Postscript: Inside Our ‘Anti-War’ Editorial Discussions

The dark clouds of war enveloped us this month. Two and half decades after Kargil, India and Pakistan were once again on the brink. But it was different this time. The theatre of war, usually the border areas, had now shifted to our palms through screens. Ordinary people turned war experts, cheerleaders, and revenge seekers. In a script that was ripe for such public participation, from naming the operation ‘Sindoor’ as a metaphor for masculine revenge for the Pahalgam attack to the headlining of joint armed forces briefings by two women officers- one Muslim and one Hindu- it reeked of patriarchy and against all that feminism, through all its waves, stood for— anti-war.

As a feminist news room, we are anti-war, for we believe it to be a masculine enterprise that strengthens the military industrial complex. Anti-war feminism, as Cynthia Cockburn writes, ‘ involves a critique of the meaning and operation of power itself – women often choose to organise in prefigurative ways, exchanging ‘power over’ (domination) for ‘power to’ (capability). It was a position we wanted to actively articulate on our platforms.

But the din of war rhetoric on social media in those heady days was too shrill for our pacifist voices to be heard. At a time when Himanshi Narwal, the wife of a naval officer killed in the Pahalgam terrorist attack, was trolled and called anti-national, what space was left for a thoughtful articulation of why war never was and never will be the solution to any crisis, let alone a sensitive geo-political one like Kashmir, we asked ourselves. As editors we also had to keep the safety of our women journalists in mind after vicious trolling of journalists like Vaishna Roy and Neha Dixit who took a very public anti-war stand.

Apart from articulating our own position, we discussed why it was necessary to influence minds over a mindless rhetoric that had engulfed the nation. We contemplated interviews with pacifist feminists who had seen the horrors of previous wars and had been at the forefront of anti-war organising earlier. Our newsletters were also another space to articulate this position. Even as we were discussing these, events took a quick turn with Pakistan launching its own attacks on Indian military bases on May 7. What followed was a deluge of misinformation, deliberately manufactured to be provocative, where all ethics and standards were dispensed with. Ordinary people were left scrambling for what should have been the most important role of the press—to serve the truth.

That morning, the team got together over a Google sheet and collated useful resources that we were ourselves following for credible updates and responsible reportage. Many readers thanked us for this and we are overwhelmed that a simple act of being useful in befuddled and dangerous times is most valuable. Once the war clouds had shifted, we were curious to understand the legal frameworks that failed to check the TV channels and other media run amok during a conflict. Our reporter Saumya Kalia talked to media scholars and legal experts to piece together this explainer that tells you more about what led to the crisis of credibility.