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Downloading Dissent, Uploading Identity
Introduction | |
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< | When Reliance Limited made its voice over LTE service publicly available in 2016, it took 333 million subscribers less than three years to transform Jio’s literal translation ‘live’ into their everyday lives. But the North-South division is a classic symbol of life that marks the disconnect in India. In Kerala, the High Court held that the right to have access to the internet is part of the fundamental right to education as well as the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. In Kashmir, however, it is day 67. In this essay, I seek to briefly respond to internet shutdowns and its effects on Kashmiris. | >
> | When Reliance Limited made its voice over LTE service publicly available in 2016, it took 333 million subscribers less than three years to transform Jio’s literal translation ‘live’ into their everyday lives. But the North-South division is a classic symbol of life that marks the disconnect in India. In Kerala, the High Court held that the right to have access to the internet is part of the fundamental right to education as well as the right to privacy under Article 21 of the Constitution. In Kashmir, however, it is day 144. In this essay, I seek to briefly respond to internet shutdowns and its effects on Kashmiris. | | | History of internet shutdowns | |
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< | Populist governance, as opposed to fascism, has a remarkable ability of adapting. The Arab Spring, in 2011, rose from the collective will forged on the internet. The consequences were for all to see. But for some of those who saw, the task was to nip this mobilization of citizens in the bud. So, it started. In 2012, India witnessed the first instance of an internet shutdown when mobile internet services were suspended in the Kashmir Valley to contain protests against a blasphemous video deemed offensive to Islamic sentiments. This order was premised on the broad plank provided by Section 5(2) of the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, i.e. “in the interest of public safety and maintaining public order”. This was the first time that mobile internet services, in its entirety, were suspended in India for policing reasons, and not as part of broader telecommunications restrictions such as those imposed on Republic Day or Independence Day in Jammu-Kashmir. | >
> | Populist governance, as opposed to fascism, has a remarkable ability of adapting. The Arab Spring, in 2011, rose from the collective will forged on the internet. The consequences were for all to see. But for some of those who saw, the task was to nip this mobilization of citizens in the bud. So, technology which was supposed to make lives simpler, is currently a potent weapon in the hands of autocrats capable of subverting democracy. While it has the potential to bridge social cleavages, as of now, the key is with authoritarian forces. Inherent is their ability to deflect our attention from where it needs to be, refocusing our attention to distant victims which elicit mere sympathy instead of tackling the problems these powerful forces have created. | | | | |
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< | Between January 2012 and January 2019, 278 Internet shutdowns have been recorded. These shutdowns have largely stemmed from the malleable State powers proffered by Section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973. Within the Code of Criminal Procedure, Section 144 resides as the sole occupant under the chapter of “temporary measures to maintain public tranquillity” and gives State Governments the “power to issue orders for immediate remedy in urgent cases of nuisance or apprehended danger”. Software Freedom Law Centre, in its report published in 2018, demonstrates that out of the 278 internet shutdowns, 160 were observed to be preventive measures i.e. restrictions imposed in anticipation of law and order breakdowns, whereas 118 shutdowns were reactive in nature i.e. imposed in order to contain on-going law and order breakdowns. | >
> | In doing so, autocrats articulate a framework comprehensible even to the least literate. This is the language of fear, designating groups of people as a single collective group, i.e. the other, which concurrently disintegrates the vague liberal ideas of universal humanity. The perpetration of falsehood, supported by constructed narratives and reason, disseminated by emotional appeals on social media, works better than liberals’ articulation of crises. The recent events in Kashmir are emblematic of a larger syndrome which has gripped the world governed by such autocrats.
In August 2019, the Modi government in India, fundamentally changed India’s constitutional relationship with Kashmir and its people – all carried out in virtual darkness. Jammu and Kashmir’s chequered history with internet shutdowns dates back to 2012. Justified on the basis of law and order, between 2012 and 2019, 278 Internet shutdowns have been recorded. In 2016, mobile internet services were suspended for 133 days. And the current Kashmir internet shutdown which started on August 4, 2019 is effectively still in place. Software Freedom Law Centre, in its report published in 2018, demonstrates that out of the 278 internet shutdowns, 160 were observed to be preventive measures i.e. restrictions imposed in anticipation of law and order breakdowns, whereas 118 shutdowns were reactive in nature i.e. imposed in order to contain on-going law and order breakdowns.
Shutdowns work to create white holes, where the governments want the people to look, by simultaneously constructing black holes of information where they do not want attention. There is no benefit in creating such attention holes permanently, because of the rapid rate of information production, which constantly shifts focus from one spectacle to the next. Smart governments and businesses are constantly creating and destroying white holes and black holes. From managing expectations about jobs to creating new dystopic images about anti-nationals, every modern state is in the business of constant focusing and refocusing of citizens’ attentions | | | | |
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< | It further notes that 60 of the 278 Internet shutdowns between January, 2012-2019 lasted less than 24 hours, 55 lasted between 24 and 72 hours, 39 lasted for over 72 hours, while no information was available on the respective durations of 113 Internet shutdowns. The non-availability of information is attributable chiefly to the fact that no public notifications are issued by the Government or Internet Service Providers before, during, or after shutdowns, leaving stakeholders outside affected areas to source this information from available news reports, which do not consistently mention the durations for which Internet access was blocked. | | | The Kashmir clampdown
Far from being a tool for political dissent, the Government of India solidified control over the Valley by arrogating to itself the power to maintain peace, law and order. It is not merely the control over the narrative, but the disassembly of the counter-narrative through propaganda. This formed the Gramscian structure of domination, where the civil society is conditioned to subscribe to the State’s rationale and perpetuate it by delegitimizing any dissidents. Data trails left by users offer a significant insight into their behavioral patterns, but the monopolization of power to invade the network services of a region goes far beyond passive interference to a type of networked authoritarianism. | |
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< | The relationship between the central government and Jammu-Kashmir was radically altered on August 5, 2019. The annual Hindu pilgrimage to the holy site in Amarnath was cancelled, unprecedented military personnel were stationed at different locations, the political elites and influential leaders were detained and most critically, mobile network services were (still are) suspended. Later, in the same week, Home Minister Amit Shah tabled a resolution to delete the special status conferred to Jammu and Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, along with a range of unilateral measures that seceded the Kashmiri agency. | >
> | The relationship between the central government and Jammu and Kashmir was radically altered on August 5, 2019. The annual Hindu pilgrimage to the holy site in Amarnath was cancelled, unprecedented military personnel were stationed at different locations, the political elites and influential leaders were detained and most critically, mobile network services were (still are) suspended. Later, in the same week, Home Minister Amit Shah tabled a resolution to delete the special status conferred to Jammu and Kashmir by revoking Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, along with a range of unilateral measures that seceded the Kashmiri agency. | | | This pattern is not uncommon in India, which leads the world in temporary shutdowns of the internet. From local bureaucrats to Home Minister Amit Shah, government officials cite public security as a reason to suspend a channel that has become the routine mode of communication for most Indians. Since the medium is the message, the politics of free speech is the politics of the internet. The shutdown of WhatsApp? , however temporary, is how the government controls people’s minds. Moreover, the shutdown is temporary by design.
The idea of Kashmir now | |
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< | For 67 days, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been made invisible, not visually but communally. The absolutist powers of a State refashion law to simply a vehicle to erase identities. For most part, this identity is most powerfully expressed through the internet. But the remote control lies in the hands of those who control not just Kashmir, but the idea of Kashmiriness. In the internet age, attention is a scare resource. As Kasturirangan argues, the way to control minds is by controlling attention, whether by making people focus where businesses and governments want them to (white holes) or by creating black holes of information where they would rather people did not look. There is absolutely no advantage in making that black hole permanent because attention is fickle and it keeps shifting from one spectacle to the next. Smart governments and businesses are constantly creating and destroying white holes and black holes. From managing expectations about jobs to creating new dystopic images about anti-nationals, every modern state is in the business of constant focusing and refocusing of citizens’ attentions. | >
> | For 144 days, the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been made invisible, not visually but communally. The absolutist powers of a State refashion law to simply a vehicle to erase identities. For most part, this identity is most powerfully expressed through the internet. But the remote control lies in the hands of those who control not just Kashmir, but the idea of Kashmiriness. In the internet age, attention is a scare resource. As Kasturirangan argues, the way to control minds is by controlling attention. The future of politics isn’t between left and right, but between predictors and explainers. Predictors use the internet to drive people’s emotions in the direction they want without care about who is hurt and how. Their target is the specific yet random person. By contrast, explainers care about the actual people behind their statistical signatures. Liberal politics’ success is contingent on effectively explaining and countering the language of fear of the autocrats. | | | Till then, for us, everything has returned to normalcy in Kashmir. Or so they say. | |
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I think the draft doesn't really get to its own thinking until the end. In that sense this seems like a good first draft to me: it has cleared away the brush and disclosed the subject. Your point about the contemporary state's "business of constant focusing and refocusing of citizens' attention" is a valuable pathway for more thinking. This, rather than the facts we both know and can be briefly stated, is where your own focus should be in the next draft. The illustration is a fine and politically-crucial one, but you are writing not only about what it means in Kashmir for this to be how it is in Kashmir, but what it means for the world. That's where your idea takes you, and it is right.
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