Kashmir Files wants you to be a brute

When I entered the theatre to watch The Kashmir Files I was reminded of a Kashmiri Pandit woman who was displaced from Srinagar and who I met only once In that meeting she spoke of a dream she often had of a room made of mud in her ancestral house where the family would retreat in winter to keep warm ldquoI donrsquot know why this dream keeps recurringrdquo she saidI have always countered those who argue that Kashmiri Pandits were as vulnerable as Kashmiri Muslims during the outbreak of militancy in 198990mdashand should not therefore have left the Valley I find this argument bogus not least because of the acute anxiety I experienced during the movement against the Babri MasjidSince then every riot makes Muslims imagine violence creeping up to their doorsteps In such a scenario they know their names not political beliefs would make killers swoop down upon them Indeed it was human for Pandits to feel terrifiedmdashand abandon their homesI did not expect the psychology underlying the exodus of Pandits to be treated with sensitivity in this movie for anyone who coins a term such as Urban Naxal as Vivek Agnihotri the director of The Kashmir Files did would likely be crass I also knew aesthetics could not have inspired Prime Minister Narendra Modi to endorse The Kashmir Files After all Modi as the then Gujarat chief minister did not stop Hindutva hotheads from scaring theatreowners from screening Parzania and Firaaq Both films deal with the 2002 antiMuslim pogrom in Gujarat with restraintmdashand pathosAfter the last bullet was fired in The Kashmir Files it became palpable that the film was designed to turn Muslims and Hindus into brutes I saw my decades of empathy for Pandits wane I heard a gaggle of women applaud the film for depicting the truth in all its rawness No prizes for guessing who will gain politically from our metamorphosisThe film has been hailed for shining light on the suppressed story about the exodus of Pandits But their story has always been known But what is new about The Kashmir Files is that it has the audience view the plight of Pandits through the Hindutva lens disconnecting Kashmirrsquos tragedy from the Partition history even from the rigging of the 1987 Assembly election which was the immediate trigger for the rise of militancy Instead the film creates its own history it says the guns of militants replaced the ldquoswords of Sufisrdquo in the centuriesold Muslim project of Islamising KashmirThe film does not show a person in the army or police uniform fire a bullet even once Yet we know the Gawkadal massacre took place on January 21 1990 around the time the exodus of Pandits began Muslims are shown lusting after Hindu womenmdashand raping them However we know of many allegations against security forces of raping Kashmiri women Google Kunan Poshpora for instanceNot a single Kashmiri Muslim is killed by militants in the film But we know thousands of them have perished in the violence there Muslims are shown to betray Kashmiri Pandit neighbours In his memoir Not Just Cricket Pradeep Magazine narrates the story of Vivek Raina who recalls Kashmiri Muslims visiting the refugee camps in Jammu to beseech their Pandit friends to return home Raina speaks of a Muslim family friend who spent a month searching for his familyAgnihotrirsquos film is said to have come as an emotional catharsis for Kashmiri Pandits There are others waiting for Bollywood to tell their stories in all their rawness Let us have a film on the Gujarat riots that shows how former Gujarat MP Ehsan Jafri was stripped naked then had his arms and legs chopped off before he was tossed into a blazing fire Do include frames of Muslim women who were gangraped and burnt to death Let us make a film titled ldquoMay 22 1987rdquo after the day on which Uttar Pradesh Provincial Armed Constabulary arrested over 100 Muslims from Hashimpura Meerut shot them dead and dumped their bodies into the Ganga canalLet a film on the 1984 riots show Sikhs their hands tied with their turbans being set ablaze Let us show how Dalit woman Surekha Bhotmange her daughter and two sons were paraded naked in Khairlanji village Maharashtra before they were hacked to death Let us make a film on the children of 50 million people who have been uprooted since Independence to build big dams Let us describe the dishes they have forgotten to cook and the songs they can no longer sing just as The Kashmir Files depicts the cultural rootlessness of a displaced Kashmiri Pandit studentWhen Schindlerrsquos List was released in 1993 veteran journalist Saeed Naqvi wrote a piece which if I remember right was titled ldquoJews have monopolised the worldrsquos sorrowrdquo Their monopoly of sorrow has them justify the atrocities they commit on Palestinians Naqvi argued The Kashmir Files is Hindutvarsquos endeavour to establish the monopoly of Kashmiri Pandits over Indiarsquos sorrowmdashand then use it to oppress Muslims Watch The Kashmir Files to figure out how close you are to becoming a bruteThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper