I don’t watch movies and so I know nothing about The Kashmir Files and the reasons people have for hating or loving the movie, but the abomination that followed its release can’t be avoided.
The movie comes from a film-maker who has always chosen the path of hate-mongering to get his share of fame (only if he could have focussed this much on loving his art genuinely). It is estimated to cross ₹175 crore business tomorrow (last time I read Taran Adarsh’s tweet).
My question is, of all those people promoting the movie, going to watch it, using it to stir hatred against a particular party or community, or dissenting, for that matter, how many of them in all these years actually went to look and work for the welfare of Kashmiri Pandits? How many of them in the government did anything to assure them that one day they will return to the valley and their homes?
How many of us have read even a single journal addressing the real plight of these people? Can any of these people even name the camps without Google? I am sure they can’t.
We want to talk, write, spread noise and hatred only to be able to register everything on record. Every riot, exodus or war is a collapse of the system and consequences are for the people to bear. They lose properties, assets, lives and the worst part is that real losses are never reported for simple reasons that no administration wants to be remembered as evil or failure in history.
This movie might have shown the plight and suffering of the Kashmiri Pandits in the hands of religious terrorism but haven’t several such movies been made in the past? Then what made the government, moreover, the Prime Minister himself jump into the promotions and ensure that the PR is in place and that every Indian watches this movie?
Is it because for the ruling government and its supporters this movie is an advertisement that has already prepared a massive base for the 2024 elections?
People who didn’t blink an eye to lakhs of deaths due to COVID just a few months ago, showed no sympathy for farmers, never spoke (rather justified) the 2002 riots, have suddenly enlightened after the movie.
The opposition is busy proving that the movie is lying, people are wasting money and time watching it. Suddenly suggestions of movies addressing 1984 riots and 2002 riots have surfaced to put up a competition of “who suffered more under which government” and the country has become a battleground of propaganda and ego.
The answer to The Kashmir Files is not another movie on 1984 or 2002. The answer is the change of narrative that a movie is for entertainment and not for teaching history. We can’t keep churning the nation to decide verdicts on which community suffered more. Whenever there is a riot a human is killed and humanity suffers.
The virtual and keyboard wars can get attention and a sense of achievement, hate-mongering can get you ₹175 crores and an award atleast once in life, but what none of this can get is a respite for those who actually suffered, lost and never went back.
Don’t talk about what past governments did, talk about what the current governments have done to benefit those who suffered. If the answer is “nothing” then stop falling into the trap of the governments who divert your attention to history to be able to hide their own failures of the present.
Never in my life have I seen people so desperate to prove an irrelevant point.