I have not seen The Kashmir Files. I do not know if I will have the bandwidth or interest to see it (even if it has a brilliant actor like Anupam Kher in it). Because even without seeing it, simply knowing that it was made with a single point agenda of changing the known and accepted historical narrative to something that is tailored to fit the hate and bigotry-tinted lenses vision of the director, whose sympathies are quite well-known because of his own admission, is enough for me to know that it will not be worth my time or money, even if all those propagandists are telling me to see it. I don’t care how tasty someone tells me cow dung is. I won’t eat it. And I don’t need to taste it to get an understanding of what it is. Because. It. Was. Excreted. By. A. Cow.
That said, I am seeing some emotional exhortations from Kashmiri Pandits about why this is an important film. I am at a loss to understand it. For starters, they hardly qualify as persecuted people anywhere in India. The claims that they are a marginalised community (or worse still, hated for who they were) are far from true. Their claims that we Indians need to see why they deserve our empathy are churlish, given that they have received more than their fair share, indeed a disproportionate amount as compared to other displaced people anywhere in the nation. And lastly, none of them seems to care about their actual history, which (not to put too fine a point on it) is rather well documented. I shall not bother to repost it here, but you can find it yourself if you look for it. Many of my friends have posted a rebuttal with facts, figures, data, and sources.
The whole sordid episode has the Hindu right-wing’s pawprints on it. If anything, the self-triggered exodus (on the behest of the Governor, appointed by VP Singh, and backed by the BJP and supported by the RSS) should be classified as a false-flag operation that has allowed the perpetrators to reap benefits from it over the last 3 decades. (Note: when I say, ‘self-triggered’, I do not mean the Pandits caused it themselves, but that the Hindutva right-wing caused it to happen with the hope that this will help their cause. The ‘self’ in that phrase is for the right-wingers and not the Pandits). This film is another attempt to use the same false-flag operation to continue to forward the fraudulent narrative that somehow, this was about valley-based Muslims hating the Kashmiri Pandits (it might be interesting to read up about their exploitation of the valley-based Muslims for 125 years by the Hindu minority, by the way) and driving them away from their homes and livelihoods.
There is no doubt that there was animosity, fanned and fuelled from across the border but also as a result of a century of repression, and that Mufti Mohammed Sayeed (who quit the INC in 1986 and joined the BJP-backed VP Singh in 1987) and his gang was probably responsible for instigating riots as the Delhi-appointed Governor provided the perfect cover. But having said that, and I return to my main point, there was never ever a time when the internally displaced Kashmiri Pandits were seen by the rest of India as anything but Indians with equal rights and privileges. The kind of appeals to see a movie that negates known and recorded history are in themselves negating known and recorded history about so-called persecution and lack of empathy towards the Kashmiris.
Perhaps, I am prone to think, these people who speak of how Kashmiris are treated badly in the rest of India, are speaking of the Kashmiri Muslim students who are looked upon with suspicion and jailed for celebrating the wrong team’s cricketing victory. If that is the case, I agree. The rest of India needs to learn to be more sympathetic and understanding of the Kashmiris. But if by Kashmiris, they mean only the Pandits, they need to invite some perspective and proportion into their sad lives.
Lastly, about the whole comparison with the Holocaust when speaking about this film, let me say it is nauseating. I don’t even want to go into the differences between a state-sponsored, state-run, state-built machine created to exterminate a specific race, and succeeding(?) in murdering 6 million of them and what seems like a false-flag operation by the RSS to create a narrative and polarise the society in the late 1980s and early 1990s (the very years since India has been slowly but decisively slipping into the abyss of a fractured society, and that too by design). Get a grip, people (especially the Kashmiri Pandits). And, as I suggested, some sense of proportion.
Claiming pre-emptive persecution from LinkedIn and the ‘please don’t hate me’ tone.
The nauseating comparisons with the Holocaust.
The specific use of ‘Bharat’ and appeal to human rights and blaming the Congress. All of this stems from a persecution complex without knowing actual history.
Literal comparisons with the Holocaust. Just. No.
Claiming no one knew about the exodus before this film.
No, dude. No. Only an unlettered idiot will say watching a film is better than reading 100 books. Especially on a nuanced, complex subject like Kashmir.
——LATER ADDITION BELOW——-
Normally, I do not react to comments, but in this case, I shall make an exception. I have added the following to the post after reading some rather acerbic comments of people who have completely misread this post, no doubt because of my own bad writing. That has led to quite some bad blood and righteous indignation within some well-meaning people. So, without blaming anyone for this, let me clarify in point form:
- The Kashmiri Pandits were driven out of their homes and from their livelihood. This is a huge tragedy. I do not deny this needs to be addressed. I condemn that this happened.
- They suffered hugely for just being them and being caught in a minority in a structure where the majority around them was being instigated against them. This should never happen in a democratic free country. To anyone. Least of all in a syncretic culture like Kashmir specifically and India generally. I condemn this.
- The issue of Kashmiri Pandits’ exodus from the valley and their resettlement has been kept festering since they were forced to leave back in 1989-90. That is a good 33 years today. This is unforgivable and I condemn it.
However, that is not what my post was about. Let me put it here again in point format:
- The numbers published by their own organisations (whether Panun Kashmir or the Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti) are low. The number published by the government (the BJP government, a government sympathetic to the right-wing and supposedly to the plight of the Kashmiri Pandits) is even smaller. This does not mean that it does not matter. Even a single life lost to violence matters. However, the constant comparison to the Holocaust can and should be avoided. There was no genocide. You need not take my word for it. Look up the definition yourself. By equating it to genocide, you are belittling both: the Holocaust as well as the Kashmiri Pandit exodus. Don’t.
- Nobody and no one in India (mis)treated the fleeing Kashmiri Pandits as ‘migrants’ even in the mildest form of regionalism and racism that is faced every day by migrants from Bihar/UP, West Bengal, and the North East. To claim persecution is incorrect. No one hated them. No one asked them to go back to Kashmir. No one kept them away from state facilities or stole from them.
- The film was made with a specific agenda, not to heal or bring closure, not even to create a groundswell for rehabilitation and restitution, but to dig up old bodies, to refresh old wounds, and to inflame passions. You know it. I know it. The filmmaker knows it. And very importantly, every person begging the world to ’go, see The Kashmir Files’ knows it. Just read through their posts and their language and you will see what I mean. That said, I am not a film critic nor can I look inside someone’s mind, least of all Vivek Agnihotri’s. So, I am not certain. It is a hunch. I am prepared to be wrong, except all circumstantial evidence points to a malafide intent. Note that I am not, and I repeat, not calling for banning or boycotting the film. That would be silly. I am simply stating that I am unlikely to see it.
- The Governor of the state, who was effectively controlling the law & order situation, was an RSS-man appointed by the BJP-backed VP Singh government on 19 January 1990. It is now an accepted fact that on the very night of his appointment as Governor, he facilitated and encouraged the movement of Kashmiri Pandits out of the valley to Jammu and other parts of India. The very next day, as was apparently planned by him, a house-to-house search was carried out by the security forces (ostensibly the reason he asked the Pandits to leave ‘temporarily’). And the next day to that, as a reaction to the public protests against the security operation, what is now known as the ‘Gawkadal Massacre’ took place where at least 50 protestors were shot and killed as they gathered to protest on the Gawkadal bridge. Too much coincidence? No. The Kashmiris, Muslims and Pandits, both know about Jagmohan’s role in the worsening of the Kashmiri situation and the polarisation of society in the valley. He was removed only in May 1990, after the murder of Mirwaiz Maulvi Mohammad Farooq and the firing on his funeral procession by security forces, in which 60 people were killed. Why am I giving figures of these murders? Because I want you to contrast them with the figures thrown about for how many Kashmiri Pandits were killed by terrorists. If anything, this is a Kashmiri tragedy and not a specific Hindu Kashmiri one.
- The Indian National Congress, or indeed any government without the BJP, has been in power for a total of 17 of the 33 years since the exodus. Out of that, the PVNR government (5 years) was preoccupied with saving us from bankruptcy and eventual starvation, and I can understand why they could not focus on this. Ditto the United Front government (2 years) which was too fragile to achieve anything. Let me, therefore, condemn outright the MMS government which was ruling for the other 10 years and ask what exactly they did to right the situation and solve the Kashmiri Pandit issue. And I will understand if you do too. However, note that for the rest of the time (16 years), it has been either a BJP-run or a BJP-backed government (notably for the past 8 years), meaning that a right-wing, pro-Kashmiri-Pandit government has been at the Centre. Panun Kashmir, an organisation of Kashmiri Pandits asking for the resettlement of their brethren in a separate ‘homeland’ was founded in 1991. The government at the Centre then was backed by the BJP. If condemnation must come, it must be directed at the right people. The tone and intent of most of these articles asking me to watch the movie are that somehow, it was Muslim appeasement and secularism practised by the Congress governments that is the root of the matter and why the Kashmiri Pandit issue remains unresolved. That is far from the truth.
As you can see:
- I am not denying that the Kashmiri Pandits were driven out or that they felt unsafe. I am saying that all of this happened under the watch of a right-wing-backed government and a right-wing-appointed Governor.
- I am not saying that Pakistan-backed terrorists and separatists, their funding, arms, and indoctrination wasn’t responsible for and cause of the immediate murders, mayhem, and fear. I am saying that Pakistan has been trying to meddle in Indian affairs since 1947. I am saying that the right-wing, in its excitement to create polarisation (right since SPM’s Jammu Praja Parishad days), played (and continued to play) into the Pakistani hands and invariably ended up aiding each other, just like the Muslim League and the Hindu Mahasabha did pre-partition to cause the country to break up. They weren’t hand-in-glove explicitly (or at least that is what I believe), but their acts ended up causing the exodus and the internationalisation of the Kashmiri problem once again after it had calmed down for 2 decades.
- I am not saying that the Kashmiri Pandits should not seek rehabilitation or reparations. I am saying that to blame PVNR’s and MMS’s 15 years of governance out of the 33 years of time that has passed since the exodus is disingenuous and unproductive. If the right-wing (as most of those exhorting me to watch the film are) governments wanted to solve this problem, they would have. Long ago. Apparently, they profit more from the continuation of the issue rather than its closure.
- I am not saying that the Kashmiri Pandits did not suffer as they picked up their life outside their homes across the country. I am saying that they were never pulled out of a lineup or mocked or ridiculed or persecuted like the Bengali, Bihari, Naga, Assamese, Manipuri people are across India. To claim otherwise is simply fishing for sympathy and does not behove a proud Kashmiri.
Do you at least now see the point? Because if you do not, I think I should be able to conclude comfortably that you have decided to fall for the agenda the film was made with, and that agenda, I am sorry to say, was soiled by the intent of the filmmaker. I am sorry you feel the way you feel and you think you are being persecuted by people like me. But that is not the case. Your anger and frustration need to be channelised to finding ways to address the issue of your rehabilitation, in which I stand with you. But if it is going to be used by shrewd politicians and political filmmakers to divert your attention and turn it into hate, I am not only going to move away from you, but in cases where you espouse violence, whether verbal or physical, against another human, actually stand opposed to you.
Make what you will of that.
P.S: Here’s something you may want to watch if you want to get to the truth.
