Error 404 Kashmir's history not found
Winston Churchill said history is written by the victors. But in the case of Kashmir the history is being erased by India. If you click on Kashmiri news sites it says ‘404 Oops... Page not found!’ error. Or ‘Sorry the page you were looking for is not here.’ As Editors and publishers in Kashmir realized what was happening, they called each other. They noted that all Kashmiri media archives are lost. At first they thought it was a technical issue. But soon they realized that there is a method to this madness. Everything before 2019 was lost. Let’s ask an editor: Anuradha Bhasin. She is executive editor of the Kashmir Times "What is a bigger loss is loss of history. Its complete erosion of the historical records, of documentation of day-to-day events, of people's lives. It's not just about politics, it's about culture, it's about places, it's about landmarks, I mean valuable comment, editorial comment." What she did not say is the following. There have been massive peaceful protests against India in years which are now lost. The record of armed struggle against what most Kashmiris regard as the Indian occupation of Kashmir was also lost. Decades long pleas of half widows of Kashmir were lost. And no one will now ever find how Kashmiris were blinded by the Indian army. disappeared Kashmiris are once again disappeared. And no one will see the mass graves which the journalists covered. Everything is deleted. History erased. Here is the editor again: “There is a complete climate of oppression in the (Kashmir) valley. What is a bigger loss is the loss of history. Its complete erosion of the historical records. It’s not just about politics, it’s about culture, it’s about places, it’s about landmarks. The clampdown on media is an important instrument of control by the state, because if you silence the media you’ve silenced everybody else. Media is going to bring out the voices of those who are voiceless and those who are oppressed." It is primarily the Indian government suppression of the free media that Reporters Without Borders has ranked India at 142nd level. This makes the Indian media rated worse than Afghanistan and Burma. It has caused India to fall down on many democratic indicators. It is now declared an “electoral autocracy” bySweden-based think tank V-Dem Institute, while U.S.-based Freedom House downgraded India’s status to “partly free.” Here is Siddiq Wahid, historian and the founding vice chancellor of the Islamic University of Science and Technology in Pulwama, Indian held Kashmir. "(George) Orwell's depiction of the surveillance that was done in 1984 looks almost crude and primitive, you know, compared to what is happening today."
