The Fear of Being Watched: Digital Surveillance and Self-Censorship in Indian-Administrated Kashmir:By Saba Ghulam Nabi

Saba Ghulam Nabi, Research Office at Center for International Strategic Studies, AJK

For decades, Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir has been under a prolonged security regime with several checkpoints, restrictions, and surveillance. Surveillance extends beyond physical checkpoints and security installations into the everyday lives of people. The people of the region have faced various forms of monitoring, including GPS-enabled tracking tools to monitor their movements.

On the other hand, extensive security infrastructures, communications monitoring, identity verification, and digital technologies have created an environment in which communication, mobility, and association can become sources of scrutiny. This surveillance is also embedded in common spaces of life, including students going to educational institutions, employees going to the office, young people playing or gathering in public spaces, businesspeople, and individuals communicating by phone, all of whom can encounter scrutiny.

 Communication with relatives across the Line of Control has been subjected to heightened scrutiny, with individuals facing questions and inquiries about their cell phone contacts and personal associations, extending surveillance into the sphere of familial and private communication. When these experiences of surveillance become part of daily routine, it creates an environment in which fear of surveillance and being watched not only influences whom they meet, where they go, but also what they share, say, and choose to leave unsaid.

The major consequential effect of surveillance is not always collecting information about an individual, but the actions that change because people believe that they may be watched. Restrictions and internet shutdowns are evident forms of digital control because they disrupt communication directly, but surveillance works differently. An individual remains connected to the internet but is intensively cautious about how that connection is used. The major question is not merely whether people can access the internet, but whether they feel appropriately safe to use it independently. 

The experiences of the journalists show this transformation clearly. In Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, police conducted searches at the homes of at least seven journalists, including Muhammad Rafi, Qazi Shibli, Gowhar Geelani and others, and seized their mobile phones, memory cards, laptops and pen drives. In November 2025, a journalist was summoned, and his mobile phone was confiscated and examined at the Cyber Police Station, Srinagar. He was also questioned about his personal background and social-media activity. 

These incidents show why the digital surveillance of journalists has consequences beyond the device itself. The phones of the journalists contain photographs, notes, contacts with sources, and professional communications. If the devices or communications are examined, the consequences extend into the process of reporting itself. The monitoring of people released on bail provides another illustration of how surveillance technologies go into everyday movement. In Indian-administered Kashmir, GPS-enabled anklet introduced for many people who had been released on bail, including Ghulam Muhamad Bhat, Abid Ali, and Abdul Majid, to monitor their activities and compliance with bail conditions. The movement of the individuals becomes continuously traceable through digital tools.

Even students have faced the impacts of digital monitoring, becoming the subjects of scrutiny.

Sohrab Qayoom, a student from Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir studying at Mewar University in Rajasthan, was arrested over an Instagram story related to the Babri Masjid issue. There are many other cases in which Kashmiri students have been monitored and detained even for posting something on social media.

These cases tell the story not only of what happened to the youth involved, but also of their experiences communicating with others. Students may read something and want to share their views, but fearing monitoring, they hesitate to do so. Researchers are forced to think about whom they should contact or which questions they should ask. Members of civil-society become more cautious about communicating with individuals and organizations. Common citizens avoid particular subjects, stop or limit conversations, and delete comments in digital spaces. Consequently, surveillance affects not only freedom of expression but also the links through which civic and social life is sustained.

This also has implications for social trust. When people living in a society become uncertain about whether their private conversations remain private, whom to access their information, over time this weakens social trust through which solidarity, information and collective action circulate. The difference between internet shutdowns and surveillance is therefore significant.

An internet shutdown cuts connectivity, but surveillance increases the real cost of connectivity. Self-censorship becomes the connection between the two. People who cannot access the internet cannot communicate digitally, but people who can access the internet but fear that their conversation is monitored still communicate, but with the fear of being watched. The second type of restriction is less visible because the people remain online, yet the space for free expression is limited without the internet being formally closed.

The people of India-administered Jammu and Kashmir have not stopped communicating, researching, reporting, or participating in public life; students continue to communicate, journalists continue to report, and researchers continue to investigate. But the deeper question is what remains invisible because of the fear of surveillance. Which source stopped communicating? Which researcher abandoned a line of inquiry? Which student decided not to post? These absences are difficult to calculate precisely because self-censorship leaves no obvious record.

Digital surveillance should therefore be understood not solely as a technological practice but as a matter of communication, civic space, and social behavior. Its implications lie in the link between observation and anticipation; people do not have to know that they are being watched to change their behavior; the fear that they may be watched can be enough to produce caution.

When that possibility is rooted in everyday life, surveillance moves beyond the collection of information and begins to impact how people participate, communicate, and associate in society.

The tangible measure of a free digital atmosphere is therefore not merely whether people can connect. It is whether they can communicate freely without calculating the consequences of being watched.  When censorship becomes part of everyday life, surveillance has moved beyond the collection of information. It has begun to transform behavior, and with it, the space in education, journalism, research, and social relationships can take place.