiri landscape and body in British photography through the works of Samuel Bourne and John Burke, art historian Ananya Jahanara Kabir explores how the beauty, and the violence of Kashmir were fetishized and commercialized by British colonial power and the Indian state.[28] This visual history of Kashmir has continued through the twentieth century, where it has been impacted by a number of major political events. The movement for self-determination in Kashmir reached a tipping point during the election rigging of 1986, which evoked a memory of the previous political betrayal by India during the coup of 1953 that ousted the then Prime Minister of Kashmir, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah.[29] Kashmir erupted in an armed rebellion against the Indian state in 1989 which was met with the implementation of the draconian law Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which gave the Indian armed forces impunity to conduct human rights violations in the territory, including extra-judicial killings, executions, torture, rape, and seizure of property.[30] Decried by the Amnesty International as a “lawless law,” AFSPA shaped the visuality of Kashmiri solidarity representation on screen through depictions of suffering and suppression.[31] Finally, the Kargil War of 1999 propelled the Indian state into manipulating news media for its geopolitical goals in the region.[32] This war forms the foundation of much of the state propaganda about the valour of the Indian army in Kashmir in a bid to assimilate the territory into the Indian nation-state and overshadow the struggles of the Kashmiri people.

Prior to 2019, the representation of the occupation of Kashmir was markedly nuanced, focusing primarily on the human rights violations conducted under AFSPA. To be sure, this is not to suggest that these media representation were perfect; they often contain critical blind spots and skewed towards legitimizing the Indian state’s control of the territory. In addition, prior to 2019, some mainstream media and propaganda attacked the movement for self-determination in Kashmir. Many others valorized the brutality of Indian armed forces in Kashmir. Nonetheless, news, documentary, and film gave visual space to addressing AFSPA, human rights violations, and the suffering of the Kashmiri people.

These images show several separatist political leaders of Kashmir being given space on Indian national news channel (NDTV). (In order of appearance: Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq). From 2010 (Credit: NDTV)

National news channels would often air Kashmiri scholars, experts, and even separatist leaders in their debates. During the different critical moments of Kashmiri freedom movement— including the armed uprising of 1989, the 2008-10 civilian uprising, and the mass protests after the killing of Burhan Wani in 2016—news channels were not restricted access into Kashmir.[33] Documentaries would focus on the human rights violations conducted under AFSPA. For example, since 2006, Iffat Fatima has been collaborating with the Association of Parents of Disappeared People to document different families in Kashmir, focusing on people who have lost their loved ones to forced disappearances. Sanjay Kak’s film Jashn-e-Azaadi (2007, PSBT), speaks to various people who have lost their loved ones to the state suppression of the militant uprising since 1989. Similarly, Bilal Jan's Ocean of Tears (2012, PSBT) documents the mass-rape of the women in two northern villages of Kunan Poshpora in Kashmir by the Indian armed forces in 1991. Moreover, independent and solidarity documentary movements started to grow in Kashmir in early 2000s, often with vital financial support from semi-governmental organizations such as the Public Service Broadcasting Trust, a not-for-profit organization funded by the Ford Foundation and partially by the government of India through Prasar Bharati.[34]

Prior to 2019, Bollywood produced diverse narratives that were often (but not always) nuanced about the Kashmiri people and their aspiration for freedom. These include Roja (1992, Ratnam), Mission Kashmir (2000, Chopra), Yahaan (2005, Sircar), Lamhaa (2010, Dholakia), and Haider (2014, Bharadwaj). Two prominent examples of the same are Mission Kashmir (2000, Chopra), and Haider (2014, Bharadwaj). While both films have assimilationist tendencies, they significantly contributed to the construction of the image of a Kashmiri Muslim person within the representational imaginary of the Indian audiences.

Mission Kashmir addresses the armed uprising of 1989 and the human rights violations of AFSPA. The film follows the journey of a young Kashmiri boy who joins the militant movement after his whole family is killed by the police. Although the film demonizes the militant movement for freedom in Kashmir, it does depict the violence and inherent power with the armed forces under AFSPA over the Kashmiri body through the impunity they enjoy despite killing the Kashmiri people.

Haider was produced in the aftermath of the brutal suppression of the civilian uprising from 2008-2010, but the plot was based in the 1989 uprising in Kashmir. The film follows the story of a young man, Haider, as he tries to look for his father who has undergone enforced disappearance after being reported by an informant (Haider’s uncle) to the armed forces. An adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Haider represents the network of informants (Mukbirs) financed through the Indian government, the counter-insurgent movement (Ikhwanis) creating suspicion among the Kashmiri people, and the human cost of AFSPA. Although they suffered minor controversies in India for not giving the Indian armed forces an overwhelming positive representation, both films enjoyed widespread national and international release.

The tapestry of lawfare
against Kashmiri media representation

Since the abrogation of Article 370 in 2019, the Indian state has implemented specialized media laws which have both increased surveillant control over media practices in Kashmir and transformed expressions of solidarity. Such policies amount to a form of media lawfare. Lawfare is “the resort to legal instruments, to the violence inherent in the law, to commit acts of political coercion, even erasure.”[35] Through manipulation and amendment to laws and rules, a government can effectively engage in a form of a warfare against the people. Lawfare represents the phenomenon of authoritarian states across the globe within which they weaponize laws to suppress any form civil and political dissent as well as criminalize oppositional stance altogether. It allows the government to chip away at the freedom of speech and expression by infiltrating different aspects of the media industry in order to surveil and control them with complete impunity. In Kashmir, lawfare has resulted in an overwhelming production of state coverage of Kashmir within the Indian mediascape. In addition, it has allowed the Indian state to stay invisible and unaccountable for silencing and self-censorship among media professionals.

The scale of coercion exercised by Modi’s government is facilitated by implementation of new and amended laws for film and digital media industries, particularly with respect to dissent against India’s control of Kashmir. Media Policy 2020 in Kashmir gives the power of deciding what is “fake news, plagiarism, and unethical and anti-national content” to government officials to carry out actions or sanctions against journalists reporting about Kashmir.[36] Similarly, Film Policy 2021 requires submission of scripts for approval to the government officials before filming can take place in Kashmir.[37] In the digital media industry, the Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code (2021, with the latest amendment in November 2023), vaguely define offences within the digital space as “threats to sovereignty, integrity, or security of India.”[38] Similarly, Section 69A of the Information Technology Act empowers the government to block any content, website, information on the digital space that it deems to “threaten the sovereignty, integrity, or security of the country.” These forms of media lawfare not only legitimate state censorship and state-sponsored propaganda, but also suppresses criticism from journalists, filmmakers, and social media users about India’s policies towards Kashmir.

Modi’s government is notorious for using state machinery and laws to coerce media industries into sponsoring Hindutva messages as well as to curb criticism of his government.[39] Take, for example, the transformation that took place at New Delhi Television (NDTV), a broadcast and digital news channel in India that had a long history of independent journalism.[40] In 2022, after a hostile takeover of the company by Adani Group (which has close ties with Modi and his political party Bharatiya Janata Party), the founders of NDTV –Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy—stepped down from the board.[41] This was soon followed by an exodus of major and senior journalists from the network including Ravish Kumar, Nidhi Razdan, and Srinivasan Jain. Many other national and regional news agencies have faced similar troubles. They include: the 48 hour shutdown of Media One in Kerala after its critical coverage of the attacks on Muslims in Delhi in 2020;[42] the imprisonment of Sajad Gul, a senior Kashmiri journalist in 2022;[43] and the closure of the Kashmir Times offices in 2020.[44] In addition, Modi’s government has also imposed bans on documentaries critical of the state and his regime. These include India’s Daughter (Leslee Udwin, 2015), a film about the rape and murder of a woman in Delhi in 2012 that sparked massive outrage and protests in India; India: The Modi Question (BBC, 2023), a two-part series about the authoritarian shift of the Indian state under the Modi government; and India… Who lit the fuse? (Al Jazeera, 2023), a film about the communal violence against Muslims in India by the far-right Hindu groups.