Asia-Pacific, Headlines

MEDIA-SOUTH ASIA: Pawns in a Proxy War

Kunda Dixit

NEW DELHI, Nov 16 1995 (IPS) - Negative portrayal of neighbours in the domestic media of South Asian nations is preventing the peoples of the subcontinent from better understanding each other, diplomats and regional experts say.

Dominating South Asian tension is the bitter rivalry between the governments of India and Pakistan, which have fought three wars since independence and are spending large chunks of their budgets on an expensive arms race that neither can afford.

“Every newspaper in the region only gloats about the miseries of neighbours,” says I.K. Gujral, former Indian foreign minister. “They are in large part preventing moves towards genuine regional cooperation.”

Veteran Indian journalist Nikhil Chakravarty agrees: “Our (Indian) media only looks at neighbours when there is a cyclone or war or riot.”

The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) groups the subcontinent’s largest country, India, with Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan and the Maldives. But moves to make SAARC an effective regional organisation have floundered because of mutual animosities.

But it is Indo-Pakistani rivalry that is really holding the whole region hostage, according to participants at a meeting in the Indian capital last week of South Asian experts and journalists.

“Why after 48 years of separation or independence do India and Pakistan hate each other so much?” asks Anjum Niaz, a journalist with The Dawn newspaper in Islamabad. “Who is responsible: the respective governments, or the people who want to see the other destroyed?”

Niaz’s answer is: governments of the two countries aided and abetted by their media.

“In Pakistan, the mandarins of the foreign office breathe fire down our necks vis-a-vis India which the media reflects in its reports the next day,” Niaz says and adds that it is not much different in India. “India is equally, if not more deadly, in its portrayal of Pakistan.”

Television and radio in both countries are largely state- controlled and have been used as propaganda tools for foreign policy. Pakistani electronic media has been portraying Kashmir as a religious uprising that has dangerously heightened tension with India.

Meanwhile, Indian television portrays the Kashmir crisis as something for which Pakistan is solely responsible because it helps the separatists militarily. It ignores the history of the problem and the internal grievances that fanned separatism.

Chakravarty says that in this polarised media environment, journalists are often torn between “patriotism and professionalism”. But he adds: “Media has to raise its voice and reflect what is being said by moderate voices on the other side of the border.”

An indication of media apathy towards efforts at dialogue within South Asia is the coverage of the non-government Pakistan- India Forum for Peace and Democracy that met in Lahore last week. Nearly 200 writers, artists, former diplomats and journalists from both countries attended.

The meeting was largely ignored by the media in both countries. Participants were called “peaceniks”and their proposals for a nuclear test ban and a Kashmir solution were branded utopian and unrealistic.

South Asian journalists in Lahore who would like to change this media fatalism towards Indo-Pakistani rivalry, proposed a citizen’s group to monitor “hate-producing images of war and military prowess in the media”.

They said journalists in both countries should first be aware of how they are pawns in the proxy war between their governments.

Some observers, like Gujral, feel that satellite television has opened up the region to images from across the border and helped people understand each other better. Television soap operas and films have actually done more to bring Indians and Pakistanis together than the press.

“Satellite at least enables us to look at each other directly, and helps in correcting tilts created by the print media. Thanks to the dish we can now see each other’s faces,” Gujral says.

But others feel access to satellite television has also exposed people on one side of the border to biased coverage from

the other side.

Counters Niaz: “Thanks to the dish, we can now watch the other side’s propaganda. I don’t know whether this is helpful.”

 
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