Kashmir Files – first of many steps towards closure
Rashmi Talwar
“I had a nightmare that remained dreadful for years. In it, children wearing ‘Phirans’ were playing cricket at Burzahom, a prehistoric archaeological site, 16 Kms northwest of Srinagar, Kashmir. And the cricket ball falls into one of the ancient “dwelling pits” or homes of pre-historic man, where human skeletons were found in a sitting position along with bones of animals. The skeleton was seen in Sri Partap Singh Museum, Srinagar …with a cricket ball in his mouth! ”
‘Kashmir Files’ reopened that nightmarish dream, as it tracked the forced ouster of Kashmiri Pandits, from their homeland Kashmir, and near paralysis of powers to protect or stall the exodus.
Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, writer, screenplay, director of the film “Kashmir Files”, brings forth simmering wounds of January 1990, of a wailing vale when its original unconverted populace left homes, hearths, and hearts, behind to save their future generations, never to resettle again, anywhere, or call any place their home, again.
Many died in tents at what was a picture of Purkhoo camp in the film, from excruciating heat of plains of Jammu, multiple stress, unhygienic conditions, poison bites of snakes -scorpions. Most tragic were deaths from heartbreak, heatstroke, homelessness, and pennilessness. Living in tents, open to weather vagaries, left to fend for themselves, by an equally callous and unresponsive government.
Kashmir Files parades terror of the times that saw neighbor turned against neighbor, with majority community against their own brethren – the Kashmiri Pandits (KP). The Pandit community found themselves, shivering in mortal fear, herded in trucks, turned refugees overnight, in their own motherland. The film gives a peek into months of selective killing of kith and kin, before the final exodus, forced upon them, giving shape to the terrifying slogan – ‘Raaliv, Gaaliv, Chaaliv’ (Convert, Flee or Die).
The peaceful Pandit or Hindu community of Kashmir, merely 2% of the population, kept much of the truth from children, apparently, to save their progeny from a stunted physical, mental growth, and a revengeful mind. The film exactly depicts that protective shield, expressed as fright in Pandit households tangible till date, in any of their adopted homes the world over. Being a community of letters, Pandits dedicatedly collected proofs of incidents in newspaper bits, many also documented oral stories to writer Rahul Pandita and Siddhartha Gigoo- a writer cum film-maker.
Kashmir Files tracks the heartrending trajectory of bloodcurdling events of 32-years back and visually throws them in your face, with the serene Dal Lake in frozen turbulence in the January of 1990, as a backdrop.
It successfully quashes the oft-repeated refrain in the valley that Governor Jagmohan extended tactic support to the Pandit community to ‘willingly leave’ their homes in Kashmir. Incidentally, Jagmohan arrived after Pandits were completely terrorized by wave after wave of selective killings. Nobody, repeat nobody, of the majority community, could admit that it was the vast chasm of the silence of moderates of the majority, during the hapless persecution of KPs that lead to their ouster.
Terror intensified and emboldened politicians, who played dual games while local police, governments looked the other way. Selective and mass killings of minority members, were triggers, while it was ‘those’ who held their silence while the horrors played out, that the Pandits hold guilty. Guilty of connivance, through absence or their intervention; feeding fictional narratives to suppress the truth.
From a wider perspective, both communities lied to their children- The Pandits about ‘their persecution’, the Muslims, about ‘KP’s persecution’.
Driving a scooter, painted with a blue Shiva face, rescuing his children, Pushkar Nath Pandita alias Anupam Kher, dives deep into the role of Pushkar whose name too, he chose from the real name of his father. Stellar performance as a distraught and protective grandfather, that couldn’t have been done any other way. The film has given an emblem to Pandit’s forced exodus with a standout visual of Anupam’s blue Shiva face, just like the picture of the face-down dead body of a three-year-old child on the beach brings to mind the tragic plight of Syrian refugees; people falling from a skyscraper brings forth memory of 9/11 of America.
Anupam with his screen appearance of cataract-ed-eyes, shaded with thick spectacles, carrying the demented and battered soul of his community, raising the flag of the abolishment of article 370 from the Indian Constitution has put forward a performance hard to match even by his film ‘Saraansh’. Pushkar’s heart-wrenching painful muttering, ‘sheena pyato pyato’, is symbolic of his memory standing still in his beloved land of Kashmir, a lost soul’s longing for home. It may be mentioned that Kher is strongly hated in Kashmir valley for raising the issue of his hapless community, at every forum.
The film, based on testimonies of community members scarred and battered for generations, coins the term ‘genocide’ for their tragic uprooting, and accuses the aggressors of intentionally hiding the truth from the rest of the world. The intent of the film was to show – the smothering of KPs cries, for reasons of the minority’s lack of clout, and thus a minor vote bank, that apparently didn’t matter!
How media became an equal villain, readily conniving with perpetrators and politicians, in the film implies the collective gameplan. Here, Krishna (Darshan Kumaar), the lead character, a Kashmiri Hindu, grandson of Pushkar, is seen roped in as a pawn, along with gullible university students of a premier university, modeled on Jawaharlal Nehru University. Krishna, the ill-informed Hindu, is seen selectively tutored by ‘liberal’ teacher Radhika Menon (Pallavi Joshi) turned against his own community, citing state injustices. Leading him to believe, the secessionist movement in Kashmir was akin to India’s Freedom Movement. Her modus operandi: usage of popular revolutionary poetry to churn a loud, crazy, frenzied response, draws the audience into widespread narrative of a call for freedom of Kashmir from India; is so convincing that for a second the less-informed audience gets completely drawn to believe the warped narrative. Poetry of Faiz Ahmed Faiz written in 1979, Hum Dekhenge is used to dramatic effect, including symbolism to the apparent sinister role of Pakistan in Kashmir’s insurgency.
A sterling portrayal with her graceful raw performance, Sharda Pandit characterized by Bhasha Sumbli, presents quiet suppressed strength, paired with desperation, desolence, and despair. “Her portrayal is raw, tangible, yet nimble and evocative”. Even non-Kashmiris in Amritsar, sobbed copious tears as she essayed the part of the victim’s mother, wife, and daughter-in-law.
Mithun Chakraborty as IAS Brahma Dutt, Dr. Mahesh Kumar (Prakash Belawadi) DGP Hari Narain (Puneet Issar), Journalist Vishnu Ram (Atul Srivastva) made a benevolent clique, banishing lies of Kashmiri Pandits being ‘willing migrants’ versus ‘forced migrants’. The revelation opens a Pandora’s Box for youngster Krishna who is driven to believe and also endorse the call for -Freedom of Kashmir, from India, propagated by the majority community in Kashmir.
Villain, Bitta (Chinmay Madlekar) shown as real-life Bitta Karate, appeared like a common Kashmiri; his flipping eyelid, the single giveaway of stealth, malice, and horror, played the part convincingly. The real Bitta’s interview on prime time was used to frame his character that seems to club the character of Yaseen Mallik of JKLF; feted and celebrated by powers, despite selective killings on their orders.
However scintillating performances could be attributed to Anupam Kher with his Kashmiri intonation and common Kashmiri gestures, reactions, mumblings, a Kashmiri’s pronunciation when speaking English or Hindi, and particularly his gaze. Director Agnihotri’s inclusion of a loving Kashmiri lullaby, ‘Goor e Goor Karyo, Son e kan ke Dooro’ – I rock your cradle which swings like my long earrings; I shall give my life for you, O my dear) adds the flavor of a happy Kashmir, before terror struck. The background score of “Tsolhama Roshe, Roshe”, the poetic songs of Habba Khatoon, unassisted by musical instruments, adds to the starkness of Kashmir. It is known that ‘no occasion’ in Kashmir remains complete, without the melancholic songs of Habba Khatoon, irrespective of any Kashmiri community- be it Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, or Christian. Habba- the mountain Queen of Kashmir; her poetic heartrending songs, are sung at weddings even on deaths and dirges.
Krishna’s invocation of Kashmiri legends, in the climactic speech including mystic Lalleshwari, the journey of Shankaracharya to Kashmir, Kashmir as the knowledge hub, familiarizes non-Kashmiri masses about Kashmir.
Scenes of bloodshed, torture, and otherisation of Pandits is broadcast with brutal intensity. The voice of moderate Muslims is conspicuous by its absence. But then as Vishal Bhardwaj Director of ‘Haider’, another Kashmir based film- a modern adaptation of Sir William Shakespeare’s tragedy ‘Hamlet’; answered to a Kashmiri Pandit Mr. Ravinder Kaul, from the stage of Jaipur literature Festival-2015, who inquired, “Haider projects one tragedy, while in Kashmir the tragedy was twofold- ‘One of the Kashmiri Muslims and another of the Kashmiri Pandits, but you have highlighted only one and ignored the other”. To which Vishal responded- “Cinema gives a time, and it is my choice to make the film in the particular time, where it didn’t allow me to focus on that tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits more, or at all. I have told just a token line about it. That tragedy was not less”, could be the cinematic answer of Vivek too, to his detractors about the opposite side.
Within cinema halls, the film’s camerawork captures dim, gloomy, and delicate hues and transports one to the valley, as compelling performances capture the temper and mood of the film in all its starkness. The ratt-a-tatt of foreign guns, combined with the melancholic scenery evokes shivers.
All in all, a watershed film, that doesn’t chicken away or gloss over the monumental tragedy or tries to bring any false reconciliation or closure to unhealed cavernous wounds. Vivek Agnihotri is hailed for his boldness and individuality and personal risk, to tell the tale in its rawest avatar, without shying from pointing at the native majority community of Kashmir, for the Pandits ouster.
Also, for not using the oft love story crutch to add popular glitter, relegating events to the backdrop. He portrays the film in all its greys, gory, and gloriously shameful detail without mincing. Violence is not unnecessarily prolonged in screen-time to impart an echo effect; rather, horror is tangible due to the strike and pass, build-up.
Use of the Kashmiri language, creates the mood; the soulful rendering of Kashmiri songs in the background without musical notes consumes the audience. Dialogues are hard-hitting and sensitive. “Sarkar unki hai; toh kia hua; system toh hamara haii” — the professor tells the confused Pandit leader.
Curtains-call speech by Krishna Pandit encapsulates the entire history of Kashmir in few minutes. What stands out is the screenplay doesn’t just caricature the professor; it faithfully places arguments, for an audience to judge the wrong or rights of how the water passed under the bridge of those times and narratives ‘built’ to hide the shame.
Although most of the majority community are in denial or try to evade the topic of KP’s forced migration, a few times, KP atrocities are evoked at the unlikeliest of moments, especially by the lower strata of Kashmiris. One happened, when a tall, strong-looking auto-rickshaw walla, standing in Rajbagh locality, Srinagar, during rescue operations from flooded areas of six-feet water. Seeing local boatmen negotiating money with victims for their evacuation; shouted – “Ye Kehr Hai, Panditon ke saath humney jo salook kia hai, Uska Kehr” he repeated again louder and louder. In Kashmiri, then Hindi, for non-Kashmiris collected there, including me. Watching rescue operations, standing at water flood-line for victims being brought ashore, I, and other non-Kashmiris, had arrived from varied parts of mainland, with relief material, for our brethren- the majority community, who suffered as victims of floods of September 2014 in Kashmir. The locals ignored him, we couldn’t.
Seemingly, the film served a purpose, with the nightmarish skeleton left in the museum as a specimen, as a reminder; while it (the Film) plucked the ball from the mouth of the skeleton, to help restart the process of healing and play once again, on the stage of life.
Writer Rashmi Talwar, an Independent Journalist, can be reached at email: rashmitalwarno1@gmail.com
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