The Kashmir Files

Last week one film named  “ The Kashmir Files” was released, even before the release,  this film started generating controversy . The film is based on Kashmiri Pundits who were forced out of their homes in the Kashmir area in  early 1990, and the people responsible for this were the Islamic fundamentalist organizations who threatened the Kashmiri Pundits/Hindus and forced them to flee. Hundreds of Kashmiri Pundits were killed, women raped and killed and there were many atrocities inflicted on them. Actually, insurgency in Kashmir had already started from early 1989, and the organizations/groups responsible for all this wanted Kashmir only for Muslims and they forced Hindus to leave Kashmir.

Now it so happened that many political parties of Kashmir and some national parties including Congress , left parties and so called pseudo secular started feeling jittery because this film has shown what has been hidden from the general public outside the J&K area. The fact is that around 5 lakh Kashmiri Pundits were forced out of their homes, and most of them migrated to Jammu and other nearby states, and they started living in Refugee Camps and became refugees in their own country. At that time no political party had the guts to fight these Kashmiri insurgents, which means that they showed no sympathy towards the welfare of the Kashmiri Pundits, and these people suffered badly. The condition became similar to the situation at the time of partition of India, when lakhs of Hindus migrated from the area given to Pakistan after partition.

From early 1990, after this happened the J&K administration was under Governor’s rule from 19^th January 1990 to 18^th July 1990, and then under President’s rule from  19^th July 1990 to 9^th October 1996. After that Farooq Abdullah became CM, he was also the CM when the state was brought under Governor’s rule in January 1990.

Now let us see which govt was ruling at centre during these periods. VP Singh of Janata Dal became Prime Minister in November 1989, with the outside support of BJP. When BJP withdrew their support, then Chandrashekhar with a breakaway group of Janata Dal and outside support of Congress became PM in November 1990. Chandrashekhar govt lasted only a few months, and then General Elections were announced, and after elections, Narsimha Rao of Congress became PM and led the minority govt with outside support of smaller parties and independents.

It is clear that the Congress govt from 1991 to 1996 never made any serious attempt to solve the issue of Kashmiri Pundits. Actually, Kashmiri Pundits went of suffering till Govt led by PM Modi removed article 370, which had given special status to  Kashmir, made J&K union territory in 2019. Now hew Kashmiri Pundit families have gone back to Kashmir.

As per my knowledge, these are the facts, and I do not know what film has shown, as I have not seen the film. But going through the media it looks like the facts shown in the film are really hard-hitting and that’s why the controversy all over.

First controversy started when the director of the film Vivek Agnihotri told the media that the TV program “ The Kapil Sharma Show” refused the film team to come on the show to promote this film. Immediately after this Kapil Sharma was trolled on social media for this. Then it came out in media that the producer of the show has refused( and who is the producer of show-Salman Khan’s production house).

In the meantime film was released all over India in limited cinemas, as some big cinema chains refused to screen the movie for the fear of vandalism, as the film has generated enough controversy.

Now Congress appears to be embroiled in a major controversy involving this film. The Kerala Congress in along tweet claimed that the Kashmiri Pundits left the valley en masse “ under the direction of governor Jagmohan, who was an RSS man”. My question is that after that Congress which ruled the nation for 15 years till 2014 made no serious attempt to relocate the Kashmiri Pundits back to their home towns in Kashmir.

It was really surprising that Anupama Chopra (a film critic and wife of producer/director Vidhu Vinod Chopra- a Kashmiri Hindu) has in her review  of the film has mentioned that the genocide of Kashmiri Pundits was a figment of the India Right’s imagination. The movie is called a bad attempt at propaganda.

If you further go through social media, it comes out that “ The Kashmir Files is the goriest yet the most truthful account of the Kashmiri Pundits/Hindus massacre. This film will turn your stomach upside down. It will make you break down. It is perhaps the first film that does not shy away from showing reality as it was in the Kashmir of 1991 and the years that followed. The film unapologetically shows how Kashmiri Hindus were given clear choice by Islamist terrorists of the valley”.

I failed to understand, what the film shows are the event from the recent past, then why some political parties and liberals are trying to sabotage the film. These people/parties should have the guts to accept the fact that this has really happened in the recent past, and there are so many people/political parties who could have made some concrete efforts to resolve this issue. We do not know what attempts were made by earlier govts. So what is wrong in accepting that this happened and politically the problem could not be resolved for various reasons. The problem with Congress has been that they have never revealed the facts of history to the people, be it history of independence, British or Moghul history. There were so many facts that were not revealed to the Indian citizens.

So let us not start political controversy concerning this film. Treat the film as a work of art, similar to so many other historical films.

Waiting for your view on this blog.

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

15^th March 2022.