WHY I WILL NOT WATCH 'THE KASHMIR FILES'

Vivek Agnihotri’s ‘The Kashmir Files’ has been in the news (relentlessly, one might add) and the subject of drawing room and dinner table discussions ever since its release a couple of weeks ago. A few people have asked me if I’ve seen it. I haven’t. And don’t intend to. Perhaps I’m one of those ‘urban naxals’ or ‘lib-tards’ of Mr Agnihotri’s creative imagination, whose heart only bleeds for certain groups and not for others. That’s not how I see any human conflict, but we live in times when it’s easier to put people in neatly labelled boxes so that there’s no room for nuance or civilised conversation.

I won’t watch the film for the same reason I didn’t watch Anil Sharma’s ‘Gadar: Ek Prem Katha’ in 2001. Not because I’m not interested in historical events (quite the contrary), but rather that I’m not interested in jingoistic or communal rabble-rousing cinema. I’m innately curious about the historical causes of present day conflicts and tensions. So it would be worth knowing what happened to the Kashmiri Pandits and what led to their killings and mass exodus from the valley in the early 1990s. What were their individual stories, what lives did they lead before and after the tragedy and how they continued to pine for their homeland even as they sank new roots elsewhere.

I would like to go further back, to understand the events that led to the original flashpoint in Kashmir and its gradual transformation from ‘paradise on earth’ to one of the ‘most militarized zones’ in the world. And even beyond that, how this hotly contested piece of land was conquered by different rulers down the ages and how its cultures and traditions were shaped over the millennia through the mingling of diverse influences. There are many books chronicling the history of Kashmir, including books by Kashmiri Pandits like Rahul Pandita’s ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots’, which speaks of this dark chapter of Indian history and records the individual and collective suffering of these people. 

I doubt if Mr Agnihotri’s film is only interested in foregrounding the plight of the Pandits—their displacement and the loss of their homeland and subsequent struggle for justice and rehabilitation marred by the apathy of successive governments (including the present BJP one which has been in power for the last eight years, time enough to initiate the process of redressal). Rather than trying to heal historical wounds, I think the filmmaker wishes to ‘fix’ blame, in keeping with the spirit of the times. He conjures binaries of ‘heroes’ and ‘villains’, painting both sides with broad brush strokes and enough vitriolic bombast to pour oil on an already inflamed public discourse with notions of historical wrongs and a blind thirst for retribution. I don’t begrudge him that either. As a filmmaker he has the right to choose what story to tell, place the camera where he wishes and edit his narrative to suit his creative schema. As a viewer, I can choose not to watch his film and that’s the end of that. 

But there are two aspects of the unfolding drama, nay, hysteria, that are deeply concerning. The first is the almost fanatical embracing of this film by the Indian state, with endorsements from the Prime Minister, various state chief ministers and other political functionaries. I don’t mind the tax exemption either. But for a state to insinuate a work of fiction as fact (surely Mr Agnihotri’s film isn’t a documentary based on accurate historical records—there is enough evidence to suggest that he’s played fast and loose with events to suit his fictional narrative), and channel its considerable bureaucratic machinery (not to mention IT cells) towards promoting a film with such gusto is problematic. It’s as if ‘The Kashmir Files’ fits neatly with the ‘80% versus 20%’ narrative that the BJP has been whipping up to maximum effect for the past decade or so (and even longer if we go all the way back to 1992, or further back to the RSS’s imagination of the ‘Hindu Rashtra’), and hence its politicians are gleefully weaponizing it to their own narrow ends. 

The other, is that the space for alternate perspectives has shrunk to the point of near obliteration. In 2001, if there was a ‘Gadar’, there was already a far more sensitive and nuanced depiction of the partition of India in Govind Nihalani’s ‘Tamas’ (1988), which chronicles the stories of men and women caught in the crosshairs of a massive historical tragedy perpetuated by the callousness of the British ruling class and the ambitions of politicians of all hues causing the senseless destruction and displacement of millions of people. ‘Tamas’ is a disturbing watch. It unsettles you, not because it sensationalises the plight of its characters (and it certainly doesn’t cherry-pick or privilege one community over another), but through its memorable characterisation and brilliant acting it gives us a real sense of the trauma of partition. It brings to us a perspective so nuanced and complex that rather than getting enraged, we have a moment of pause, recognising the futility of hatred and violence—for it consumes everyone in its wake.

Today, it would be impossible to make anything like ‘Tamas’ and even back then, it was a niche audience that understood and absorbed its humanistic message. But let’s turn to a totally mainstream film like ‘Veer Zaara’ (2004), which was released just three years after ‘Gadar’ and tries to weave a radically different narrative about Indo-Pak relations from today’s ‘us versus them’ perspective. It was made by Yash Chopra, himself a victim of the partition—born and raised in Lahore, his family settled in India after independence and both older brother B R Chopra and he came to Mumbai and became acclaimed filmmakers. If anyone had reason to make a bitter assessment of the cleaving of India and the loss of his homeland, it would have been Chopra. Instead, he made ‘Veer Zaara’, which may not be great cinema, but it has its heart in the right place. 

 

It is to this film I turned in my desire to shut out the vitriolic discourse around ‘The Kashmir Files’. In Chopra’s film, Zaara, a girl from Lahore comes to India to immerse her Sikh grandmother’s ashes, runs into an air force officer called Veer Pratap Singh, falls in love with him, but is forced to go back and marry the son of her father’s political ally in the interest of family honour. Veer, in the vein of Chopra’s son’s earlier blockbuster ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’, travels to Pakistan to try and win his beloved back on the eve of her nikaah. There he meets Zaara’s mother, who pleads with him to let her daughter’s wedding go through, and the forlorn lovers agree to sacrifice themselves in the interest of the family. 

While there are no villains in this piece, Zaara’s betrothed, Razaa, comes closest to wearing this tag. He has Veer arrested under the false pretext of being a RAW agent and thus the protagonist spends 22 years in a Pakistani jail, till a bright young lawyer called Saamiya takes up his case, goes to India to find proof of his innocence, meets Zaara there (how and why she gets there is a bit complicated and it’s not really relevant), brings her back to stand as a witness in the case and finally Veer and Zaara have an emotional reunion. 

You might wonder what ‘Veer Zaara’ has to do with ‘The Kashmir Files’? There’s no overt connection between the two films. One is an Indo-Pak love story, the other is a chronicle of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus from the valley. The common thread is that both are constructed around historical wounds. Chopra tries to put a soothing balm on the lacerations of partition and the artificial division of one nation into two by highlighting the historical, cultural and geographical similarities between the two sides and the possibility of healing through love and understanding. While Agnihotri seems to believe that the quest for justice for the Pandits is about assigning blame on the Muslims of the valley (and indeed across India, by extension), and perhaps exacting revenge by some perverse ‘tit-for-tat’ excision. 

 

Chopra imagines India and Pakistan as Veer and Zaara, two lovers separated by forces bigger than themselves, whose deep attachment to one another helps break down the artificial barriers of nationhood. Thus he restores his fractured homeland by weaving a fantasy about its symbolic reunification. I wonder if Agnihotri’s Pandit families get a chance to go back to their beloved motherland and re-establish bonds with their past. For, surely his heart bleeds for them and thus he would have done his best to imagine the restoration of their dignity and their rightful place in the world. Being a more ‘realistic’ film than Chopra’s, he’d perhaps update us about how the Kashmiri Pandits have been rehabilitated thanks to the laudable efforts of our honourable Prime Minister, and thus the film might end on a brilliant photo-op—the first family to return to the valley being handed over the keys to their ‘new’ old home by the messiah of the Hindus himself…

 

I will never find out.

 

Deepa Deosthalee