The Kashmir Files: A Year Later, The Film Remains Relevant

On March 11, 2022, a movie produced and directed by Vivek Agnihotri, was lapped up by audiences all over India and became a raging hit. The movie, The Kashmir Files, was one of the highest revenue-grossing movies of last year and was intensely liked/disliked by its supporters/distracters. A year later, the movie is still being described as one of the most truthful movies made by anyone for the Indian screens.

“It is a movie that depicts the horrors that the Kashmiri Pandits (KPs) had to go through in the late 1989 and early 1990s. The movie touches on some of the most horrific incidents the members of the community were subjected to, by terrorists trained and backed by Pakistan,” said Dr Vikas Padha. He was part of a select group of spectators who were invited to a Jammu theatre on March 4, 2022, for a first pre-release screening of the movie which was released on March 11.

Recalling the manner in which Vivek Agnihotri’s movie was reviled in some sections of the media, Dr Padha said, “It was one of the best movies released last year and was one of the biggest commercial successes too. Why was it a success? Mainly because it showed the truth, shorn of all lustre, stark, bitter and gory. Of course, cinematography and acting also stood out.”

Dr Padha, an orthopaedic surgeon based in Jammu, is very active on Twitter, and comments on a host of social issues. This was the reason those associated with the movie invited him to its pre-release screening. It was a houseful show in which several members of the film’s cast were present. Bhasha Sumbli, who played Sharda Pandit, and Darshan Kumaar, who played Krishna Pandit in the movie were present along with Pallavi Joshi, who played Radhika Menon.

Bhasha Sumbli’s character in the movie was based on Girija Tickoo, who is the daughter of Kuldeep Sumbli, aka Agnishekhar. Dr Agnishekhar is a foremost Hindi writer and a senior leader of Panun Kashmir, an organisation focussed on highlighting the issues pertaining to Kashmiri Pandits.

Vivek Agnihotri was also present at the screening and interacted freely with the select audience, who comprised strictly of the “invitation only” crowd. Agnihotri has claimed that before starting work on the movie, at least 700 interviews, mostly with victims of the violence of January 1990, those who were driven out of their homes, were carried out. “It is true that some people labelled the movie as painting Muslims in a bad light. The facts depicted and dramatised in the movie were all based on real-life events, chronicled in the newspapers of that era. Not pieces of fiction,” Dr Padha stressed.

An interview with Bitta Karate, shown in the movie, is actually almost word by word copy of an interview actually conducted by Manoj Raghuvanshi. Another piece to the camera, narrated in the movie by a male actor playing a journalist, is a verbatim translation of a PTC telecast by a TV channel, done by a female reporter in English. Details included in the movie regarding the Nadimarg massacre, which is the climax scene of The Kashmir Files, can easily be found on Google. The movie shows 24 Kashmiri Pandits lined up and shot one by one.

In the movie, it is shown that Sharda Pandit, one of the fulcrums of the movie, is assaulted, her clothes torn and put alive on an electric saw to be cut into two pieces. This incident had not happened in real life in the Nadimarg massacre incident. However, a Kashmiri Pandit woman, Girija Tickoo, was actually cut into two using a carpenter’s saw after being gang raped. Girija was a librarian at Kashmir University and had gone to collect her paycheque when she was overpowered and dumped into a taxi. One of her kidnappers was a colleague of hers who had brought four others with him.

Some other incidents depicted in the movie are those which happened in real life, on the streets of Srinagar and elsewhere. Be it the mention of the brutal murder of Neel Kanth Ganjoo, a judge, who had sentenced Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) terrorist Maqbool Bhat to death. Or the gusty slogan Raliv, Galiv ya Chaliv (Convert, Die or Run) which was raised from dozens of mosques in Kashmir in the worst phase of terrorism. The inclusion of these scenes in the movie raised heckling with Vivek Agnihotri being accused of Islamophobia.

Incidentally, The Kashmir Files is the second movie of a trilogy Agnihotri plans to produce, the first being The Tashkent Files – Who killed Shastri? The first movie of the trilogy was released in the year 2019 and the subject of the movie was the death of former Prime Minister of India Lal Bahadur Shastri. This movie had opened to negative reviews initially, but spectators warmed up to it later and it became a commercial success, winning much critical acclaim.

Agnihotri’s forthcoming movie, The Vaccine War, scheduled for release on August 15 this year, is going to stir a hornet’s nest, with the focus on the Covid-19 pandemic that is behind us. It is going to be released in 11 languages simultaneously and is about the vaccine war India had to wage in the international arena, Agnihotri has said in interviews. Nana Patekar and Pallavi Joshi will play major roles in the movie. Agnihotri said that this movie is about various aspects of the pandemic and chronicles dirty games and politics played by different people, different countries and major pharma companies.

The last movie in the trilogy is The Delhi Files, scheduled for release in early 2024, and going by Agnihotri’s past record, it is also likely to be hugely controversial.

Sant Kumar Sharma is a senior journalist. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.

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