Review: The Kashmir Files
Kashmir has always had a turbulent past - from being a part of disputed territories to raging wars. Its history is often untold and unknown. But with The Kashmir Files, filmmaker Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri tries to bring out an important aspect of Kashmiri history – the genocide and exodus of Kashmiri Hindu Pandits.
In 1990, half a million Kashmiri Hindus were ethnically cleansed of the Kashmir Valley by marauding Islamic gangs. Brutal murders and rapes followed. Even a judge of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court was shot in broad daylight. While the then Kashmir Chief Minister, Farooq Abdullah, completely abdicated his responsibility, perhaps one should say colluded with the gangs, 500,000 Kashmiri Hindus had no option but to convert, leave, or stay back and die.
The film is a hard-hitting portrayal of the testimonies of these pandits told through the eyes of Krishna (Darshan Kumar), playing a student in a university, modelled on the Jawaharlal Nehru University. His teacher Radhika Menon (Pallavi Joshi) makes him believe that the secessionist movement in Kashmir is akin to India’s Freedom Movement.
When Krishna’s grandfather Pushkar Nath (Anupam Kher) dies, he returns to Kashmir with his ashes and meets four of his friends who reveal the ‘real’ story of Kashmir to Krishna.
The film jumps between the past (1990s) and present (2021s) through a series of flashbacks. Unlike Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara, Agnihotri does not make use of romance in the Valley. His film is more like Vishal Bharadwaj’s Haider, albeit with a few scenic shots of the mountains here and there.
The film starts off with a small boy celebrating and eventually getting beaten up for supporting Sachin Tendulkar’s winning 100 against Pakistan. The first few minutes of the film itself, sets us up for quite a disturbing take, with scenes of bloodshed, torture, and otherization of Pandits that have been filmed with brutal intensity.
I could in fact hear the gasps of everyone in the darkened auditorium each time such a scene came on. The dark colour pallet aids the camera work that captures the dark, bloodied, harrowed sequences with closeups and distorted angles.
In one particular scene, a pandit who is hiding in a rice barrel is killed. The camera pans to the grains of now, red rice, as the perpetrator slightly moves his foot away, probably not wanting his foot to touch the blood of the non-believer. It is beautifully shot.
The film is also filled with hard hitting dialogues by Saurabh Pandey and Vivek Agnihotri. Anupam Kher delivers a strong convincing performance as Pushkar Nath. Small nuances in his character make up for a majority of the saving grace of this film.
Along with him, Darshan is a revelation and it is good to see Pallavi back. Mithun Chakraborty, Prakash Belawadi, Puneet Issar, and Atul Shrivastava also sound convincing, as friends of Pushkar Nath.
The film also sheds a light on how professors and teachers who are biased can affect the thinking of students, and how they attempt to brainwash students who simply follow them and not do their own research.
In one scene, Radhika Menon explains to Krishna how he should fight for Kashmir and how supporting Kashmiri Muslims are the only thing that will help him win the student council election, as they formed a major vote bank.
In another scene, Krishna’s elder brother is taken to a school in Kashmir where the maulvi insists that one must demand on building a mosque. Krishna’s brother, a Hindu, is forced to utter the word ‘masjid’ when asked what he wants or get beaten up by his classmates.
Oftentimes, teachers act as our second parents. We go to them for guidance. However, when our teacher’s judgment is clouded, or opposing from what we think, what then is right and wrong?
Overall, in Agnihotri’s documentation, terror has a religion and it appears every Muslim in Kashmir has been a separatist and keen to convert Hindus to Islam. Of course, religious slogans were raised, and indeed Kashmir Pandits got caught in the crossfire between India and Pakistan, but the history is not as black and white as Agnihotri wants us to believe.
The film talks of justice for the pandits, but curiously doesn’t bring in the role of the judiciary, the legal battle of Pandits, and the fact that the real Bitta spent more than two decades in jail and after being out on bail, is once again behind the bars.
Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Hum Dekhenge, which was composed as a medium of protest against Pakistani General Zia Ul Haq’s oppressive regime is also used multiple times in the film.
The Kashmir Files attempts to bring out the testimonies of the Pandits via newspaper articles and shots of the actual footage during that time. However, not knowing a lot about the genocide that took place, I would have loved a super-script at the end, in order to sum up the three hours of this hard-hitting, gruesome, bloodied film.
You can watch The Kashmir Files in a theatre near you. Don’t forget to wear your mask.
