The Keepers Of Kashyap

The colors of Holi intend to stick this year. The appeal of the pristine white of purity is fast fading. For, behind its seemingly innocent façade hides the hideous color of ‘willful concealment’. Like the bond with color, we Indians have a bond with cinema too, a colorful appeal to our colorful selves. But you know something is far wrong when the so called proponents of the freedom of expression and cinematic liberty target a single film which deviates from the ‘official version’ and attempt to sabotage it by all means available in the arsenal of social media.
A ‘propaganda film’ has at least brought an uncomfortable truth out into the open, made us think of what lies beneath (pun unintended). The emerging picture is dirtier than imagination permits (pun again unintended). A veritable night of the walking dead, if you will. For there was a night in the history of modern India when even the dead had to walk, carrying the burden of their souls on their broken shoulders, through the ruins of their lives, rendered invisible and mute by the powers that were. And they stayed that way for more than three decades.
I am, of course talking about ‘The Kashmir Files’ by maverick director Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri. A film which you can either hate or love, but cannot ignore. A film like this, which cocks a snook at the established narrative and tries to find an alternative and inconvenient one is of course, asking for trouble. Like they say, there is your truth and there is my truth. The universal truth does not exist.

‘The Kashmir Files’ was released under an adult certificate. I will not comment much on the acting and the cinematography and the screenplay. There are people who are much better qualified to talk on such things. At the risk of sounding cliched, what struck me was the unapologetic belligerent rawness with which the film has been handled. There is nothing soft and soppy about it. The picturesque visuals of Kashmir clad in pristine snow exist purely because the story demands it.

The reason why I chose to watch it because I was genuinely curious about the Kashmir issue. Conveniently blanketed by childhood when the Pandits were driven from their homes, there was not much to know except that Kashmir had become a hot bed of terrorism. The makers themselves claim that it is a work of fiction, but also emphasize that the story was written AFTER interviewing several (700+ to be precise) displaced Pandit families, still haunted by the trauma after a couple of generations. As far as the community, on whom unthinkable atrocities were perpetrated by the Muslim Jihadis, (some home-grown and some in Pakistan) is concerned, the film is the turning of a corner. They are no longer numbers but real people with stories which have at least been acknowledged.

Of course, one cannot talk about such a sensitive subject and not stir up the controversy pot. I watched an analysis by a senior journalist formerly associated with a leading vernacular daily who claimed the film to be a mere smoke screen, cleverly spread by the ruling dispensation to hide their true nefarious designs of selling the country, your personal property and you (not necessarily in that order) for personal gains after causing heightened communal tensions and a ‘charged’ atmosphere. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so miffed at his low opinion of the intelligence of the average Indian. The film has been running to nearly full houses for a week now and as far as I know, all is quiet on the communal front. Yes, people seethe quietly or vocally when they leave the theatre, but if there are any communal mobs running amok anywhere with swords and scythes, I have yet to see or hear of them. All that I would like to say to Mr. Senior Journalist is that going by your logic, ethnic Germans should have been wiped out wherever and whenever ‘Schindler’s List’ was screened and to please stop comparing our brains with his!

Perhaps this is where the film really wins, by exposing the contempt with which we, the common citizens are treated by the so called ‘masters of narrative’, for make no mistake, as the lead character says in the film itself, ‘Knowledge is Power’. Don’t we have a right to know the facts? A right to interpret them and analyze for ourselves? Or are we to remain little more than sheep forever? Incapable of independent thought? The film in no way absolves Pakistan of its role in the occurrences, it even highlights Benazir Bhutto’s incendiary speech. In fact, it even acknowledges those moderate Muslims who sheltered their neighbors against horrendous odds and were put to the sword themselves. And shows the spinelessness of the rulers in great detail, from the local police to the home-minister of India. I hope the detractors are listening.

We have watched several films glorifying terrorism without batting an eyelid or degenerating into a sordid mess. Not just watched, but also heaped all parties concerned with awards and what-not. ‘Haider’ being a prime example. But, make a film too close to reality for comfort and suddenly everyone is personally involved, as if they are the ones who lost family, homes and a way of life. It surely begs the question why this particular film is to be dissed when you have guzzled enough codswallop to last you several lifetimes before this?

I think what has irked several establishments the most is that sinking feeling which comes with a weakening of the grip on power. When you have carefully crafted your life on being the ONLY version of events and thus controlling the emotions of a billion people, the specter of people escaping your clutches and feeling what THEY want to is definitely going to haunt you for a long time to come. For propagating freedom comes easy. Actually giving it to people? Not so easy! Perhaps it is because the director makes no bones about digging up all that is rotten in many of the premier institutions of the country. And laying it out in its full stinking glory for all to see.

And that is what I, personally found most disturbing, the gory scenes notwithstanding. The casual ease with which those, trusted by parents like you and me to mold the minds of our children who are on the cusp of adulthood, abuse this trust. A rather ponderous dialogue “Toote hue log bolte nahin, unhe suna jaata hai” has been touted as a watershed one. But what gave me the goosebumps was quite another, “Unke ke paas power hai to kya hua? System to hamare paas hai na? We will never allow Kashmir to be an integral part of India, chahe uske liye humein desh me aag kyon na lagani pade!” casually mouthed by a pre-eminent college professor, no less.

And then can retribution be far behind? We have already seen social media flooded with the usual questions on why this film is a blatant attempt at polarizing communities, references to the Sikh massacres and Gujarat riots and several RTIs showing that the number of Pandits actually killed were only a hundred and sixty- nine as compared to the thousands of Muslims who have been victimized. What people who raise such non sequiturs fail to realize is that NOBODY is condoning the Sikh massacres or the Gujarat riots. But these events have been acknowledged, investigated, at least brought before a court of law and have several cinematic versions made on them, ranging from ill-informed to downright tripe. What happened in Kashmir, while perfectly planned and executed down to the last gory detail, has not been granted this privilege. As far as the polarization comments go, well if you are that easily influenced, then you need to send the rest of your life in isolation, preferably in a padded cell.

What really shocks, is the brutality with which the organized massacres were carried out by Jihadis hand-in-glove with a covetous and complicit Pakistan. And thus, we have Justice Neelkanth Ganjoo and Pandit Tikalal Taploo murdered in broad daylight and Girija Tickoo, gang raped and sawn in two while still alive, reduced to a mere statistic in a dusty file moldering in a government office somewhere. And then, we have Yasin Malik, who after confessing to murdering several innocents finally ‘sees the light and embraces peace’ shaking hands with Dr. Manmohan Singh, the then Prime Minister of India and addressing the India Today conclave as a peace icon and messiah of the poor misguided Kashmiris! Irony just died a very painful death.

It has taken courage, a couple of fatwas and thirty- two unending years for us to merely acknowledge the Kashmir Genocide. I am not even dwelling on the innumerable number of security personnel whom we have lost to the place once called heaven on earth, all because of a way of life built on greed and terror. And this is where it hits those outraged Indian citizens, that there are those who believing themselves to be above the law, carve their own narrative and force it down our throats, which we are then expected to swallow without demur, even though the stomach maybe heaving.

We, who shout ourselves hoarse at brutality perpetrated in the far corners of world (yes, that is wrong too, without doubt) should now get to grips with the pain of our own. It is time to ‘take the knee’ for all those innocents who wanted nothing more than to live in harmony in their little patch of heaven. At the moment, ‘The Kashmir Files’ has sparked outrage among common citizens and is riding high on its swelling wave, bucking the establishment. How long the magic lasts however, remains to be seen, cursed as we are with notoriously short memories, minds straying ahead in search for the next piece of salaciousness, undermined by the subversive narrative which the truly divisive will start putting together in a short matter of time. It is only when the Kashmiri Pandits find peace, satisfaction with government actions and closure, will justice truly be done and the movie will have served its purpose.

I am optimistic about my fellow Indians though, who will see the crimson peeping through the whitewash and will teach the ruling dispensation to never ‘underestimate the power of the common man’ in the memory of the thousands of victims of massacre, the real ‘Keepers of Kashyap’.