NEW DELHI LETTER
The film was released in Indian theaters on March 11 and is arousing a torrent of passions and reviews. The Kashmir Files recounts the exodus of Pandits from Kashmir between January and March 1990, after the rise of jihadists and armed separatist groups in the Himalayan region. The pandits, members of the high castes, embodied the Hindu elite of Kashmir, the only Indian region with a Muslim majority. They were driven from the valley in blood and fury. About 300 died and between 150,000 and 300,000 people fled Srinagar, abandoning their beautiful homes to crammed into unsanitary refugee camps in Jammu, South Kashmir, before rebuilding their lives in other parts of India or abroad. Only a handful of pundits remained.
The work done by Vivek Agnihotri has been massively promoted by the government, Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself and regions ruled by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Eight states dominated by the BJP, including Gujarat and Karnataka, have exempted it from the tax on entertainment to lower the price of the entrance ticket and promote its distribution. Madhya Pradesh and Assam have even granted civil servants and police officers half a day off to go to the cinema with their families.
Boosted by this unprecedented government promotion for a commercial film, The Kashmir Files is a big success, but above all provokes a lively controversy, not on the exodus of the pundits – which nobody refutes – but on the narration, on the lack of nuance, on the representation of Muslims and on the message sent. The result was expected: videos posted on social networks show spectators shouting hateful slogans and calling for violence against Muslims. The government granted special protection to the director.
Critics of the film dispute the accuracy of the reported facts and argue that it is yet another attempt by Hindu nationalists to create an anti-Muslim narrative in the country, where the climate is becoming more Islamophobic every day.
In perfect harmony with the ideology carried by Modi
The director attributes in particular the responsibility for the drama of the pundits to Congress and to former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. However, the government in Delhi at the time was led by VP Singh, supported by the BJP, and represented in Kashmir by Governor Jagmohan Malhotra, also supported by the BJP. He attacks, in passing, the liberals and the intellectuals of the Jawaharlal-Nehru University, another target of the Modi government. The film is in perfect harmony with the ideology carried by the strong man of India since 2014, based on the superiority of Hindus, community division and the rewriting of history.
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