Watching this movie in the theaters is a harrowing experience. It incites a negative, hateful and emotive response from the majority of viewers. Someone at the end of the screening starts making the prevalent anti-Muslim slogans, and hysteria takes over the theatres. It has been recommended by no less than spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP-ruled states have made it tax-free. 

It is a gripping film but lacks any sophistication. It shows the raw violence in a horrific way, some are supposed to be based on true stories (like cutting the woman with an electric saw). There are counterclaims that deny such harrowing violence has taken place. Of course, despicable violence did take place. There are stories of Muslim neighbours saving Pandits from atrocities, helping them in various ways. All that amicable phenomenon of Kashmiri life is deliberately kept out. The film highlights the killings of Kashmiri Pandits in a one-sided manner. 

The director of the film was asked in one interview why he has not shown the killings of Muslims, who also faced the wrath of the terrorists. His response was totally off the mark as he said that in Second World War Germans and Jews both were killed. Only Jews are remembered. He says we need to remember the killings of Pandits in the same manner like Jews in Germany! Totally illogical comparison. Germans did not die in concentration camps and Jews who are remembered are the ones who were victims of Hitler’s internal fascist policy and not directly in the war. It is an off the mark comparison just to defend the indefensible, omission of the killings of Muslims by terrorists in Kashmir. 

All Muslims not terrorists 

Another BJP leader, one from Jammu and Kashmir, asserted that only Muslims killed the Pandits. No Pandit took up arms. This is an attempt to present the whole Muslim community in the colour of terrorists. It was terrorists, trained in Pakistan, the ones’ who became more aggressive after the rise of Islamism (Zia ul Haq and Taliban) who indulged in killings and other atrocities of Pandits and pro-India Muslims.

The opposition to autonomy clauses and their suppression in due course created dissatisfaction, alienation among Kashmiri youth set in. This alienation went through various phases. Initially, it was based on the core values of Kashmiriyat. From the decade of 1980, it became anti-India and later assumed anti-Hindu form. The first political murder was that of National Conference’s Mohammad Yusuf Halwai, even before that of Tikalal Tiplu, the Jammu and Kashmir BJP leader. We should know that it was not communal violence, where two communities were pitted against each other. It was an agenda-based terrorist violence. 

In the case of Kashmir, sections of militants turned terrorists under the influence of the growing clout of the Taliban and Al Qaeda. This dastardly phenomenon emerged from a few madrassas of Pakistan. These madrassas were particularly set up with American aid ($8,000 mn). They implemented an American-designed syllabus based on a retrograde version of Islam. America also gave 7,000 tonnes of armaments which were used in the anti-Russia Afghan war. Kashmiri Muslims need to be distinguished from the breed of gun-bomb wielding terrorists whose roots, in turn, lay in process of alienation furthered by the aggressive version of Islam, which dominated the area.

Only Pandits killed? 

The deliberate ‘Only Pandits were killed’ is a blatant lie. The film lives to its own dialogue that showing wrong is as dangerous as hiding the truth; it totally hides the murders and exodus of Muslims. The film director in various interviews says that only Pandits had to leave the valley. The truth is that over 50,000 Muslims also had to leave.

Then he claims that there are no Pandits in the Valley. Again a full-throated lie! He deliberately hides the fact that there are close to 800 Pandit families living in the Valley. Their organization is Kashmir Pandit Suraksha Samiti (KPSS). Its leader Sanjay Tikkoo is now apprehensive that this film may have an adverse impact on Pandits living in the Valley. The film, he fears, aims to polarize communities, spread hate and may even fuel the violence that people of Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere do not want to be repeated ever again.

He elaborates on the type of bonding between Kashmiri Muslims and the Pandits, “What we call the mass migration began March 15, 1990, onward. Terrorist organizations were making daily hit lists and pasting them inside the mosques. On these lists were Pandits, National Conference workers and Muslims. As there were cordial relations between individual Pandits and Muslims, the latter after the evening namaaz would inform his (Pandit) neighbour if he spotted the name. He wanted to save his (KP friend/neighbor) and their families.” 

Divisive agenda 

These are the things unsuitable for the divisive agenda of the director and those recommending and promoting the film. The film also uses the stereotype that Kashmir was inhabited by Pandits/Hindus alone who were converted to Islam by ‘Sufi’s sword’ (Anupam Kher’s dialogue in the film). This is far from the truth of the spread of Islam in the Valley and other parts of India. Just a minimal knowledge about Sufi tradition will tell us that Sufi saints were for spiritualism and love. That’s how most of the Sufi shrines to date are visited by Hindus and Muslims both. Conversion to Islam has been more due to caste atrocities rather than the sword of the kings. 

Swami Vivekananda has said: “Religious conversions have not taken place because of atrocities of Christians and Muslims, but because of atrocities of upper caste.”  

The film will have a negative impact on the carefully nurtured Kashmiriyat in Kashmir and the communal fraternity which emerged during the freedom movement all over India.

(The writer, a former IIT Bombay professor, is Chairman, Center for Study of Society and Secularism, Mumbai. Views are personal.)