The channels, says Wani, have also swamped Kashmir with the workaday discourse of Pakistan’s socio-political life. “We have moved beyond PTV. With other channels, Kashmiris, for the first time, have a chance to tune into other submerged layers of Pakistan’s discourse. So you have a heterogeneous society hemmed in by its own anxieties and disaffection with the establishment and the institutions. You have a country debating the 1971 debacle and the threats to integrity due to political and religious violence. And then we find that Kashmir is not necessarily always at the centre of things in the country — unlike what we always assumed,” says Wani.

The unhindered broadcast of Pakistani channels is also seen as an “unwitting confidence building measure” between India and Pakistan on Kashmir, in tune with the new “borders are irrelevant” theme of Indo-Pak dialogue. “In a situation where opening of crossing points on the LoC has proved a non-starter, TV channels have reduced the mental distance and bridged the huge sense of divide,” says the chairman of the Hurriyat Conference, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq. In 2005, the Mirwaiz travelled to Pakistan through the re-opened Srinagar-Muzaffarabad road, so far the biggest Kashmir-centric CBM between India and Pakistan.

Now, how far this cross-border broadcast will influence and modify the perception of Pakistan remains to be seen. “We may be in for some overhaul in our collective approach towards Kashmir’s troubled political legacy. We are also in for a sort of competition of narratives,” says Wani, adding that globalisation has added its own dimensions to the problem by bringing in a vastly large context.

... contd.