The Living Scripts | Iftikhar Gilani

The 33^rd session of IPS’ oral history project ‘The Living Scripts’ was held with Iftikhar Gilani, a renowned journalist with a distinguished career spanning over three decades, on October 28, 2024.

Born in Sopore – a historically significant town in North Kashmir known for its vibrant democratic culture and high GDP, Iftikhar Gilani completed his early education in his hometown before attending Government College Sopore, a politically active institution where he engaged in discourse on issues such as the widespread election rigging of the 1980s.

During his college years, he started contributing to the college magazine. After graduating with a science degree, he pursued journalism at the Jawaharlal Nehru University’s Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Delhi, entering through a Kashmiri seat.

After graduation, his journalistic career began with Mid-Day, where he reported on a riot for the first time in 1991 in the Nizamuddin area, covering communal unrest around the local graveyard. Then he covered the 1992 riots in Seelampur after the Babri Masjid demolition. His reporting of these riots contributed to legal actions against the perpetrators, and as a result, there were no riots in Delhi until 2002.

He later joined a feature agency, covering “news behind the news” stories that took him across India and provided insights into the country’s regional media strength. He then covered India for Germany’s public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) and then he joined South Asian Service and then freelancing.

In the 1990s, he reported for various outlets, including working for Pioneer newspaper in 1995, where he first connected with Pakistani press during a SAARC summit. This eventually led him to work as a special correspondent for The Nation and Nawa-e-Waqt in Pakistan. He also worked for Kashmir Times, a widely circulated newspaper published from Jammu and Srinagar.

He later led the Political Bureau at Tehelka Magazine and Delhi Bureau at Kashmir Times’, and headed the National Bureau at Daily News Analysis (DNA). Till 2019, he was the Editor (Strategic Affairs) and Chief of the National Bureau at the DNA, published from Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Indore, and Jaipur. During his tenure at DNA, he focused on strategic affairs and reported on national security issues despite institutional barriers to questioning the government on sensitive topics.

After facing threats to his safety, he left India in 2019 and joined Turkey’s Anadolu Agency, overseeing the Asia-Pacific, America, Middle East, Africa, and Europe divisions and reporting extensively from regions including Azerbaijan, Syria, and Palestine, and providing ground coverage of the Turkey earthquake and Middle Eastern conflicts.

He is also the author of My Days in Prison, a memoir reflecting his challenging yet resolute career in journalism.