Hindu hardliners have jumped on an explosive new filmlinkendorsedby Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the mass flight of Hindus from IndianIllegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK) 30 years ago to stir up hatredagainst minority Muslims.
“The Kashmir Fileslink”is the latest Bollywood offering — more famous for its song-and-dance lovestories — to tackle themes close to the political agenda of Modi’s Hindunationalist government, critics say.
Released last month and already one of the country’s highest-grossing filmsthis year, it depicts in harrowing detail how several hundred thousandHindus fled IIOJK in 1989-90.
Authorities have made entrance to the film tax-free in many states, withpolice and others given time off to go watch.
Numerous videos shared on social media and verified as genuine by *AFP *haveshown people in cinemas calling for revenge and for Muslims to be killed.
One clip shows Swami Jeetendranand, a Hindu monk, leading a crowd innationalist and anti-Muslim chants.
“We think that we are safe, but we are safe as long as they don’t attackus,” he rails.
“(Muslims) are not only dangerous to India but to the whole world.”
Also read: Mehbooba lambastes BJP for promoting ‘The Kashmir Files’link
Around 200,000 Kashmiri Hindus in IIOJK— known as Pandits — fled after theviolence began in the late 1980s. Up to 219 may have been killed, accordingto official figures.
Redressing this “genocide” and “exodus”, as right-wing Hindu groups call it— likening it to the Holocaust — has long been a central theme of Modi’sBharatiya Janata Party.
In 2019, his administration — often accused of marginalising and vilifyingIndia’s 200 million Muslims — revoked the occupied region’s partialautonomy and imposed a vice-like security blanket.
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But Sanjay Kaw, a Kashmiri Pandit journalist who himself fled in the 1990s,said the movie makes no allusion to the persecution of the region’s Muslimcommunity either before or since.
“One of my relatives was shot dead… barely 300 meters away from ourhome,” Kaw told AFP.
“The movie only talks about the exodus part, and only refers to the failureof the state but not the things that led to the situation.”
The movie’s director Vivek Agnihotri, an avowed Modi fan, told *AFP *thathe wanted to give “some dignity to the people who have been hurt”.
“Nobody asked Steven Spielberg why there were a few violent reactions to’Schindler’s List’,” he said, referring to the 1993 movie on the Holocaustthat was widely acclaimed as historically accurate.
“Give (people) the right to react the way they want to react. As long asthey are not hurting anybody physically, I think it’s fine,” Agnihotriadded.
But the film “certainly has an agenda”, said documentary filmmaker SanjayKak, as it “strongly feeds into the current Islamophobic discourse in oursociety”.
“I think the film makes those goals (of the BJP) quite explicit: which isbasically about setting up Kashmir as a kind of ideological pole for theirvision of a new resurgent Hindu India,” he told *AFP*.
Modi has hit back against the criticism, saying a “whole ecosystem istrying to silence the person who made the film and tried to reveal thetruth”.
The world’s largest democracy has a long history of film censorship, butdetractors say the industry has come under increased pressure to make filmsthat dovetail more with the BJP’s narrative. -APP/AFP
