The Hindutva brigade’s indefatigable pursuit of an anti-Muslim agenda emphasizes its commitment to an ideal which, to others, aims at provoking violence against a targeted community. Until recently, the right-wing fraternity mainly used political propaganda for this purpose. Now, it has another tool in its hands that is no less effective. The new polarizing instrument is cinema. 

Not surprisingly, India's ruling BJP has lost no time after the screening of the Hindi film “The Kashmir Files” (KF) to float another project which focuses on the alleged targeted trafficking of Hindu women in Kerala. It doesn’t take much perspicacity to see that the objective of such endeavours is to fuel anti-Muslim sentiments which, the saffron lobby is convinced, will help the BJP’s electoral prospects by consolidating the Hindu vote across the country. 

The party is obviously delighted with the KF’s box-office success. The popular response underlines the extent of the saffron brotherhood’s anti-Muslim base. To strengthen this advantage, the BJP governments in the states have made the film tax-free, announced holidays to enable more and more people to watch it, and the party bigwigs have felicitated the film’s director and actors in an unprecedented gesture of showing support. There is little doubt that the proposed film on Kerala will receive similar warm treatment. 

Film on Gujarat riots? 

For all the claims of the BJP that the KF exposes the “truth” about the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits from the valley in 1990, it is unlikely that the party will demonstrate a similar concern for the “truth” in a film on the 2002 Gujarat riots. Any depiction of the murder and mayhem of the time when the Supreme Court described the BJP-run state government’s seeming tardiness in checking the outbreak to the act of a “modern-day Nero” would be unpalatable to the Sangh Parivar. 

The KF and the proposed film on Kerala are in a category of their own which has few parallels in India’s cinematic history. It can seem odd that the KF was not made a few months earlier when it could have reinforced Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s diatribes against those who say “abba jaan” or bury their dead in “kabaristhan”. However, perhaps the fear that the Election Commission might call for stopping the exhibition of a film which targets both Muslims and a liberal institution like the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), which has long been the BJP’s bete noire, persuaded the party to advise the filmmakers to delay the film’s release. 

It is no secret that the makers and the actors have a saffron background with one of them, Anupam Kher, declaring himself in a TV interview as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “chamcha” (acolyte). Such artists will not like to feature in a film showing how the riots in Gujarat lasted for several weeks and the trials of some of the Muslim victims had to be held outside Gujarat to prevent any interference by the police and bureaucrats of the saffron province. 

Can Pandits return to Valley? 

It is yet to be seen whether the film on Kerala is as widely acclaimed as the KF, but what the fanning of anti-Muslim sentiments by the latter has done is to ensure that the task of the return of the Hindu Pandits to the Kashmir Valley has become doubly difficult unless gated and heavily policed enclaves are built on the lines of the Jewish settlements in Palestine. 

The film has soured Hindu-Muslim relations to an extent in Kashmir  - and also in the rest of the country - that the Pandits will be unable to settle down as before in close proximity with their Muslim neighbours. In their eagerness to stoke communal passions, the sponsors and supporters of the KF do not seem to have cared for this aspect of their venture. Or, perhaps, they were never interested in Kashmir returning to the pre-exodus days lest the restoration of inter-communal harmony should undermine the saffron lobby’s presentation of Muslims as pro-Pakistanis and anti-nationals. 

Besides films by the BJP’s camp followers, the party has been having a field day in the equally powerful media world where scores of television anchors unabashedly echo the party line. Not since the Emergency (1975-77) of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has radio and television been put to the government’s service so blatantly. Then, there are the so-called commentators who peddle the saffron line and trash critics like Sweden’s V-Dem Institute for describing India as an “electoral autocracy”. 

Hindu rightwing writ 

With the opposition palpably unable to offer any kind of meaningful challenge, except in provincial pockets, the BJP is seemingly the master of all it surveys. The personality cult related to this success has made Congress MP Shashi Tharoor describe his BJP colleagues in Parliament as “brown-nosing North Koreans” for their repeated praise of Prime Minister Modi.  

In this day and age, a  Bollywood film of the nineties like “Amar, Akbar, Anthony”, that celebrated communal harmony,  is unlikely to be made. Instead, the spotlight will be on the Islamists and demonisation of Muslims as in the Kashmir Files or the upcoming film on Kerala. 

(The author is a commentator on current affairs. Views are personal and not necessarily shared by editors of South Asia Monitor)