Lengthy earlier than The Kashmir Recordsdata, there was Parzania, a movie that relives the trauma of a Parsi household that misplaced their son within the 2002 Gujarat riots. Simply earlier than the movie was to be launched in Ahmedabad, the director, Rahul Dholakia, was summoned by the multiplex theatre affiliation and advised that the Nationwide Award-winning movie may very well be proven provided that “cleared” by the native Bajrang Dal chief, Babu Bajrangi. The infamous Bajrangi is accused of main murderous mobs within the 2002 violence. With the Gujarat authorities refusing to intervene, Dholakia had little choice however to withdraw the movie from the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who now hails Kashmir Recordsdata for “truth-telling”, was the Gujarat chief minister on the time.
The immutable fact is that netas and their partisan cheerleaders reducing throughout get together traces are unwilling to face the inconvenient truths of historical past. Make an sincere movie on the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom and make sure that the Congress will elevate a purple flag. A Bengal Recordsdata that highlights political violence is unlikely to be screened in that state. The historical past of this nation’s cinema is strewn with circumstances of movies being censored and banned, the bounds of inventive freedom being drawn by present energy equations.
The place The Kashmir Recordsdata stands out is that it is a rarest of uncommon occasion the place a ruling political get together is utilizing State energy to actively promote a privately made movie. From leisure tax waivers and reserving theatres at subsidised charges to even giving authorities workers a break day to look at the movie, by no means earlier than in current instances has a political management and its associates so openly used business cinema for public mobilisation in a fashion the place the traces between State propaganda and cinematic narratives are blurred.
Nor ought to the State’s express patronage of The Kashmir Recordsdata come as a shock. In spite of everything, the core storyline of the movie suits in with a dominant majoritarian political ideology that sees the Muslim, inside and throughout the border, because the principal “enemy”. The horror of the 1989-90 killings and exodus of Kashmiri Pandits pits “barbaric” Islamism versus “peace-loving” Hinduism in a stark and actual method. The very fact is that the terrible winter of a defining 12 months in Kashmir’s tryst with violence did witness the focused killings of Kashmiri Hindus by Pakistan-sponsored terror teams. Rekindling these pictures greater than three a long time later will solely amplify the prevailing Islamophobic hate politics that has already ruptured society.
For a lot of Kashmiri Hindu households, who have been uprooted and pushed into refugee camps, a movie like this can be an emotionally cathartic expertise, an opportunity to have their agonising story acknowledged and advised to a wider viewers. However whereas a movie is likely to be therapeutic for the victims, can it result in real change, a way of justice, and eventually, reconciliation? That is the place Kashmir’s blood-soaked historical past can’t be diminished to a one-sided political drama with out offering related context and perspective. How, for instance, does one appropriate the seeming amnesia over the Kashmiri Pandit exodus with none reference to different necessary points of Kashmir’s frozen turbulence, be it the Delhi-Srinagar intrigue, rigged elections, State brutalities, historic calls for for larger autonomy or certainly, azaadi (freedom)?
Within the final three a long time, the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) and third entrance governments have all been in energy on the Centre, however didn’t rehabilitate Kashmiri Pandit households or certainly prosecute most of their killers. What does it say about our prison justice system that one of many unique poster boys of Kashmiri azaadi, Yasin Malik, was solely charged as late as 2020 for the homicide of 4 Indian Air Power officers in a 1990 terror assault? Recall that successive governments in Delhi — the BJP and the Congress — noticed Malik as a stakeholder within the Kashmir dialogue.
Which can also be why it’s so a lot simpler to cowl up for the failings of the Indian State by selling a movie made by an unapologetic BJP supporter that builds on the acquainted demonisation of Muslim as terrorist theme with none nuance, slightly than guaranteeing justice to the victims of terror or untangle the vastly problematic Kashmiri knot. Not simply justice for grieving Kashmiri Pandit households, but additionally for Kashmiri Muslims, a whole bunch of whom have died going through terror retailers.
Sadly, a post-1990 era — round half of this nation’s citizenry is born after that landmark 12 months — would appear to have little time to hunt historic accuracy on polarising points. Ate up a weight loss program of aggressive propaganda, prime time noise, post-truth twists and hyper-nationalism, it is a “new” India that will get its “info” from WhatsApp forwards, social media influencers and 60-second viral movies. A “new” India the place controversial movies on Nathuram Godse entice way more consideration than measured writings on Mahatma Gandhi. Caught between a rising tide of Islamic extremism and a Hindu awakening, it’s nearly as if a whole era is being pushed by concern and hatred of the opposite and never compassion and concord. Would anybody, for instance, be allowed to doc the tales of worthy makes an attempt made by Kashmiri Muslims and Pandits at peaceable co-existence with out being branded as “anti-national”? The reality-telling mirror should present all sides — good, unhealthy and ugly — earlier than it will probably try and heal the festering sores of a fractured previous.
Submit-script: A number of years in the past, a super-hit movie, Bajrangi Bhaijaan, made a stab at selling Indo-Pak peace and friendship. One evocative dialogue stays with me: “Nafrat phailana bahut aasan hai, pyar baatna mushkil” (it’s simpler to incite hatred than unfold love). That holds true for politically aligned film-makers because it does for vote financial institution politicians.
Rajdeep Sardesai is a senior journalist and writer
The views expressed are private
