Defending her paper, The Kashmir Times, its executive editor, Anuradha Bhasin, tells Karan Thapar that the litany of charges brought against her paper by the Special Investigation Agency of the Jammu and Kashmir police, when it raided the paper last week, are “absolutely false, absolutely fabricated”. She said reports that several arms and weapons were found in the newspaper’s premises are “completely fabricated”. She suggested that this claim has been trumped up to provide an excuse for the raid. 

The following is the full text of their conversation, transcribed by Maseera Sheikh.

Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. On Thursday, the special investigation agency of the Jammu and Kashmir police raided the offices of the Kashmir Times in Srinagar. Amongst other things, the paper has been accused of disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology, spreading inflammatory, fabricated, and false narratives, disturbing peace and public order, and challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India. It's also been reported that weapons and arms were found on the newspaper premises. Now, this is not the first time the Kashmir Times has been raided. That also happened five years ago in 2020. At the time, its executive editor, Anuradha Bhasin, writing in the New York Times, wrote that the raid was punishment for daring to question the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. So today we ask what the truth is behind Thursday's raid? Joining me is the executive editor of the Kashmir Times, Anuradha Bhasin. Anuradha Bhasin, on Thursday, the special investigative agency of the Jammu and Kashmir police raided the offices of your paper, the Kashmir Times, in Srinagar. Can you start by telling me what exactly happened on that occasion?

Anuradha Bhasin: I'm sitting at a distance. I've been out of the country for three and a half years and, the office has been shut for much longer, four years, by which time the Kashmir Times print edition was not being published regularly, you know, just about once or twice a week because we were stubbornly trying to do so. The office was practically shut more than four years ago and so I really don't know why anybody would want to go and raid a building that is abandoned, in shambles. Whatever I have received is through the media narrative. The allegations that have come are patently false and politically fabricated and we completely reject these. The government has been targeting, as you mentioned earlier, the government has been relentlessly targeting Kashmir Times, not just since I wrote the New York Times article. They had declared Kashmir Times dead. Kashmir Times has been targeted since it started in 1954, and more so in the last 30 years of armed insurgency when it was caught between the two guns. In the last 10 years it has been much more, but this time – a raid, this kind of a narrative building, it just shows their desperation to vilify us because we dare to speak, because we dare to be reborn as a digital format and at a time when all voices in Jammu and Kashmir have been systemically silenced and you cannot dare to question anybody. Nobody can dare to speak when everyone has been effectively silenced. I think they cannot tolerate that somebody is still speaking, somebody is still breathing.

Karan Thapar: As you say, this is a desperate attempt, and I'm quoting you, to vilify your paper because you dare to speak. Now, the charges against your paper include disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology, spreading inflammatory, fabricated, and false narratives, radicalising the youth, inciting disaffection and separatist sentiments, disturbing peace and order, and finally challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India through print and digital content. How do you respond to those charges?

Anuradha Bhasin: Absolutely false, absolutely fabricated. Newspapers, like all professional journalists, our work is to bring out the truth and to speak truth to power, to hold the powerful accountable, and that is what we try to do. Now, the Kashmir Times today is not what it was in its time of glory. It is no longer; we had several editions. They were all shut down one by one, and they died a slow death. In 2023, while I was in the US, we revived it as a digital platform in its new avatar. All we are doing is it's a very small-scale operation, but we are trying to ensure that all the voices from Jammu and Kashmir are not lost. So we are trying to bring in some marginalised voices. Our work was even appreciated recently when the India-Pakistan war escalated by the Columbia Journalism Review, by several other publications, and so obviously we're doing something right.

Karan Thapar: Are you being targeted, are you being vilified, to use your word, because you're giving room and space to marginalised voices? Is that what the government you think doesn't like?

Anuradha Bhasin: The government does not like the marginalised voices, the voices of grievances, to appear in the media. They believe that, you know, they, they feel that grievance can be suppressed and, and, and just be invisibilized, not talked about, and it would go away. It is not going to go away. As journalists, it is our duty to bring out the ugly truth, however ugly it is, because people need to be informed. And Jammu and Kashmir is, as we have seen recently, we've seen and Pulwama, we've seen what happened after that in the India-Pakistan, you know, three-day conflict, we've seen how things have panned out in the Delhi blast. So the grievance is not going to go away. Every time that it springs back, it is going to spring back with a venom much in much more vitriolic. And for us, from this region, journalists from this region, our duty is extremely challenging.

Karan Thapar: I accept what you're saying. On the other hand, it's also been reported in the Indian papers, in the Indian Express in particular, that the SIA found one revolver, 14 cases of an AK series weapon, three live AK rounds, four fired bullets, three grenade safety divas, and three suspected pistol rounds. A, are those reports accurate and B, and if they are, how do you explain these arms and weapons being found in a newspaper office?

Anuradha Bhasin: Look, we don't store in a newspaper office, you don't store arms and ammunition, you know? I think it's completely fabricated. We work with pens and computers, and this office has been virtually abandoned for the last four years. If you see the videos, you can see and even when we left, it was, we had been financially choked by the government completely, and the building was already in shambles. Now, if you look at it, it looks like ruins.

Karan Thapar: So you're saying to me that the reports that these arms and weapons were found in your newspaper office are completely fabricated? Are they false reports?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yes, I, at least till we were there, these kinds of things were not stored in our office.

Karan Thapar: What do you mean, "till we were there"? What does that mean?

Anuradha Bhasin: Because the office has been shut after that. I've been out of the country. I mean, can you even imagine how ridiculous it sounds? So this is a completely abandoned, shut office.

Karan Thapar: It is a completely abandoned, shut office?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yes.

Karan Thapar: And no one was working there and is working there at the time? 

Anuradha Bhasin: I don't think anybody is working there. There is one person who has the keys who sometimes opens it to get it cleaned or whatever.

Karan Thapar: But so the digital paper that you make is not produced out of this office?

Anuradha Bhasin: We don't have an office. We don't have an office. It's just a digital platform. We are a team of two people, my husband who's the editor Prabot Jamal and I. We have one consulting editor which is a very voluntary position. We work with young freelance journalists and several experts voluntarily write for us.

Karan Thapar: So you're saying to me that the SIA, the special investigation agency of the Jammu and Kashmir police, raided an office that has been abandoned, to use your phrase, for almost four years, that it's an office that is shut, it's an office that is empty, no one works out of there? That's the first thing you're saying: they've actually raided a shut building and a building that's been shut for four years.

Anuradha Bhasin: Yeah. Why would anybody do that? And, and, and doesn't it sound ridiculous? I mean, why would we store arms over there?

Karan Thapar: And that's the second thing you're saying, that this report that a variety of arms and weapons were found in the office is completely false and fabricated? Is it not true?

Anuradha Bhasin: You know what they are saying now and trying to build a narrative they've been doing for a long time, so they needed something new. It just shows that there is some desperation on the part of the government. They have been trying to link us to militancy, they have been trying to link us to radicalisation, they have been, you know, trying to say that we are antinationals, we are seditionists. So I think this, this gives them some kind of you, you know, they, they want a new, new way to present that narrative.

Karan Thapar: You're saying that the claim that these weapons and arms were found in an abandoned office that hasn't been used for four years is a false claim, but it's been made because they need a new excuse for carrying out the raid. Is that what you're saying?

Anuradha Bhasin:  I think they want to further scare us into silence. They want to create a chilling impact. This is something extremely shocking.

Karan Thapar: But you deny categorically that these weapons and arms were present in the office? You deny that completely?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yeah.

Karan Thapar: Now, this, of course, Anuradha Bhasin, was not the first time the Kashmir Times office was raided. That also happened on October 19th, 2020. And in an article that you wrote for the New York Times in 2023, you said that the raid was punishment for daring to question the policies of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Do you believe that's still true, that you're being raided a second time last Thursday? You're questioning the government's policies because you're critical of the regime both in Srinagar and in Delhi?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, ever since 2019, the suppression and intimidation of media has been exacerbated much more than it was earlier. It existed even before the BJP regime and the Modi regime. But it has been much more. This government is completely intolerant of any word of criticism. If you look at the newspapers of Jammu and Kashmir, you know, that were being published before 2019, either they have shut down, or they are skeletal versions of themselves. And the ones that are thriving, if you look at the front pages, there's a big, you know, government advertisement and the main lead is virtually like a mirror image of that advertisement. They practically say the same thing, and that is what is happening. The comment pages do not carry articles; they carry subjects that are inane and they do not criticise the government or hold it accountable. They do not platform people's voices, and that is what is happening in the media today.

Karan Thapar: You're talking specifically of the media in Kashmir, aren't you?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yes, I am. No, in Jammu and Kashmir. In both. In both. Both parts of the union territory.

Karan Thapar: And what you're suggesting there is that the treatment of journalism as well as the treatment of journalists in Jammu and Kashmir is a lot worse than it is in the rest of the country. Have I understood that implication correctly?

Anuradha Bhasin: Yes, in Jammu and Kashmir, it's always been higher because Jammu and Kashmir is viewed in mainland India from an ultraist perspective. There's always a sense of insecurity in mainland India with respect to Jammu and Kashmir and that has not served a very good purpose.

Karan Thapar: So what sort of conditions do journalists operate under in Jammu and Kashmir? What is the threat that hangs over their heads all the time? You, especially in the...

Anuradha Bhasin: I can speak of what I've heard about a few things when my father started the newspaper, and I saw as I grew. You know, in 1954, before he brought out the newspaper, he had another Urdu newspaper, and that was banned under Defence of India Rules at that time in 1954. Then the first issue of Kashmir Times, which at that time, that time was a weekly, was seized. You know, these are the kind of actions that journalists and newspapers have faced from time to time. Absolutely. There was a murderous assault on my father in 1983, which I remember as a child.

Karan Thapar: Tell me the condition today. Let's not go back into history. What...

Anuradha Bhasin: Okay, let me go back to more recent. You know, before, not just 2019. There has to be a context. You know, in 1989 when militancy started, and the armed insurgency broke out, and, you know, there was a massive militarisation of the entire region, the journalists were caught between the two guns. There was a physical threat. There was an inability to speak there. The newspapers would be banned by either side; they would be seized, stopped from circulation. In Jammu, the Hindu right-wing has always been a threat for Kashmir Times because we dare to speak openly.

Karan Thapar: Can I ask you this: how much worse has the situation become since 2014, when Narendra Modi was first sworn in as Prime Minister?

Anuradha Bhasin: Much worse, because earlier the threat was from different stakeholders. The threat this time was from an extremely powerful state, and I think it was around 2018 that it started increasing.

Karan Thapar: What, what do they do? Can you give us some examples of the way they carry out this threat against journalists?

Anuradha Bhasin: Kashmir was always very sensitive and volatile, and whenever anything happened in Kashmir, say the Burhan Wani killing, or even before that, the Afzal Guru killing – execution – then the newspaper offices would be raided and, you know, the, the news copies would be prevented from being published or from being circulated if they had been published. One newspaper was banned, and reporters are intimidated.

Karan Thapar: You're saying to me it's not just censorship, but often newspapers are actually banned from being published that day. That edition is stopped altogether.

Anuradha Bhasin: Yeah, it is stopped altogether. And under duress, you know, newspaper, they don't give curfew passes. There is a prolonged curfew, and they prevent, you know, news, journalists from continuing their work. So there are days when for several days newspapers were not published in 2010, in 2016.

Karan Thapar: No, but tell me under Mr Narendra Modi, what happened after 2016?

Anuradha Bhasin: I'm talking about 2016 when there were raids on the different presses of newspapers, including ours in these circumstances and against the background of what you've just been describing.

Karan Thapar: Tell me about the state of your paper. I know that it is no longer published in print. What sort of problems do you face as a digital paper?

Anuradha Bhasin: Digital paper. Okay, that needs very little finances, but you know, finances are still a problem because we rely on subscriptions of readers, and that, that even you would know, is not very easily forthcoming. I'm operating from a distance and navigating time zones, phones, and getting people to speak. We started in 2023. It took a year for journalists to be confident to work with us. I realised that there was a hunger among young journalists to work because there were no platforms, and we provided that hope to them. We provided mentorship, we provided handholding. It took a year to build those networks and those relationships.

Karan Thapar: What sort of thwarting, what sort of action does the government take against you? For what? What sort of obstacles do they put in your way?

Anuradha Bhasin: They put obstacles, they scare people. There is a chilling impact today on journalists. You've arrested several journalists. Okay, some of them are released. There are a handful of journalists who were arrested, but it creates a chilling impact. There are constant raids and verifications of journalists. Recently there was a policy very recently where journalists are now supposed to hand down, there is a 10-point checklist where they are supposed to give to the police, their verification data which includes Aadhaar card, their biometrics, their bank statements, and these are to be regularly verified because the government will verify who a bonafide journalist list is.

Karan Thapar: This reminds me of something you wrote in that article you did for the New York Times in 2023. You said, and I'm quoting you, "If Mr Modi succeeds in introducing the Kashmir model of information control to the rest of the country, it won't just be press freedom that is at risk. Indian democracy itself will be at risk." What is the Kashmir model of information control? Can you give us a greater detailed account of this?

Anuradha Bhasin: The Kashmir model of control is to completely disallow journalists from speaking anything critical, to ask questions of the government, to disallow young people from working, to disallow freelancers. There are no support mechanisms. The free press freedom organisations do not exist in the way that they were existing earlier. You had the press club, which was shut down. Now, a new that has replaced the old press club, which has the government patronage. You so unless and until you are willing to speak the same language, the government is not going to allow you to do your work. And if you're speaking the same language, you're not doing journalism anymore, you are just being a stenographer, you're just taking dictations, and that is what is happening. A lot of journalists, when I, when I ask them, young or slightly senior, when I ask them how many times have you been called to police stations or how many times you've been interrogated, and when I hear them say, "We've lost count of the number of times," and that's a telling impact of what is happening repeatedly and cyclically.

Karan Thapar: In contrast to everything you said, I should point out that the government, both the Lieutenant Governor in Srinagar and the Home Minister in Delhi, insist that the situation in Kashmir is normal, that people are going about their lives happily, that there is no government interference with news or journalists. I know you're not in Kashmir at the moment, but how much of a lie is the government putting out when they say this?

Anuradha Bhasin: It's an absolute lie. I mean, you cannot silence people under military jack boots. It's not going to show you the true picture. Pulwama happened because you're telling lies to the people. And in fact, let me tell you, Karan, it is so important that the journalists give the right picture. I remember in the '90s, I was still very young when I was working, army officers, you know, sometimes they were not happy with the kind of work we did, but army officers often told us, "Your work is extremely important to us because your stories give us feedback and which is missed out by our intelligence loops." You know, now that feedback is denied to the system. If they've broken down their own intelligence networks. They have no connection with the masses other than those who agree with them. They have no connection with the masses. So they have no feedback. There is no knowledge of what is really happening on the ground level. You see the kind of radicalisation that has, you know, seems to have fed the Delhi blast thing and it's shocking, but at the same time, it is not unexpected when you push grievances out of the public domain. They're still existing. You cannot push them out. You push them out of print because nothing is being said about it. After all, nothing is being told about. After all,se these things are not being informed, they are going to take a more poisonous form and spring back. This is what has happened in Pahelgam. We haven't had those kinds of killings ever earlier in Kashmir. We've had a lot of militancy, but not, not that that kind of scale. You see recent stories and that's a telling comment on what happens when journalists are stopped from doing their work. It's telling people don't know what is happening.

Karan Thapar: Tell me this: I know you're not in Kashmir. I know you've been in America, where you have lived in California for the last three years or more. At the moment, you're in the UK on a holiday. What is the future of the Kashmir Times with its executive editor out of the country? What is the future of the Kashmir Times?

Anuradha Bhasin: Look, we take each day as it comes. We'd been gradually, gradually choked. We had two English editions. We had a Hindi newspaper called Dhani Kashmir Times, a Dogri newspaper, the only Dogri newspaper – which is the local language in Jammu in the region, which the government should be promoting because it's a local language. It is in the Eighth Schedule. I mean, all of these gradually were shut down because we were financially choked. Much of the reliance unfortunately, the revenue model of the newspaper industry has been so reliant on advertising and in Jammu and Kashmir it has been government advertising and government support. So we lost that. Gradually all these newspapers, all these publications died one by one.

Karan Thapar: Is that the future the Kashmir Times faces? Will it, is it facing, trying to so at you...

Anuradha Bhasin: You know, at that time when we completely finally suspended the publication even we weren't sure we could spring back. Today I'm sure after spending a year kind of rejuvenating, you know, all the time you're caught in a revolving door where you're being boxed, where you are the favourite punching bag of the government. When I took a year off, I think that helped us realise that we couldn't be buried. We were seeds, we had to spring back. So we carry, I think the future is...

Karan Thapar: The print edition will return?

Anuradha Bhasin: No, the print edition will not return. I mean, let's face it, today's journalism landscape has completely changed.

Karan Thapar: So, when you say "we will spring back," in what shape and form would you spring back?

Anuradha Bhasin: We sprang back in the digital format. We revitalised it. It's, it's our new avatar and what we're doing is a very small scale of work. We bring a few investigative stories in a month, and we're doing comment pieces, say about two to three, or we do podcasts and it has been received very well.

Karan Thapar: My last question: when will you consider returning to India? Or do you think it's impossible in the present conditions for you to contemplate doing so?

Anuradha Bhasin: Look, I wanted to. There are employment issues right now that kept me out. I had a few projects that I continue to work on. I still have for some time. I want to come back and the present circumstances make it extremely difficult.

Karan Thapar: Okay, I understand. I'm very grateful to you for having given me time. I'm very grateful that you're willing to talk to me and to explain exactly what you believe is being done to you. As you said, this is a deliberate attempt to vilify us so that we dare not speak. And as you said, the charges brought against you are absolutely false, absolutely fabricated. And the claim that weapons were found, arms were found in the premises of a newspaper that has been effectively shut and abandoned for four years, you said, is completely fabricated. The office is virtually abandoned. You don't believe this is true. This is a planted false story. I'm grateful to you for speaking to me. Take care, stay safe.

Anuradha Bhasin: Thank you. Pleasure speaking.

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