BY JUNAID MALIK
The film the Kashmir files have created ripples far and wide and have become a box office hit within a few days of its release. It has created a furor so much so that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has endorsed the movie calling it the depiction of truth which has been hidden for nearly three decades. A small budget movie that was made on some six hundred small screens has now grabbed more than 2500 big screens in and outside the country. The movie is all set to cross the hundred crores club.
The real buzz isn’t the commercial aspect of the movie but the message, the Frenzy, the uproar, and tumultuous response which it has garnered across the length and breadth of the country .people were seen not only crying and sobbing in cinema theatres but also the hate speeches and calling for Muslim extermination on streets and states. Social media is trending millions of hashtags and trends invoking abhorrence and division amongst the people themselves. The undeniable truth of the unmeasurable pain and agony of Kashmiri pandits is not hidden from anybody but the question that arises and is being alleged is the half depiction or half-truth being shown to the world. The pain and sufferings of Kashmir are not community or religious specific but collective damage to the helpless land sandwiched between two powers.
The proxy war had begun in Kashmir with political and mainstream killings on streets by the forces not hidden from anybody. The popular government had been dismissed and the valley was in shambles. There was a macabre situation with roaring and blazing guns but the sufferers were equally Muslims and pandit dwellers of the valley. The forces inimical to peace and stability were calling the shots with impunity. The exodus of Kashmiri pandits must not be read and recorded in isolation. Everybody suffered equally but fear and phobia played the migration role for the minority community which was the net result of failed state policies and the allegedly incapacitated role of Jag Mohan, the then governor of Jammu and Kashmir.
An able administrator and crisis manager, Jag Mohan was appointed the governor of Kashmir after the dismissal of the Farooq Abdullah government. Jag Mohan himself writes in his book as to how he had to leave for Kashmir after receiving distressing calls from different quarters in the valley, how he left for Kashmir in hurry and remained awake all through the night when subversive elements had been calling for alleged massacre of Kashmiri Pandits from the valley. The question again arises as to what the Governor administration was doing who had lacs of police and paramilitary forces under his command in every nook and cranny of the state. Kashmir valley is a landlocked and border-ridden state. In a matter of three days beginning 19th January 1990 how come lacs of Kashmiri Pandits were given a safe passage to leave the valley to an unknown and undecided destination? What were the law enforcement agencies doing when the mass migration was happening in the valley? Why were Kashmiri pandits not given a safe place in the valley itself like today’s satellite colonies if the threat was so real and happening? What measures were taken to quell the slogans of “Raliv, charlie, garlic (convert, run or die) or “Kashmir Banega Pakistan, Batav Russie banyan swan (Kashmir will become Pakistan along with Pandit women excluding men)? What was the gargantuan model of intelligence doing all around?.
There is no recorded evidence of killings of Kashmiri pandits when they were leaving the valley despite the allegations of brazen announcements from the loudspeakers of mosques invoking the pandits to leave the valley. On one side there is a deluge of praises for Jagmohan for the effective handling of Kashmir but nobody questioned him as to how lacs of pandits in pain and distress got a safe passage without any harm to anybody. Anyone who is familiar with the topography of Kashmir would testify to the allegations of the forced or facilitated an exodus of Kashmiri Pandits.
No one in the world with a human heart would deny the exodus of Kashmir to leave their home to die under the scorching heat above-chilling winters under the open sky with no destination or place to go in their own country but would that legitimize the innumerable killings, abductions, tortures, and rapes committed on helpless Kashmiri Jammu Muslims in the conflict by the alien forces.? This very fact makes Kashmiri files half-truth and half-lie.
The Kashmir files have failed to show the Gaw kadal massacre, the Bijbehara massacre, Handwara, Zakora, Hawal massacre, the Sikh massacre of chhittisingpora, the mass rape of Kunan poshopora, the mass killings of Kulihand, Chapnari, Hasti, Poonch, Rajouri, Bunjwah where scores of people were gunned down. If B K Ganjoo, Tika Lal taploo, Girja pandit became the victims of sponsored terrorism then Satish Bhandari, Ghulam Mohiuddin Qazi, Tanvir Mir, Parihar brothers are also the poor victims of the same violence. You can’t have two prisms to see the grave reality from your convenient lens. if Vivek Agnihotri, Pallavi Joshi, and Anupam Kher claim long and lengthy research over the film, then the research is itself flawed, half-baked, and far from ground reality.
The movie also fails to mirror the past reality. If our sister Girja pandit was raped and cut on saw then here again thousands of unmarked graves in the far and secluded places of Bandipora, Handwara, and Kupwara weren’t shown where thousands of youth have been buried with no claimant or heir apparent. The film also fails to show the staged and fake encounters for stars and promotions. Not to go far, the recent killings of three Rajouri youth in Shopian in fake encounters is also the tip of the iceberg of those fake encounters that happened in the last three decades of conflict. The tears and sobs of these poor families aren’t less credible or the blood of children of lesser gods is not human blood at all.
Our Kashmiri brethren have suffered beyond measured and were called migrants in their own land and country. Their untold stories must be told to the world without demonizing the Muslims of the state or valley particularly. This would further wedge the gap between the suffering communities without blaming the wounds. Even today the funerals of our Kashmiri Hindus who have stayed back are done by their Muslim neighbors and friends. Why are these stories of love and compassion are hidden from the world? When the stories of pain, the agony, and wounds of separation are told to the world it must be told in totality lest it’s a half-truth or a half-lie that loses its credibility and crux of its own stories.
The invisibilisation of the pain of thousands of families who have lost their kith and kin in this murky conflict and weaponization of hate is the biggest disservice one could do with its people and country. The saddest human tragedy of Kashmiri pandits in their exodus must not become a weapon to further divide the country into communal lines. Intellectual terrorism and selective amnesia are more lethal weapons to destroy the peace and tranquillity of a country than the weapons of guns and grenades.
The authors is Socio-Political Activist and Freelance Writer / Columnist from Jammu and Kashmir and can be reached at freelancershafqat@gmail.com
