One Of The Many Positives Of 'The Kashmir Files' Is That It Shows The Importance Of Documentation

This is a review, and not an advertisement or publicity piece, so there will be some points of criticism in it (although I myself see, and will point out, possible excuses or atonement points for the points of criticism raised by myself), but make no mistake, this is a positive review for a truly revolutionary film by a truly great nationalist film-maker.

It is revolutionary in the sense that it is for the first time a Hindi film points out the Truth in a film depicting modern Indian historical events and the politics behind them. In that sense, I would, even at the risk of it sounding like hyperbole, describe Agnihotri as the pioneering Dadasaheb Phalke of Hindu Hindi Indian cinema: Hindi cinema in India has always been venomously or subtly (depending on the depictions) anti-Hindu, whenever it addressed political or historical issues — and even when no particular historical or political issues are involved in the storyline (Pauranik films perhaps being the only exception) — and Agnihotri is the only fearless, honest and nationalist (in spite of the concerted media trend to successfully brand "nationalist" as a politically bad word, I as well as Agnihotri himself, and millions of others, will not see that word in that sense) film maker who can see the Truth and show it without sankoch, hesitation or fear.

As an aside, Hindi cinema has always blatantly distorted the Truth in such matters, and no-one would ever dream of daring to challenge the narrative of "Hindus-bad, non-Hindus-good" which has been the mainstay of Indian and particularly the Hindi film industry — Agnihotri himself has often pointed out that he does not consider himself part of this "Bollywood". Of course, there may have been producer-directors (and not necessarily Hindu ones!) who have occasionally dared to show glimpses of the truth in some matters. See this video clip from the film Son of India by Mehboob Khan, which seems to start out with the usual cliché of the loving Christian padre-nun with the benevolent "yes, my child" facade, but then points out a truth no Hindu film maker of the time would have dared to depict:

In my very first book in 1993, I had described this phenomenon :

"The first stage, the primary stage, is represented by the familiar "Hindu-Muslim-Isai" syndrome. According to this, the Arabic-West-Asian culture of Islam, the Palestinian-European culture of Christianity, and the Indian culture of Hinduism, represent the three components of our "composite" Indian culture. (The introduction of the "Sikh" as a fourth angle to this triangle, was a side-development, intended to firmly separate Sikhs from other Hindus, and bring them closer to Muslims. That this part of the conspiracy has been a roaring success needs no elaboration here)….

The "Amar-Akbar-Anthony" brand of film propaganda has always been an indispensable feature of our Film industry. It has served to highlight this "composite" culture, by presenting stereotypes of blatantly West-Asianized Muslims and blatantly Europeanized Christians, insisting all the time on the "Indianness" of these stereotypes….

In this second stage, the "Amar" aspect of the "composite" culture is slowly diluted and downgraded, and the "Akbar" aspect is glorified and upgraded; hence, the propaganda must, necessarily, be more subtle than the "Amar-Akbar-Anthony" brand of propaganda.

When two persons meet, in a Hindi film, and one is a Hindu and the other a Muslim, they do not greet one another with namaste or Ram Ram: nor does one say namaste and the other assalam 'aleykum (nor in fact, do they refrain altogether from formal greetings); both greet each other with adab arz hai or assalam 'aleykum. When a Hindu, in a Hindi film, is faced with some great affliction, he starts doing the rounds, turn by turn, of a temple, a mosque, and a church, but a Muslim or Christian is never shown finding it necessary to approach other shrines. These are just two of many examples—each subtle by itself, perhaps not even consciously noticed in spite of their repeated occurrence—which, in the cumulative effect, serve to create the intended psychological environment.

The entertainment media have played no mean role in carrying on this brand of propaganda. The calculated glorification of Urdu, of Lucknow tehzib, of the Mughals, of ghazals and qawwalis, etc., and the subtle ridicule of Sanskritized Hindi, has been a basic feature of the Hindi film industry…

The third stage is the final stage. This is the highest and most refined stage of all. At this stage, every aspect of India's mainstream culture, which existed in India prior to the arrival of Islamic culture from West Asia, represents "communalism".

Thus, it is perfectly secular for Indian politicians to don fez caps, visit mosques, perform namāz to clicking cameras, etc. But it is "communal", for them to visit temples, or bow down before Hindu holy men, or to wave ārtīs or break coconuts while inaugurating a function, since the customs of visiting temples, bowing before holy men, waving ārtīs, and breaking coconuts, all existed in India before the arrival of Islam from West Asia.

This last, and ultimate stage of "secularism" and "national integration based on a composite culture", can be fully comprehended only by the ideologically most advanced sections of Indians — the Leftists.

When the Ramayana was being shown as a serial on TV, Leftist and progressive artists, led by doughty warriors like A.K. Hangal and Dina Pathak, organized a march in Bombay to protest against this "communal" act of Doordarshan (Rama being a pre-Islamic Indian hero, any serial on him would obviously be a "communal" one). Addressing a rally at the conclusion of the march, Dina Pathak bitterly castigated Doordarshan for showing another "communal" item on its network—a report of the archaeological discovery, by Dr. S.R. Rao, of the remains of ancient Dwarka, under the sea, off the coast of Gujarat (Dwarka, having sunk under the sea long before the birth of Islam, any report on it would obviously be a "communal" one). Need we say more?" (TALAGERI 1993:32-34).

Matters have only got progressively worse and worse: with the tightening financial stranglehold of the Muslim Mafia over Bollywood, and the increasing mind-control of unbelievably anti-Hindu leftists (now they would be called Woke leftists) — and also convent-brainwashed middle class Hindus — over the academia, media and political discourse, today it is almost unthinkable that any scenario can even be shown where a Hindu, as a Hindu, can be good, and a Muslim, as a Muslim, can be anything but good (if even slightly bad, there are always extenuating circumstances, for which, of course, Hindus are equally always responsible)!

In fact, this film under review, was released on the 11th or 12th (I am not sure exactly when, because of attempts to stall or ban the film through the intervention of courts), and I saw it on the 12th afternoon at the Roxy theatre in my area (in South Mumbai), with the specific intention of writing a review of it. My brother had made the mistake of going to see the film Gangubai Kathiawadi in the morning, and got so fed up of it that he left the film in the interval, but with such a headache that he could not come for The Kashmir Files (he will be seeing it soon). So I took my Muslim friend along with me! The point is that the film my brother saw apparently contained the usual political trash, with corrupt and villainous Hindu policemen contrasted with Muslim gangsters with (soft) hearts of gold!

In any case, I saw The Kashmir Files on the 12th, and, like so many people who saw it, with tears in my eyes — I suspect even my Muslim friend, against all his trained inclinations, also had tears in his eyes.

To come back to the review part of this article: this pioneering film has many very positive points:

1. It is the first time that the plight of Kashmiri Hindus has been depicted in Hindi films, without somehow showing excuses and extenuating circumstances, and ultimate Hindu responsibility, for their plight.

In fact, the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, or Kashmiri Hindus as a whole (I am assuming there are Kashmiri Hindus, other than Pandits, affected by the Kashmiri Holocaust), is totally shunned and blanked out in both international as well as Indian political discourse, as if completely non-existent. Thus elite Indian and Hindu cricketers, for example, who show how overwhelmed they are with emotion and human concern when they "take the knee" for issues like "Black Lives Matter", care two figs (or two f***s) for Kashmiri Hindu lives.

This film, however, minces no words (or cms of film) in showing things as they are: the omnipresent and ubiquitous slogans (on walls and posters, and in the mouths of even women and children) of "Indian/Hindu dogs, get out" and "Either convert to Islam, leave the land, or die" and "Hindu men leave Kashmir, and leave the Hindu women for us"; the mullahs spouting hatred against "kafirs" from the pulpits of mosques; even small Muslim children chanting anti-Hindu slogans with hate-filled eyes; the molestations and humiliations and persecution of Hindu women; the stone-throwing and the burning of Hindu vehicles and houses: all are shown in the film without any camouflage or sugar-coating or excuses.

2. It is also the first time that the leftist gangsters functioning in academia and in NGOs have been exposed in every way. The film shows their openly avowed agendas, strategies and intentions; their heavy funding and their direct connections with the terrorists; their conscious creation of blatantly false "narratives"; the large gangs of brainwashed youth in the educational institutions created through peer pressures; the dancing and singing on streets and in campuses accompanied by raucous cries for "azadi"; the provocative speeches, interspersed with "witty" statements to loud clapping and cheering; etc. in a way which should open the eyes of the blindest Hindus. All credit should go to Pallavi Joshi, who has not only effectively played the role of the smug and shameless leftist leader who leads the subversive activities, but is also the producer of the film.

3. For me in particular, one of the very great positives of this film is that it shows the supreme importance of documentation. Indians and Hindus in particular have always been among the most notoriously backward people in the world in this field. Alberuni in his Tehrik-e-Hind noted in 1030 CE that "The Hindus do not pay much attention to the historical order of things, they are very careless in relating the chronological succession of their kings, and when they are pressed for information and are at a loss, not knowing what to say, they invariably take to tale-tellings". Monier-Williams, in the introduction to his Sanskrit dictionary, tells us: "Scarcely a subject can be named, with the single exception of historiography, not furnishing a greater number of texts, and commentaries, or commentaries on commentaries than any other language of the ancient world."

Strangely, many Hindus treat this weakness as a sign of Hinduness and something to be proud of. One of the weirder criticisms my analysis of Rigvedic history has produced from the more narrow-minded and orthodox Hindu critics is that by analysing our Hindu texts for history, something which our ancestors wisely avoided doing, I am somehow betraying those ancestors and our Hindu traditions, and showing that I am under the influence of "Western" thought processes!

This film shows the great power of serious documentation (anyone who has not yet seen the film, and does not like "spoilers", should stop reading at this point): the brainwashed leftist student protagonist, who is required by the leftist cabal for his propaganda-value as an actual Kashmiri Pandit standing up for "azadi", refuses to believe the narrations of the Kashmiri Pandit veterans (survivors of the Kashmiri Holocaust) and berates them for making up stories and working against the interests of Kashmiris. Until he comes across the well collected and maintained "Kashmir Files", maintained by the Kashmiri Pandit character played by Mithun Chakravarty, containing every single newspaper report and document detailing the events. This transforms the protagonist to such an extent that he gives the most eloquent speech against the "azadi" gangsters to a huge and worked-up stadium-full of woke-brainwashed students who, in turn, are transformed into accepting the truth!

[Obviously an exaggerated scenario, and not very likely to actually take place in this way in real life. But this is a film, and art has to exaggerate to make its point. And the last quarter of the film definitely makes its point very effectively indeed].

So it is time Hindus started the extremely vital process of systematically analyzing, and presenting and broadcasting to the world, past events and past history. And documenting in systematic detail all present events for future reference, analysis and presentation. But I think, seeing the state of Hindu intelligentsia and Hindu politics, that is a tall order.

Now I come to what seem, or seemed, to me some negative aspects of the film:

1. The colour schemes in the film struck me, as soon as the film started in the theatre, as on the dark and gloomy side. This could be argued as being in sync with the tragic and gloomy history being presented in the film, but the first thought was that this was simply in keeping with a trend that I myself do not like in present-day films and serials:

However, as the film progressed, I became less and less conscious of the colour schemes. And, as I realized, perhaps it was not an issue after all. But nevertheless I know it would be an issue for more shallow viewers: a person who saw the film yesterday told me that he did not like it very much because "it was like a documentary". But it was meant to be a documentary, the best of its kind, to document the tragedy in Kashmir. I don't know if this person (who is incidentally a Modi-bhakt, and so I thought he would appreciate the content of the film: but Modi-bhakts are not necessarily people who care for Hindu issues) expected Westernized film songs, raunchy "item numbers", fashion models performing the cat-walk, and a catchy romantic story-line. There are such people, and their views are really not worth anything.

2. The film seemed to show a minimum of gory scenes. Of course, as the Marathi proverb puts it, "shitavarun bhatachi pariksha" (testing the whole rice dish by testing one cooked grain from it): the whole picture can be understood from the samples shown. But frankly, I personally would have preferred that the massacres, killings, burning of vehicles and houses, shooting of defense personnel, stone throwing by Kashmiri children and youths, etc. could have been shown on a larger scale and with larger casts: after all, the film very appropriately and very effectively showed a stadium full of left-brainwashed students doing their thing. After all, cinema is a visual medium, and to some audiences at least the scale and grandeur of presentations make for a greater and deeper impact.

The whole film seemed to revolve around one group of affected Kashmiri Pandits, one truck full of escaping women, one master-terrorist and his goons, one camp full of refugees massacred, two houses (in a scene showing a town full of houses from an aerial view) bursting into flames, etc. Of course, the dialogues pointed out that the thing was taking place on a massive scale, and that more than two (or more) lakh Hindus had been forced to abandon their properties and flee the land, but the impact of dialogues is not the same as the impact of visual scenes.

But perhaps that is my ignorance of cinematography and the impact of cinematic depictions speaking. In any case, as I said before, the ending scenes seemed to compensate for the reticence earlier: and it is after all the last ending scenes of any film which are supposed to leave an impact. So I will leave this to the judgment of other viewers.

3. Another purely personal point that struck me was that since so many lakhs of Hindus became refugees, who had to flee Kashmir abandoning their properties and wealth forever, it cannot be that all of them (however much credit we may give to their education levels, intelligence, skills, perseverance and luck) came up within a few decades back to a position of upper middle class luxury. Surely (and this is my ignorance speaking) there must be many refugees living their lives in relatively poor or unhappy circumstances who could also have been depicted in the film. But the film depicts only a handful of them, all living relatively posh upper middle class lives, meeting and enjoying the choicest Kashmiri dishes, and drinking alcohol.

Of course, this could be my orthodoxy (in such matters) speaking: I have been a determined teetotaler, never having tasted even a drop of beer in my life. And so, possibly the above scenes rankled my mind in a way which may not represent the general reactions to the above scenes. But I thought I should express my opinion anyway.

4. Finally, the one thing in the film that, to put it in Hindi, mujhe khatka, was the unnecessary reference to the present Modi-BJP regime. In the last few years, no-one can talk about any Hindu issue without directly binding it with the Modi-BJP identity. Both the anti-Hindu as well as the pro-Hindu sides compulsively link any and every Hindu issue with the Modi-BJP government:

a) Anything against Modi-BJP is immediately and automatically interpreted as an attack on Hinduism , as if this government — which, among countless other things, recently told the Supreme Court, in response to a petition by some concerned Hindus against the massive minority-only schemes on which this government regularly spends ten thousands of crores of rupees of tax-payers' money, that these schemes did not constitute injustice to Hindus, and that the minorities required to be "uplifted" with such schemes — is somehow a personification of Hinduism itself.

b) And, anything against Hindus and Hinduism is immediately and automatically interpreted as an attack on the Modi-BJP government, as if Hindus and Hinduism were never under attack at any time in history before the present regime came to power.

In this matter, there is a mili-bhagat (the Hindi phrase puts it so succinctly) between the supporters and the leftist opponents of the Modi-BJP government. It is in the interests of both sides to enforce this identity between Hindu issues and the Modi-BJP government.

It reminds me of the scene in Animal Farm where everything is automatically linked by the denizens of Animal Farm with the hallowed leadership: "It had become usual to give Napoleon the credit for every successful achievement and every stroke of good fortune. You would often hear one hen remark to another, "Under the guidance of our Leader, Comrade Napoleon, I have laid five eggs in six days"; or two cows, enjoying a drink at the pool, would exclaim, "Thanks to the leadership of Comrade Napoleon, how excellent this water tastes!""

Here, in this film, we have it right from the horse's mouth, from the mouth of the master-terrorist himself when he says (towards the end of the film) that things were better in the times of Nehru and Vajpayee, but that under the present vazir-e-azam (Prime Minister) things have changed drastically and for the worse (for terrorists). This single reference to the present-day political leadership, in a film made to expose the history and plight of the Kashmiri Hindus, made me squirm, and reminded me of the old Nehruvian days when it was mandatory for the most popular Hindi film songs with a political or social or patriotic message to sing the praises of Gandhi and Nehru. Was it necessary?

But, at the same time, I wonder (and I may be one of the few viewers to wonder in this way) whether this was after all a tongue-in-cheek reference. If they had shown the master-terrorist saying this from a prison cell where he was incarcerated for life, or just before he was to be hanged or executed in some way, it would have made sense. But here this master-terrorist, who is shown orchestrating or actually carrying out all the massacres and tortures throughout the film, and in fact is shown freely admitting in a television interview that he killed 20 or 25 or many more people and that he would kill his own brother or mother if necessary in his Islamic cause, says all this from a beautiful house in the most scenic parts of Kashmir where he seems to be living a luxurious life with his henchmen on the banks of a lake, enjoying the choicest Kashmiri cuisine, drinking the best Kashmiri kava, and playing lover to the NGO leaders leading the "azadi" activities in the Universities (there is a photo in his house showing him with the character played by Pallavi Joshi, in a flirtatious pose) and host to student-leader delegates such as the protagonist Krishna Pandit. Is this the drastic change being referred to under the present regime?

Has there really been a basic change in the Kashmir situation? In the face of conflicting reports and claims from the powerful propagandists from both sides, it is difficult to say. It is in fact difficult to trust anyone in present times. I would (as far as it is possible to trust anyone) trust the views of true Kashmiri activists like Sushil Pandit and Ashish Dhar (to name the two that come to my mind).

In any case, there will be plenty of attacks on this film by the leftist controlled academic and media armies. Small discrepancies of detail in the film will be hunted out to discredit the film and the history it portrays. Arguments of the "It was not only Jews who were killed; some Germans were also killed" type will be bandied around. Kashmiri Pandits, or Hindus as a whole, or Hindutvites in particular, will be demonized or blamed in strange ways. But thanks to Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri and his team, a real start has been made in the Hindu Cause. Let it not be wasted or sabotaged, and let many more people follow in his tracks and expose True History. They will get little or no help from "Hindu" political parties, and will have to struggle to make themselves heard, but a start has been made.

Note added 16-3-2022

I must also request the readers to read another review which has just come to my notice. It seems to be in a Canada edition of "The National Telegraph":

This article, apart from showing that this film is receiving attention worldwide (to whatever extent the world is willing to look, and look honestly, at happenings in India), it brings to light certain points that I did not know, such as the fact that Vivek Agnihotri refused an offer from Netflix which required him to delete references to Islamic terrorism in the film, or which I missed out, such as the Kashmiri Pandit community's determinedly ostrich-like behavior — both before, during, and after the events — which was in a way equally responsible for their plight. This is certainly the most important lesson that we must learn from the film. This is typical Hindu behavior. When will Hindus ever learn?