by SHALINI RAI
I had to first watch Gangubai Kathiawadi before I could watch The Kashmir Files.
It so happened that I reached the multiplex, 20 kms from my house, thinking that I would be able to get a ticket to see The Kashmir Files
(TKF) if I landed there a few minutes early. When the lady manning the
ticket counter told me the film was running housefull, it left me
pleasantly surprised. But also a bit inconvenienced. This was on March
12. I was finally able to secure a ticket for the next day, evening
show.
An overwhelming majority of important things in my life happen on the
13th or revolve around the number 4. So, it was serendipity that the
first time I saw TKF was on March 13. So much has already been said,
written and debated about this film that it is a tough call to add
something new and thought-provoking about it. But I will try.
The film tells the story of the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in the
1990s, the circumstances that led to their exodus from the land of their
ancestors and the subsequent misleading and false narrative peddled
about both the episodes. How do I know that this narrative was
‘misleading’ and ‘false’? For that, I must mention the declaration by
the film’s director Vivek Agnihotri at the start of the feature, where
he says that his entire screenplay is based on real-life testimonies
of over 700 KP families, which Vivek Agnihotri and wife Pallavi Joshi
interviewed as part of their research into TKF. Vivek Agnihotri also
mentions that this is not the first but the seventh time in history that
KPs have been driven out of Kashmir ignominiously and in most cases,
with just the clothes on their back.
I know the numbness that follows such abrupt departure. I have
experienced it first-hand both in India and while studying abroad. It
makes you question the nature of life, your place in this world and why
such things had to happen to you. But it is hardly enough to try to
understand, empathise with or convincingly convey the pain, struggle,
suffering, humiliation, violence and violations faced by KPs in the
years following January 19, 1990.
Without giving away the plot of the film, let me just say that
documenting the excesses faced by Kashmiri Hindus in the run-up to 1990,
during that year and in the years that followed, would not have been
easy for the film’s team. Vivek Agnihotri and Pallavi Joshi have
mentioned in interviews how tough it was to listen to the horrors seen
and violence faced by KPs during the research stage. It admittedly left
them drained, depressed and hopeless.
If this is the effect that just hearing the truth of Kashmir in the
1990s could have on two seasoned artists, with a fair bit of life behind
them, I wonder what horrors the KPs themselves would have had to suffer
at the hands of their acquaintances, friends, neighbours during those
testing times. And if the truth was so difficult to deal with for Vivek
and Pallavi, one can only imagine what the immediate persecution would
have done to the psyche and mental and physical health of KPs.
Some scenes from the movie left an indelible impression on my mind.
Among the first, right at the beginning of the film, is one which
shows how local thugs rough up Shiva Pandit, elder brother of Krishna —
the film’s main protagonist, for chanting ‘Sachin! Sachin!’ while
playing cricket on a snow-covered field in Srinagar. They also call him
an ‘Indian dog!’ and punch the teenage boy, several years their junior
and physically at a disadvantage.
The next dreadful incident is the cold-blooded murder of Shiva’s
father Karan, while he hides in a barrel of ‘tomul’ (rice) in the attic
of his home, by Farooq Malik Bitta, a dreaded terrorist who was once
also the student of Pushkar Nath Pandit, Shiva and Krishna’s
grandfather. While Bitta fires incessantly at the metal rice barrel,
Sharda, his wife and Shiva and Krishna’s mother wails and watches
helplessly, even as Krishna (a baby at the time) cries piteously in the
background. Bitta then asks Sharda to eat a fistful of grains of rice
covered in the blood of her husband, saying he will spare the rest of
her family if she eats the blood-soaked rice.
Another scene that I could not erase from my mind was the public humiliation/disrobing of Sharda by Bitta and then the act of cutting her into pieces
using an electric saw. This last bit was too terrible to watch and I
closed my eyes involuntarily, even though I could not shut out the sound
of an electric saw meant to chop and shape wood slicing its way through
the naked, violated body of a woman, even as her teenage son Shiva
watches the horror in stunned silence and paralysing helplessness, amid
heart-rending sobs.
There is a scene in the movie where Bitta shoots point-blank at four
IAF officers and removes the Indian flag from Lal Chowk, which is
actually a location in Mussoorie, as TKF team had to leave Kashmir and
put up the set in the Uttarakhand hill station due to threats to their
lives and ‘fatwas’ issued against them. After throwing away the Indian
flag, Bitta replaces it with a flag meant to represent ‘Azad Kashmir’,
even as Brahma Dutt, IAS (played by Mithun Chakraborty), looks on at the
AK-47 wielding terrorist, unable to do anything, despite being a
prominent and powerful administrative officer.
The depiction of the vulnerability of KPs forced into exile is
evident in the character of Pushkar Nath Pandit (played by Anupam Kher),
condemned to live through his son’s gruesome death, to face the
uprooting of his dignified, comfortable life in ancestral Srinagar, to
suffer the abasement of living in a snake and scorpion-infested refugee camp,
witness his daughter-in-law and grandson’s macabre end and the
brainwashed apathy of a young Krishna, a student of ANU (yes, you
guessed it right), who takes great pride in raising the slogan ‘Azaadi!’.
The ‘Azaadi’ — independence — of Kashmir.
So much can be said about so many scenes in TKF and the entire
screenplay, dialogues, cinematography and direction that this space will
fall short. I will keep it short and just say that this film is a
must-watch, whichever side of the ideological divide you find yourself
on. If you think you know what happened to KPs and what caused their
genocide and forced exodus from the Kashmir Valley, you have another
think coming after watching this film, which is a labour of love and has
been put together with great empathy and humanity.
A word about the cast. Pallavi Joshi as the firebrand orator and ANU Professor Radhika Menon,
has essayed the role of a lifetime, portraying as she does the sheer
hypocrisy of her stance on KPs, her ‘friendship’ with the dreaded Bitta
and her ‘networking abilities’ in Kashmir. In one scene, she tells
Krishna, who she is mentoring to be ANU Students’ Union President, “Government unki hui to kya hua, system to hamara hai….”
(So what if they are in power, the system is ours after all.) Her
calculated magnetism, glibness, kohl-lined eyes, chunky jewellery,
sunglasses as hair accessory-turn as the main antagonist makes you feel
awed (negatively) by her selective sympathy for Kashmiris (not including
KPs). If she reminds you of a certain ‘professor’, ‘author’ and
‘activist’, you are not alone.
Her rendition of Hum Dekhenge — a hopeful lament by
Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz — surrounded by scores of gullible,
malleable, impressionable ANU students accords the film complexity and
brings out the resilience of the written word, despite originating in a
different country in a different context.
Then comes the sheer evil that Chinmay Mandlekar has brought forth
onscreen through his character — Farooq Malik Bitta. I could feel the
influence of two separate persons in the construction of this persona — Bitta Karate
and Yasin Malik, both JKLF members. The chilling testimony that Bitta
gives to journalist Vishnu Ram (Manoj Raghuvanshi in real life)–
confessing to killing over 20 Kashmiri Pandits — in the 1990s is made
more menacing by the inclusion of his involuntary ‘lazy eye’ — a trait
unique to Yasin Malik.
Krishna’s role is played convincingly by Darshan Kumar, who had wowed
audiences with his act as the violent killer of his sister and others
in the visceral film NH-10. Kumar brings alive the denial,
brain-washing, confusion and ultimately catharsis, of a young Kashmiri
Pandit, enrolled in ANU and unaware of the truth of his family’s
grotesque, unjust end. The audience can relate to the confusion arising
out of a falsified view of Kashmir’s history that he has grown up with,
in his initial idolisation and subsequent denunciation of the ideology
and politics of Prof Radhika Menon, good friends with Bitta.
Mithun Chakraborty as IAS officer Brahma Dutta, Prakash Belawadi as
Dr Mahesh Kumar, Puneet Issar as DGP Hari Narain and Atul Srivastava as
journalist Vishnu Ram play their roles with unprecedented restraint and
empathy and bring out the powerlessness of the administration, medical
practitioners, police and media during the 1990s and in subsequent
years.
After watching the film twice, the first time with great enthusiasm
and the second time with great trepidation (at reliving the violence
faced by KPs), I can emphatically say that it is an important piece of
cinematic history. TKF brings out the unvarnished truth of Kashmir, the
Kashmir where ‘Upanishads were written and Saraswati/Sharda was
worshipped’ (as Pushkar Nath Pandit tells Krishna). He rightly says, “Tu Kashmir ke baare mein jaanta hi kya hai…!?” (What do you really know about Kashmir…!?)
The last scene of the film is revealing, in so many senses of the word. It is the recreation of the Nadimarg massacre
of March 23, 2003, in which Bitta shoots dead 24 KPs — with a single
bullet to the forehead — after forcing them to stand at the edge of a
deep pit, reminiscent of the modus operandi of the Nazis, who accorded
the same treatment to the Jews during the Holocaust.
It is the same pit into which Shiva jumps playfully while going to
school one day and is admonished by mother Sharda for it. It seems as if
Sharda subconsciously knew that the pit would one day become the mass
grave of her son Shiva and many other hapless Kashmiri Pandits. Baby
Krishna and Pushkar Nath Pandit, despite being present, are spared by
the militants, because, as Bitta says, “Koi doosron ko bataane wala bhi to hona chahiye….” (Some of you must be left alive to tell the story to others).
The Kashmir Files is deeply symbolic and deeply moving. Reams can be
written about the symbolism, naming, construction and portrayal of
almost all mnemonic characters in the film.
The legacy of The Kashmir Files can be best encapsulated in the fact
that despite exiting two different theatres on different occasions, the
menacing cry in Kashmir during the unprecedented violence of, before and
after January 19, 1990 — “Raliv, Galiv ya Chaliv…!” (Convert,
Die or Leave) — kept echoing in my mind and despite my best efforts,
might continue to do so, two nights and several hours later.
The film’s end is rich in metaphors, as we see Sharda/Saraswati disrobed, dismembered and left to die, all while still breathing and a bullet wound on the forehead of Shiva,
a spot associated with the ‘Third Eye’ and all the wisdom and mythology
that evokes. It is as if the filmmakers want to say this is what
Kashmir, the land of ancient knowledge, mysticism, mythology, wisdom and
breathtaking beauty, has been reduced to — with Saraswati violated and
lying in pieces and Shiva with a fatal injury where the Third Eye ought
to have been…
