PRESS FREEDOM UNDER SIEGE: WHY THE INDIAN STATE IS AFRAID OF ‘KASHMIR TIMES’
Anuradha Bhasin
Editor’s Note: Founded in 1954 by veteran journalist Ved Bhasin, the Kashmir Times has long stood as a bulwark of journalism in the highly militarized and violence-ridden Jammu and Kashmir. Despite repeated targeting by different Indian governments, Kashmir Times has chronicled the region’s most challenging chapters with courage. In the wake of the November 2025 raid on its Jammu office — for alleged “anti-national” activities — the newspaper’s Managing Editor Anuradha Bhasin writes this piece in defence of her publication, and in defence of press freedom itself. As India slides to the bottom of the Press Freedom Index, The Polis Project’s editorial believes it is crucial to stand up for the fourth pillar of democracy and affirm that holding power accountable is the main purpose of journalism.
The State Investigation Agency of Jammu and Kashmir stated on November 19 that the Kashmir Times office in Jammu was searched based on a First Information Report (FIR) alleging criminal conspiracy. The agency statement said that incriminating material had been recovered from the publication’s office. It claimed the media house has been allegedly “disseminating terrorist and secessionist ideology, spreading inflammatory, fabricated and false narratives, attempting to radicalize the youth, inciting disaffection and separatist sentiments, disturbing peace and public order, and challenging the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India through print and digital content”.
We completely reject these allegations as false, politically motivated, and fabricated. This action is yet another attempt to discredit us, malign our image, and silence us. In the last decade, the state has targeted us in various ways. The latest raids and narrative spin are not only parts of the pattern, but they also reflect an exacerbation of targeted attacks.
It is important to note that the Kashmir Times office has been shut for the last four years. It has no staff. The publication’s broadsheet print edition was suspended following repeated targeting, and a limited-scale digital operation was resumed in 2023. The raids were conducted on an almost abandoned building with no electricity, which is surprising. The narrative is being spun based on trumped-up charges. It exposes a state desperate to vilify us for continuing independent journalism in a place where it is being systematically dismantled. We dare to question and speak when everyone else has fallen silent under a sophisticated mechanism of suppression that involves co-option, coercion, and capture of the media space. Our own history is a case study of this mechanism.
Since 1954, Kashmir Times has existed in many forms—a weekly publication, newspaper, and multimedia digital platform. However, its legacy of fearless, courageous, and critical journalism has remained the driving force behind the newspaper, regardless of its form. We have adapted to the demands and challenges of each era, but we have refused to bow before power or be silenced by intimidation and threat.
Owing to a peculiar dispute since 1947, and a history marked by wars and armed conflict, Kashmir (divided between Indian and Pakistani-administered territories) has been much misunderstood in the rest of India, and by extension in the rest of South Asia. With an ultra-nationalist approach, the powerful Indian and Pakistani states have spun their own narratives of falsehoods and half-truths about Kashmir, which are dutifully absorbed by the media on both sides. Amidst the misconceptions, misinformation, and vitriol often pumped up against Kashmir, an enabling atmosphere has been created for suppressing and crushing independent media in the region.
This is as true on the Pakistani side as it is on the Indian side, which is a far more liberal democracy. Media in Jammu and Kashmir, thus, was always more controlled and scrutinized than in mainland India.
Kashmir Times has faced countless battles since its inception. Its founder and editor was Ved Bhasin, my father, who launched it in 1954, after his previous publication – an Urdu newspaper called ‘Naya Samaj’ – was banned under the Defence of India Rules (emergency regulations during wartime). Unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles were deliberately placed in his path to prevent registration in Srinagar, compelling him to relocate to Jammu, where he first published the Kashmir Times. Its very first issue was seized before it could be circulated.
In subsequent years, there were continuing threats and challenges, including a murderous assault on my father by Hindu right-wing militants in June 1983, which he miraculously survived. Despite these, the newspaper grew and transformed into a full-fledged publication house. By 2010, apart from our Srinagar and Jammu editions of Kashmir Times daily, we were publishing Dainik Kashmir Times in Hindi and Jammu Prabhat in Dogri, the major language spoken in Jammu. In addition, the Srinagar children’s magazine and a book publishing unit rounded out our offerings.
What kind of journalism did we pursue? We gave voice to the voiceless, amplified their grievances, and provided a platform for marginalized communities. At the same time, we served as a platform advocating peace, dialogue, and reconciliation in a region of strife, diversity, and many counter-narratives. Our strength has always been our credibility and the goodwill of the people.
In the early 1990s, Jammu and Kashmir was swept by insurgency, emotional and religious slogans, public rallies, and forced displacements. Security forces grew in number, erecting barriers across the region. Through it all, Kashmir Times continued to inform the public about what was really happening. Both the state and militant groups saw us as a threat. We faced attacks on our staff, newspaper bans, threats, office raids, arbitrary arrests, and false accusations.
The newspaper was banned several times by different militant groups in the 1990s. The state stopped its circulation. In Jammu, the rightwing groups, accompanied by state security personnel, would beat our hawkers and prevent the newspaper’s circulation, often with the tacit support of the state. Our staffers were intimidated, attacked, and harassed on several occasions. Criminal and defamation suits were spun and frivolous, and trumped-up income tax cases were weaponized against us.
Reignited in 2012, the armed insurgency, followed by excessive militarization of the region, came with its own cascade of problems.
For the past three decades, the conflict that has raged in Kashmir has left every shred of misinformation untouched by scrutiny, and thus vulnerable to being weaponized. The incarceration of thousands of innocent people, often for decades, only to be released from prisons after their lives are shattered, the enforced disappearances, and the many cases of human rights violations have become routine. This has ultimately led to a dangerous erosion of truth.
Under a rightwing regime, this further worsened. False narratives and speculation replaced real reporting. Hatred and conspiracy theories spread unchecked, turning public anger toward an enemy defined by religion instead of evidence.
In this environment, Kashmir Times reported from the ground to uncover facts. Our editorial offices worked tirelessly to bring clarity and context to unfolding events.
It would not be an exaggeration to say that in our 70 years of publication, we saw it all—as individuals and as an institution. But the worst was yet to come.
In 2019, the journalism scenario in Jammu and Kashmir changed overnight. Our advertisement support had primarily relied upon government ads. It had already reduced to a trickle after 2010, and was completely withdrawn after I went to court against the internet shutdown in 2020. The six-month-long internet shutdown was imposed after the Indian state withdrew Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomous and special status. This meant that every piece of real information was erased by the internet shutdown and replaced by the government’s narrative of “all is well” and “normalcy,” which was completely at odds with the daily reality of repression, restrictions, and suppression. On the ground, we witnessed arm-twisting and harassment of journalists, the cooption of media houses, and authorities either shutting down news outlets or compelling them into complete submission.
Since 2019, the state has drawn us into an exhausting cycle of trumped-up income-tax and employment cases. At different points, our bank accounts were frozen, and our Srinagar office, housed in a government building we had rented, was sealed; we were evicted without due process, and officials confiscated everything: computers, printers, office records, basic furniture, and our most valuable possession—our archives.
By the time the COVID-19 pandemic swept the world in 2020, we had been reduced to a skeletal self of our original form. By the end of 2021, the Srinagar edition, Dogri, and Hindi editions were all shut down. Only the English Jammu edition remained. But the daily newspaper was printed only some times. The printing gradually reduced from a few days a week to a few days a month until it became impossible to continue. By the beginning of 2022, Kashmir Times was as good as dead and buried.
But we were seeds. We had to spring back from our ashes. And, we did.
In November 2023, we redesigned our digital edition, without any resources and staff, and armed only with our sense of dedication and commitment. We are a small team – Prabodh Jamwal (the editor of Kashmir Times and my husband), and I. Our old colleague, Iftikhar Gilani, equally dedicated, offered his voluntary services as a Consulting Editor.
Since then, based on reader subscriptions and limited philanthropic support, we have continued a small operation to publish stories in collaboration with brave young freelancers, podcasts, and voluntary contributions from experts.
In the last two years, our investigations into civil liberties violations and social justice issues have filled a critical void in Kashmir’s media ecosystem. Our reporting gives voice to marginalized communities who have been rendered invisible in mainstream narratives, documenting their struggles and aspirations in a region where such stories are systematically suppressed.
Our work has included stories on invasive surveillance mechanisms, harassment of media persons, displacements due to climate change and development models, conflict-induced displacements, sweeping arrests, arbitrary job terminations, unlawful demolitions and property seizures, cultural imposition, increasing drug abuse, and health crisis. In all these stories, we have raised vital questions of accountability and pointed out the deliberate gaps in the information.
We also documented how changes in land laws and development projects are affecting local communities, how farmers are losing their agricultural lands, nomadic communities are being cut off from traditional grazing grounds, and environmental degradation is accelerating due to unchecked development projects. Our investigation into property seizures under anti-terror laws exposed cases of collective punishment and procedural irregularities.
Through our commentative articles by noted experts, Kashmir Times continues to provide critical perspectives that challenge the official narrative. These are the voices that are no longer heard, and it is important to hear them.
In this environment of enforced silence, Kashmir Times‘ role becomes crucial. It is currently the only platform consistently challenging state narratives and demanding accountability in Jammu and Kashmir. While operating with limited resources and facing extreme difficulties in information gathering, its impact is profound precisely because it provides the only alternative voice in a region where dissent has been criminalized.
Truth must be told, howsoever ugly it is, in its most naked form. Grievance, disappointments, and alienation cannot be wished away. They exist beneath layers of suppression, co-option and corruption, running the risk of springing back with a venom – as the recent Delhi blast demonstrates. Addressing the root causes requires acknowledgment, not a pack of lies that we challenge. We document those grievances for them to be acknowledged and addressed.
When we reinvented Kashmir Times in a digital format, we also reimagined it as a new space that could bring collaborative work. We brought stories from not just Indian-administered but also Pakistan-administered Kashmir. We do not see Kashmir as a fragment but as a crucial part of the larger South Asian region and as connected to the world. While our stories and articles highlight the regional, inter-regional, and international connections, we connect the Kashmiri communities across the globe.
Our stories from Pakistan-administered Kashmir on the political crisis, the Joint Awami Action Committee agitations since 2024, provide the most insightful and layered details from the region. Kashmir Times has also done collaborative stories on border firings, displacements, and melting glaciers, and is in the process of expanding its collaborative work to different parts of Kashmir.
We are thus the only critical voice from the region challenging the prevailing narrative in Jammu and Kashmir on both sides of the border, where independent journalism has been crushed over time and local media outlets have been transformed into state propaganda machines, or reporters are scared of continuing their work.
Despite navigating numerous challenges and experimenting with new ways of storytelling, we have successfully trained a generation of skilled reporters by pairing them with senior mentors. While they courageously report on ground realities, Kashmir Times provides hope—not only by amplifying the voices of communities and speaking truth to power, but by preserving a generation of journalists and preventing the profession from dying in the region. We refuse to let censorship, suppression, or the threat of other professions silence the next generation of truth-tellers.
This is precisely why we continue to be targeted. In August 2025, my book ‘A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Abrogation of Article 370’ (Harper Collins, 2022) was among the 25 books arbitrarily banned by the Jammu and Kashmir government. The November 19 raids represent the most hideous form of that relentless crackdown on us. My and my organization’s work is unpalatable for the government that seeks abject obedience, no questioning, less-informed citizenry, and brain-dead people. We don’t fit into that plan and are seen as a threat.
If holding the government accountable, amplifying the grievances of communities, talking about peace, justice, dialogue, and reconciliation, and continuing our work independently while upholding the ethics and integrity of journalism are considered a crime, then we plead guilty.
Anuradha Bhasin is the Managing Editor of the Kashmir Times and author of the book, ‘A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir After Abrogation of Article 370’.
Courtesy: The Polis Project https://thepolisproject.com/
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