An approximate 1,00,000 of the total 1,40,000 Kashmiri Pandits are reported to have migrated out of the valley between February and March 1990. It is said that such mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was due to threats by various terrorist outfits, which set three conditions, i.e., they must either convert to Islam to stay in Kashmir or be prepared to be killed or flee the valley. This episode in the history of the valley is full of heart-wrenching stories of brutalities and atrocities, about which there were consistent denial at the top echelons of power and politics until the NDA regime came to power at the Centre. Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ is an attempt to unravel the truth long suppressed about such atrocities.
A majority of the viewers of the movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ are sanguine about the truthfulness of the stories of the unfortunate Kashmiri Pandits, who were coerced to become refugees in their own country by the brute force of Islamic terrorists and absolute lack of cooperation to the Pandits by the sympathisers of such terrorists in the power corridors of Srinagar in the then undivided State of Jammu and Kashmir and the mute spectators at Delhi. Agnihotri has endeavoured to play before us some of those unthinkable brutalities and traumas that Kashmiri Pandits had to go through. Those Pandits, who managed to flee the valley then, have lived and retold the stories of how terrorists masquerading themselves in the uniforms of the Indian Army visited camps of the displaced Pandits and shot dead many of them. This has been quite intensely shown in the last few minutes of the movie which had many viewers in the theatre crying.
‘The Kashmir Files’ plays around the desire of Pandit Puskar Nath (character played by veteran actor Anupam Kher) to return to his house in the valley. As the story in the movie unfolds, some brilliant performances were given by actor Darshan Kumar playing the character of Puskar Nath’s grandson and by actress Pallavi Joshi, who played the character of a professor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, who made headlines for instigating the students to agitate for “azadi” of Kashmir as she believed it to be under India’s ‘illegal occupation’.
The crux of the movie rests with the way in which the brutal oppression and killings of Kashmiri Pandits was cold-shouldered by the media and top political echelon of the country and overlooked by the liberal intelligentsia and how this was allowed to continue. The movie also shows how some conscientious bureaucrats (like the character played by Mithun Chakraborty) who were truly sworn in to uphold the Constitution were unheeded in the power corridors.
Some of these civil servants, now retired, have admitted a lot of those incidents after seeing the movie but have refused to unravel the details in view of the Official Secrets Act. But such a narrative has been challenged and rejected by film reviewers/ critics and by the so-called liberal/secular elites and has been termed as staged, faked, doctored, etc. Agnihotri has in the most unique and realistic manner reanimated and asserted the history of the valley and savage atrocities on Pandits.
The so-called liberals have alleged Agnihotri to have shown a limited side of the story and have totally ignored the death of Muslims in the process and that the insurgency was a consequence of betrayal, maladministration and erroneous decisions by Delhi. But this is nothing than a disgusting display of double standards as none of them have ever raised questions about movies on terrorism and insurgencies for their unilateral portrayals, made earlier by the likes of Mahesh Bhatt. These liberals are the ones who have always found pleasure in painting the Indian Army as the aggressor and all set of those separatists and militants as poor Kashmiris struggling for their human rights.
But fact remains that the truth about what is happening in the valley since last three decades is best put in context by former Deputy Chief Minister Muzaffar Hussain Baig, who in an all-party meeting in Delhi in August 2016 said, “A narrative of religious extremism” is witnessing “the revival of Khilafat” which has taken the form of Islamic State. He said, “I told that there is a narrative of religious extremism. This narrative is created in madrasas. Our teachers and schools don’t have such commitment or reach. These kids are trained in religious texts without context. Now, there is a revival of Khilafat, which has taken the form of IS. It is bound to influence the youth of Kashmir”…… He further said, “I told them that what is taught in madrasas is not real Islam. They teach them politicised Islam. They (students) get two sets of kameez pajamas from their families and these vulnerable minds are told that if you die in Jihad, you will go to paradise; and if you survive, you will be a hero. We should have had a counter-narrative (in Kashmir).”
Leaving behind what Baig said, the myth about the armed insurgency in Kashmir is that it actually commenced in 1989-90 owing to election rigging of 1987. However, the truth is the election rigging is hardly a catalyst; the real reason lies in the poll campaign where Islamists/separatists had made their wish clear about establishing a ‘Nizam-e-Mustafa’ (rule of the Prophet) in Kashmir as they have always viewed democracy as un-Islamic or ‘haram’.
While there is a lot to narrate to show the truth to the so-called liberals, the constraint of words for the column restraints it. Anyway, those who are not satisfied with the story that ‘The Kashmir Files’ narrates are welcome to go on with their version in another movie. But to a lot of Indians like me, ‘The Kashmir Files’ has done justice to the Kashmiri Pandits whose voice was long suppressed.
(The writer is an Additional Central Government Standing Counsel, Central Administrative Tribunal, Cuttack Bench and a Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Law and Media Studies, School of Mass Communication, KIIT University. Views are personal)