KASHMIR FILES AGAINST IT?

A traumatic tale that seize the pain, suffering, and fight of the Kashmiri Pandit section in 1990. The Kashmir Files is a 2022 Indian drama film corresponded and directed by Vivek Vivek agnihotri. On 14 August 2019, Vivek agnihotri announced the film with a poster with the intent to release it on 15 August 2020, coinciding with India’s Independence Day. The subject of the film was the evacuation of Kashmiri Pandits which took place between the late 80s and early 90s.

The budget for the film was approx. Rs.15-25 crore and its box office collection were Rs.340.92 crore.

The panic shown in this movie is based on actual events. The truth had been kept away from the Indian cinema as it would have been too much for the faint-hearted copy-paste specialist of the conventional film industry. Duplicate for the scheming intellectuals. Add to the mix the liberals, who have tried to set the narrative rather than practice the true genre of no discrimination.

The Kashmiri Pandits deserve MASSIVE respect for standing up against the dictator rather than giving up their religion so as to get their lives to depart from uninjured. Bhasha Sumbli has keep alive the memory of herself… What performance! No words to express what trauma our Kashmiri pandit community went through.

Mr. Vivek Vivek agnihotri has taken a fearless step and he should be brace by any true human being. The actors have put up with their own efforts to bring this prime movie to life. The movie shows some really prime points of defeat and atrocities in different manners and it has been ensured that crushing instances have been included.

Hopefully, the movie will shake up the heavy-duty coat of ignorance on the spirit and awareness of Indians at the minimum. The scenario follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student, raised by his deported grandfather and shielded from the knowledge of the state of affairs of the death of his parents. After his grandfather’s death, the student, who had come to have an idea that at college that the evacuation was friendly, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his family’s deaths.

The story takes a turn between the student’s quest in the present time, 2020, and his family’s stress of thirty years before. The film was make known in theatres on 11 March 2022. In 1989–90 Kashmir, Islamic militants storm and exile Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Kashmir valley using the slogans Raliv Galiv ya Chaliv (“convert (to Islam), depart from or die”) and Al-Safa Batte Dafa (“with god’s grace whole Kashmiri Pandit section will depart from valley”).

Pushkar Nath Pandit, a teacher, fears for the safety of his son Karan, who has been charged by the militants of being an Indian agent. Pushkar appeal his friend Brahma Dutt, a civil servant, for Karan’s defence. Brahma travels with Pushkar to Kashmir and be a witness to the violence against Kashmiri Pandits. He takes up the affair with the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), who suspends Brahma.

Militant commander Farooq Malik Bitta, also a former student of Pushkar, burst Pushkar Nath’s house. Karan conceals in a rice container but is found and shot by Bitta. Pushkar and his daughter-in-law Sharda begged for their lives. Bitta forces Sharda to eat rice soaked in Karan’s blood in exchange for their lives. After Bitta and his gang depart from the house, Pushkar begs his doctor friend Mahesh Kumar to bring an ambulance and save Karan’s life. However, the hospital gets taken over by militants, who prohibit the hospital staff from treating non-Muslims. Afterward, Karan surrenders to injuries from the gunshots.

To ensure their safety, Pushkar and his family are taken by their journalist friend Vishnu Ram to Kaul, a Hindu poet who maintains a pleasant relationship with Muslims. Kaul takes many Pandits into his home but a group of militants arrives to pick Kaul and his son up under the appearence of offering defence. The rest of the Pandits depart from the place but are later shocked to find dead bodies of Kaul and his son hanging from trees.

The refugee Pandits from the Kashmir valley settle in Jammu and live on inadequate ration and in poor conditions. Brahma is scheduled as an advisor to the new Governor of J&K. At his request, the Home Minister visits the Jammu camps where Pushkar demands the removal of Article 370 and the colonization of Kashmiri Pandits. Brahma manages to get Sharda a government job in Nadimarg in Kashmir, and the family shift there.

One day a group of militants commanded by Bitta dress up as members of the Indian Army and arrive at ‘Nadimarg’. They start gathered together the Pandits living there. Sharda counters when the militants get hold of her elder son Shiva. Angry Farooq dispose her and saws her body in half. He lines up Shiva and the remaining Pandits and shoots them into a group tomb. Pushkar is afford to spread the word about what happened.

Government and ruling party support

The ruling party ‘Bharatiya Janata Party’ (BJP) has sign on the back and promoted the film in obvious terms, which has led to significant audience at theatres making it a runaway commercial success. Union Minister Smriti Irani was one of the most vocal in advancing it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attacked critics in response to negative reviews, claiming that there is a plot to discredit the film, which according to him “reveals the truth”; he met with Vivek Agnihotri to congratulate him, also the Home Minister Amit Shah. 

The BJP Information and Technology Cell, known for being the party’s information unit promoted the film with its head-raising calls for people to look at it. Pro-government media were also straightforward in its promotion; OpIndia — a pro-Hindutva news portal — published a number of articles raining praises on the film and questioning the motives of backbiter as well as opposition parties while television channels hosted multiple shows and debates to the same end. Following the release of the film, Vivek Agnihotri was provided with a Y-category security detail from the Central Reserve Police Force by the Ministry of Home Affairs, based on what an official described as inputs of the discern threat to the director’s safety.

States in which movie was tax-free.

The film was proclaimed tax-free in multiple BJP governed states—Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh—with calls by a number of chief ministers and Members of Parliament for “everyone to look at the movie”. 

Assam and Madhya Pradesh permitted vacations to government employees and police personnel respectively, if they planned to look at the movie; Assam, Karnataka and Tripura governments held special screenings of the film. In addition, in the states of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, which have opposition parties in power, BJP legislators have called for their respective state governments to make the movie tax-free. Across the country, BJP legislators have acquired screens for audiences to look at the movie for free.

The film also recorded the highest number of views for ZEE5, OTT platform, during its opening weekend and the first week at more than 6 million and 9 million views respectively.

Read our other Finance and International Blogs!

Check out the Author on Social:

• Mail