Dexter Filkins & Rana Ayyub Discuss the Situation in Kashmir

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Just tell me what it was like to be there trying to tell this story, seeing how Kashmir was being explained to the Indian people and wanting to try to figure out whether that was really what was happening. What made you enlist Rana?

DEXTER FILKINS, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Well, foreigners weren’t being admitted to Kashmir. I mean, it’s just — it’s completely locked down. And, you know, it’s part of this larger story, not just about Kashmir but what the Hindu nationalist government is doing to Muslims in India. And I thought that Kashmir was a kind of Exhibit A. I wanted to see it. I mean, as it turned out, you know, we just got on a plane and went. And, you know, walked out of the airport. So, it wasn’t all that difficult but I — but no one else had managed to get in there. And when we got in there, yes, it was pretty shocking. I mean, it was pretty much what your viewers just saw, total lockdown. Everybody — the Kashmiris cut off from the rest of the world and Kashmiris cut off from each other. And very, very depressing. Soldiers everywhere.

AMANPOUR: Rana, it is, you know, really difficult for — as Dexter said, certainly, for those of us even outside of India, even further afield, you just don’t know what is happening. And, you know, you have been reporting on Narendra Modi, on the — as we said, the violation against Muslim minority in India. What were you looking for in Kashmir? Because clearly a different story was being broadcast on Indian state media.

RANA AYYUB, GLOBAL OPINIONS WRITER, THE WASHINGTON POST: Absolutely, Christiane. The kind of news reports that were trickling in from the Indian media was that everything was normal in Kashmir and there were tourists all over the place. As somebody who has been reporting on Narendra Modi for the last 14 odd years and somebody who has witnessed his majoritarian pro Hindu politics, I knew that this was another exercise in basically establishing his Hindu national supremacy because Kashmir also happens to be the only Muslim majority state in India, at this point of time. So, on the (INAUDIBLE), the government of India revoked the special status where all the — every democratic leader in the country has been put behind bars. There’s no internet. There’s new connectivity. Kashmiris have no means to communicate with anybody in the world, and a position has been taken on their behalf. When we and Dexter went to Kashmir for the first time, we met families who had 12-year-olds and 13-year-olds had been detained, you know, and thousands have been detained in jails across Kashmir and across the country because the jails in Kashmir are overflowing. That’s where Kashmir stands now.