The politics of finding facts

Article 370 of the Indian constitution granted the State of Jammu and Kashmir ‘special status’ in the Indian Union. It was read down in a unilateral move by the Indian government in 2019. The State was stripped of its statehood and split into two Union Territories. The whole event was carried out without the consent of the people. The State’s political leadership was detained and an information blockade was imposed. The local media could not function. Kashmir became like a blackhole from which no information was allowed to escape. Several Indian fact-finding teams visited Kashmir during this period, as they did during previous uprisings, to reveal facts from the ground situation. This paper examines multiple reports produced by these teams and seeks to understand the values and concerns that animate them. It considers of immense significance the professional and personal engagement of the authors with the politics of Kashmir and examines whether, and how, their identity, citizenship or ideological inclinations hamper their ability to produce unbiased reports. In doing so, the paper argues that such partisan teams and their biased reports contribute to a decontextualised and hierarchical (re)production of knowledge about Kashmir and its people.