'The Kashmir Files': Vulgar twists

Singapore refused to certify the film for screening, and its ambassador did not feel the need to issue a public apology to India

Imagine if an Indian citizen, an artist, writer, or filmmaker, is invited to a foreign country to head a jury and determines that one submission by a citizen of the host nation is so crass that it should not be included in the competition. Presuming that the piece of work is an important propaganda work promoted by the regime of the country, understandably, apologists of the host state/nation would be annoyed. But would the ambassador of India begin apologising for the artist/filmmaker/writer who has been invited on artistic merit?

I suspect not, which is why I am quite baffled by the act of Israel's Ambassador to India, taking issue with the views of his citizen Nadav Lapid, president of the jury at the recent International Film festival of India (IFFI), who described the movie Kashmir Files as "vulgar manipulated propaganda" unfit for the competitive section of the festival. The ambassador went public with his outrage against filmmaker Nadav Lapid saying he should be ashamed of himself for denigrating Indian hospitality.

The filmmaker, in turn, has said that he was ashamed of the Israeli ambassador and that he (Nadav Lapid) is not the property of the State of Israel, just as an Indian person is not the property of the Indian State. It's entirely possible that the Israeli ambassador responded to the critique of the film as a critique of India itself because he understood quite well that The Kashmir Files was promoted by India's ruling party quite systematically and therefore is an extension of State propaganda itself.

In that case, we can argue, quite perversely, that both the Israeli filmmaker and the ambassador could have responded quite correctly from each of their respective understandings of the situation!

So what is The Kashmir Files exactly? It's a 2022 film about the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley during the era of militancy in Kashmir. It has been endorsed by the entire BJP establishment and is clearly a propaganda tool for ideological dissemination, as it rails against Muslims, promotes Islamophobia and also takes swipes at liberals and left/leaning critics, the category that BJP spokespersons and the film's director Vivek Agnihotri describe as urban naxals. (Vivek Agnihotri, who made The Kashmir Files, had in 2018 written a book titled Urban Naxals: The Making of Buddha in a Traffic Jam that describes certain individuals in media and academia as "invisible enemies of India").

What happened when the film was released earlier this year was unprecedented in the annals of popular cinema. No less than the prime minister promoted the film, and the entire BJP followed suit. The BJP's IT cell kept pushing the film, as did the overwhelmingly pro-establishment broadcast media outlets. The film was declared tax-free in all BJP-ruled states, and the governments organised special screenings in many places. The cadre of the RSS/BJP/VHP also made news when they chanted aggressive slogans during and after the film screenings in cinemas.

To critics, it looked like toxic propaganda, but to those of a certain ideological persuasion, it was valuable propaganda. There are multiple reasons for this, including the continued need to project Muslims as the permanent enemy, deserving of every misfortune that befalls them in contemporary times. Certainly, an exodus took place in Kashmir, yet those who stayed, that is, the majority of Muslims, faced thousands more casualties from terror attacks and strikes besides the sheer suffocation and loss of rights that come from living in one of the most militarised zones in the world.

I personally believe that The Kashmir Files was strategically timed propaganda designed to engage the public with the misfortune of one section of the Kashmiri population and deflect from what has happened to the majority community in the Valley, that is, the Muslims, so utterly demonised in the film. Things have always been fraught in the Valley, but since August 5, 2019, when Article 370, which gave Kashmir special constitutional rights, was abrogated and the state of Jammu and Kashmir downgraded to two union territories, whatever remained of democracy in the Valley has been suspended. Now, over three years later, there is no elected regime in Kashmir that remains under Central rule. It was the only Muslim-majority state in India.

Having made several journalistic forays into Kashmir, I can say that it had a vibrant and energetic press core that covered one of the most enduring conflicts in the world. But years of militancy, combined with covert and overt ops by state and non-state actors and the final August 5, 2019 push, has now virtually killed the independent press in Kashmir. Personally, all my Kashmir journalist friends and contacts are either dead or silenced. One of my regular journalist sources there was shot dead some years ago, and the killers remain unknown. Another was advised to depart India. A third faced so many cases and was stopped from leaving India that he has ceased functioning as an active journalist, and a fourth is reportedly suffering from acute mental health issues. Recently among the younger generation who reports from there, the prestigious Pulitzer prize was awarded to Kashmir-based photo journalist Sanna Irshad Mattoo. But she was stopped at Delhi airport and prevented from flying to the US for the awards ceremony.

As for the movie The Kashmir Files, for all its promotion by the government of India, it's just never really earned the kind of "respect" that the filmmakers may hanker for. Singapore refused to certify the film for screening, saying that representations in the film "have the potential to cause enmity between different communities and disrupt social cohesion and harmony in our multi-racial and multi-religious society". The ambassador from Singapore did not feel the need to issue a public apology to India.

(Saba Naqvi is a journalist and author)

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.