The Kashmir Files is currently streaming in theatres. (Photo credit: Twitter/KashmirFiles)
by Rajesh Kumar Sinha 30 March 2022
The release of a movie, The Kashmir Files, has led to a massive debate throughout India and many parts of the world. The film has been widely acclaimed by many critics and thinkers while hugely applauded by audiences. However, there have been discordant voices against the movie, its makers, and its very intent. There have been some voices questioning the utility of the storyline. Some have hammered it as politically motivated, aimed at disturbing the social cohesion and furthering the so-called propaganda of the ruling elite in the country.
The Kashmir Files is a movie that chronicles the disturbing killing and forced migration of native Kashmiri Pandits from the valley since the early 1990s. The storyline revolves around the beginning of the surge of terrorism and the systematic ethnic cleansing that many have described as ‘genocide’ of minority Kashmiri Pandits from the region. It also recounts the very indifferent attitude of the then head of the state administration, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, and a helpless, indecisive and scared bureaucracy.
Talking of the movie storyline, which its director Vivek Agnihotri claims to be entirely accurate and based on factual events, the critical point is criticism notwithstanding, not a single individual has been able to find anything that could be termed as fictitious. The gruesome murder of Balakrishna Ganjoo, an engineer, working with state-owned telecom company BSNL who hid in a rice drum to save his life, was located and killed by terrorists inside the drum while forcing his wife to eat blood-soaked rice is an event shared in a testimony to the US Congress.
The killing of Justice Nilakanth in Maharaj Bazar in broad daylight to avenge his judgment against Maqbool Bhat, the leader of the Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), and that of four unarmed Indian Air Force (IAF) officers on the road, both are events that were widely reported and recorded in government documents. The cold-blooded Nadimarg massacre of 24 innocent civilians, including a child, by terrorists donning army uniforms also sent a chilling message to vulnerable Pandit minorities in the valley. The killing of women by a mechanical saw alive would probably be no parallel to barbarism in contemporary society, and the fact is that it happened in Kashmir in the 1990s that rarely people in the world, including India, we’re aware of.
One of the major criticisms against the movie has been that showing the events, albeit in a much-limited way, is likely to promote hostility amongst Hindus and Muslims in India. If that is the case, the German treatment of Jews in the 1940s could have encouraged bad blood between Germany and, Israel/other European countries. Depicting the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in WWII by the US and its horrible impact on the people in movies could have made Japan and the US enemies for generations; nothing happened.
Also, when movies like Parazania, Haidar, and Mulk, along with a few short films/documentaries on Gujarat riots (2002), Babri Masjid Demolition (1992), depicting the problematic state of Muslims in India were released and appreciated by certain political motives, they were touted as examples of freedom of expression. None criticised movies like Fana and Mission Kashmir, both glorifying terrorists in one way or another. However, the problem with The Kashmir Files is that it is too blunt, too true, despite not showing all the inhuman cruelties that vulnerable Pandits of the valley had to go through in the early 1990s.
Further, more than any real trouble that Muslims came across as a result of this film, it’s been a case of politicians exploiting the movie’s success. While the ruling BJP party is trying to use it to further its populist-nationalist agenda, all other opposition politicians are scared of the further mileage that the BJP might accrue as a result of the movie’s success and hence using all sorts of unreal, irrational criticism of the film and its makers.
Some call it unnecessary after the unfortunate saga occurred almost three decades back. Many say that the movie vitiates the delicate social fabric between Hindus and Muslims. A sane response, however, has come from the director of The Kashmir Files, Vivek Agnihotri, who has stood his ground and reasoned that he has not made up any part of the movie that is based on actual events that took place in those times and two, only by showing reality and acknowledging mistakes of the past one can hope to heal the wounds, facilitate dialogue and communication furthering better understanding and harmony.
Another laughable argument by some supposedly intellectuals calling for donating the hard-earned money of the movie’s commercial success to victims of the genocide, Pandits, is blinkered and biased since they did not ask for the same when other movies were showing different human tragedies made money too.
Though the ruling party leaders, including Prime Minister Modi, have spoken approvingly of the movie (they cannot be faulted on that account), the furious reaction from some of the politicians/intellectuals/journalists castigating it as anti-Muslim propaganda is prejudiced and irrational, based on their hatred against the current government. And the more they get united against Modi on superficial grounds, the more BJP gains politically.
The film has become hot politics, given its extensive coverage in media, mainstream and digital, and the way politicians from all sections have got involved. The way its screening was tried to be sabotaged in a distant New Zealand also speaks of the insecurity some of the political and religious leaders face. All those sane voices who have seen the movie The Kashmir Files are clear that the film does not promote extremism or hatred against one community but merely depicts a black chapter of Indian politics and state that Amitabh Bachchan twitted many of us were not aware of. We need to acknowledge the horrible tragedy and then collectively help the surviving victims overcome it in the best possible way.