Such that lakhs of them were exiled, so many killed. It’s semantically immaterial whether you term their plight genocide, or exodus; or debate on statistics. Death and displacement, of even a single person, is just that—crime against humanity. Voluntary migration is another matter. But even there, much to my surprise, only 5 per cent Indians live in a city that is not of their birth. Home is home.

I’ve met no Indian—no matter what their economic or political leanings—who doesn’t sufficiently sympathise with the cause of Kashmiri Pandits, who lost their life and dwellings. They were pushed into refugee camps within their country, based merely on who they pray to. It should happen to no one. No matter what their faith. 

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How can you not empathise? Everyone does. And surely a film that shines a light on that plight is an important work. As is Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files. Even if it bombastically, brutally scrapes off bandage to refresh wounds. 

In as much as Rakesh Sharma’s Final Solution (2004), Rahul Dholakia’s Parzania (2005), Nandita Das’s Firaaq (2008), were for 2002 Gujarat riots. Or Shonali Bose’s Amu (2004) was for 1984 Delhi riots. Only that Kashmir is historically a lot more complicated still.

In the sense that, as a character in Agnihotri’s film puts it, this was a princely state, whose people were promised plebiscite, once Jammu & Kashmir acceded to India after independence. At the same time though, you can argue, by sheer dint of a two-nation theory, it’s not like any princely state got independence anyway.

The savagery of some separatists, likewise, doesn’t help with seeing them as anything close to principled freedom fighters, in the vein of how India had, against the British. The excesses of the Indian Army in Kashmir can’t be denied either. Vishal Bharadwaj’s Haider (2014) details that. It was handed the National Award for Best Screenplay, among several National Awards, in 2015, under the BJP government. 

There’s the third angle of Pakistan backed terrorism, that have been rightly denounced and demonised, also lampooned by the dozen, in Hindi films. I’ve met no Indian who sides with terrorists. In The Kashmir Files, Agnihotri claims that the Indian news media calls them “rebels.” A character in the film says, “Think of politics as a story with a hero. There must be a villain.”

The news media is decidedly shown to be the villain. Only that the mainstream Indian press has, by and large, toed the official/government line on Kashmir, ever since I’ve been its regular consumer. 

Of course, I was a child in 1990, when Kashmiri Pandits were exiled en masse. But there was hardly any private news outlet then (barring Newstrack, that I can remember, which would’ve strongly covered this tragedy, surely). For research in the film, the camera points towards news clips.

The other villain in this piece are young college students in a university modelled on JNU, with an election around the corner, being brainwashed by a professor. These are young college students, with a pen in their hand, for heaven’s sake. 

The film makes a point about how “false news is less dangerous than hiding truth.” And yet for a movie that’s effectively centred on January 18, 1990, while the state pretty much dissolved its monopoly over violence to maintain rule of law, letting terror prevail—the audience is never told which was the central government in power? 

I’m googling, National Front. Who was the Prime Minister? VP Singh. Who became the governor right after? Jagmohan. Isn’t it a crying shame that despite several governments over three decades plus, the Kashmiri Pandits who left, haven’t quite returned yet? Every other conversation is tokenism for activism then, isn’t it?

Agnihotri belongs to India’s ruling elite, headquartered in Lutyens’s New Delhi—with direct access to the nation’s Prime Minister. His picture’s polemic aside (and polemic is a legit genre, after all), what you can’t deny—even if you’ve seen his first film Chocolate (2005), which was an uncredited remake of The Usual Suspects (1996)—there’s a certain, above the baseline hold over his filmmaking tools/craft; extracting credible performances from actors as well.

As is the case with The Kashmir Files. Hence an applause after the 170-minute screening that I experienced in my theatre in Mumbai’s Bandra. This is rare, unless a film is playing at a festival. There are also clips circulating online of angry audiences. 

But what exactly is the call to action, if not adequate rehabilitation, judicial probe, fair compensation, promise of rule of law, adequate security. What good, really, is an eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, limb for a limb. 

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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