Web Exclusive

THE MERCENARY JOURNALIST
By INDIA TODAY Special Correspondent Ramesh Vinayak.

Covering militancy is one of the most challenging assignments any journalist could ask for. Being in the thick of militant violence often desensitises him but it never ceases to excite. For a reporter, a rich haul of bylines is compensation for all the stress, threat and fear that go with a conflict situation. As one who has extensively reported terrorism in Punjab when it was at its blood-letting peak in the late 1980s, I have a sense of deja vu in Kashmir. I often relive my days in Amritsar, the then terrorist capital of Punjab where I was baptised into journalism by fire, almost literally.

Yet, my last fortnight in the Valley was a different experience. For the first time since 1994, the year I ventured into Kashmir after terrorism in Punjab had tapered off, I discovered how hi-tech communication tools has made mercenaries out of journalists. The pressure of meeting deadlines is always nerve-wracking in Kashmir. But, never before have I found journalists so desperate to be the first to report words, voices and visual images to their organisations. Kashmir now has a new breed of mercenary journalists and sound-bite soldiers. Invariably, it's not the facts but the speed that counts.

The Lull Before the Storm

On August 1, the day I landed in Srinagar, the Valley was refreshingly pleasant as compared to humid Delhi. My brief was to report the ground swell, if any, of hope among the people in the wake of the cease-fire declared by the Hizbul Mujahideen, the militant outfit that evokes as much fear as sympathy among the Kashmiris. I was the latest addition to the few 'outside' journalists in Srinagar that day - a small number of these outsiders being in the city indicates that there isn't much happening.

The lull is notoriously shortlived in Kashmir. My late night meeting with chairman of the Hurriyat Conference Abdul Ghani Bhat had given me a hint of impending storm. Bhat suddenly turned restive and wanted to wind up the interview when news of attack on the pilgrims near Pahalgam filtered in. By midnight, the toll had crossed 50 and it was not just one massacre but three. 'Get ready at 4.30 a.m. to leave for Pahalgam,' a grim-sounding but familiar voice told me. It was Mehraj-ud-Din, a senior Kashmiri photo-journalist who works for India Today in Srinagar. It was already 2 a.m.

By 4.15 a.m. my taxi was on the roll on Srinagar's desolate, dark roads. Only a speeding truck overtook us. I could only see a bottle of some intravenous solution dangling inside the truck. Instantly I knew where it had come from Pahalgam. At Partap Bagh, the area where journalists live, there were no signs of life. But, inside a dim room, Ejaj Rahi, a young journalist working for a foreign news agency, sat glued before his laptop, sending gory details and images of the previous night's massacres. 'The whole night my bosses in New York and London were screaming at me to get details as early as possible', he said with a deadpan expression. 'And, this is the unearthly hour you get connected with Internet in Srinagar'.

On the way to Pahalgam, we stopped at Anantnag where the bodies of two more massacres of construction labourers had been kept in the police lines. There were no cries; only deadly silence. The police didn't allow the desperate journalists to get inside, saying they had to wait for instructions from above. A young journalist even went to the police official's residence but was told that 'sahib is sleeping' after a night of horror.

"You can beat us, arrest us, shoot us ...."

The same story unfolded in Pahalgam. A posse of adamant policemen simply didn't allow those from the media, whose number grew every 15 minutes, to get past a barrier they had put a kilometre short of the massacre site. No amount of pleading worked. While terror-stricken pilgrims were desperately fleeing the town, the journalists were desperate to get in. After an hour-long wait, some journalists led by Ejaj charged forward despite resistance by the police and CRPF men. 'You can beat us, arrest us, shoot us, but we have to go', they were saying. After pushing for a few yards, the police gave up.

When we returned by noon, Kashmir was abuzz with deadly tales about the massacres. 'Relax, it's still not a century', a senior police official whom I met that evening told me. It was a joke in poor taste. The next day, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and a Home Ministry team descended on Srinagar to initiate talks with the Hizb's underground commanders. In an apparent statement on security concerns, the Prime Minister addressed a hurriedly convened press conference at a fortress-like defence hangar in Srinagar airport.

At any given time, Kashmir is more rife with rumours than any other part of the country. But the fast-changing events had further accelerated the rumour mills. And the journalists find it difficult to segregate fact from fiction.

Two days before the Hizb's August 8 make-or-break deadline was to expire, a funny tale was doing the rounds in journalistic circles in Srinagar; it was about a friendly cricket match that Pakistan-backed militants and the Indian Army had played in Kupwara. Even the margin of victory - expectedly in favour of militants - was mentioned. Most journalists laughed it off over their evening mug of beer but a few were taken in by the high-news-value rumour. Hours later, the bizarre cricket match found a mention in a leading news channel while the next day's papers carried box items.

On August 8 journalists in Srinagar were unusually hyper. The more enterprising among them had kept ready reactions of leaders whether or not the Hizb extended the cease-fire. Telephones buzzed constantly. Srinagar had a power cut that day, but the computers, image-scanners and high-speed transmitters were running with the help of generators to help break news instantly. It was almost a war-like situation much before the cease-fire was actually called off from Islamabad.

When the pigeons flew away

On the morning of August 10, just when the stormy week was nearing an end, journalistic exuberance took its toll. When a grenade blast rocked the city, my taxi driver Fayyaz was quick to point towards the place of explosion, he knew from the flight of pigeons in the sky. He offered to take me to the blast site on Residency Road, barely half a kilometre away.

Almost instantly, a thought crossed my mind. In Punjab, an explosion used to be a ploy to attract crowds before a bigger blast would go off. I told Fayyaz not to hurry. Barely three minutes later, Srinagar trembled with another explosion, and another drone of pigeons flew away on the skyline. The next day I was on my way to Delhi. On the same flight was fellow-journalist, Pradip Bhatia, a young photographer of The Hindustan Times. He was in a flower-decked coffin after an unfinished assignment in Kashmir. His life was cut short by the second blast where he had rushed to take exclusive on-the-spot- pictures.

'You can duck firing or a grenade but this bloody blast doesn't given you time to even react', said someone in the crowd which had gathered at the Delhi airport to mourn Bhatia's death. In Kashmir, the thin line between reporting amid hazards and saving your own life is more tenuous than before.

BUSINESS TODAY | INDIA TODAY PLUS | COMPUTERS TODAY
TEENS TODAY | MUSIC TODAY | ART TODAY | NEWS TODAY | SYNDICATIONS TODAY

Write to us | Subscriptions | Advertise with us
© Living Media India Ltd