The Kashmir Files: A Stellar Film That Takes Away Nothing From The Truth

The audience continues sitting in stunned silence for several minutes after the movie has ended. As I slowly start walking out of the theatre, I see many in the audience crying. It’s a premiere show, the actors of the film are waiting outside to interact with the audience. I see him standing outside. Shiva Pandit, the six-year-old boy shot in cold blood during the Waldhama massacre in which 23 Pandits were killed. It’s a relief to see this sweet little boy is alive and well, and I can’t help but reach out to him, hug him and ask his name. Prithviraj, he replies in his innocent but confident little voice.

And then there are Vivek Agnihotri and Pallavi Joshi. The crowd mills around the team, congratulating the actors for their incredible performance and the director for his bravery in showing the brutal, naked truth of what really happened to the Kashmiri Pandits in that cold, bleak January of 1990.

Anupam Kher is waiting in the lobby. He’s calm and composed, looking as professional as ever. I wonder how it’s even possible for him to be a normal person again after what he as Pushkar Nath Pandit has been through. We shared his intense pain, anguish and trauma for just three hours but it has changed us forever. Four nights later, I’m still crying myself to sleep.

While characters have been altered, every single line and scene in the film is from a real event. For example, in the movie, Radhika Menon is a professor who aggressively proclaims to a gathering of students that Kashmir was never an integral part of India. In real life, it’s JNU Professor Nivedita Menon who said this. The setting of the scene is exactly identical to the real event.

The television broadcast scene has a Vinod Dua lookalike explaining that the Kashmiri Hindus were privileged elite who had monopolised jobs, postings and benefits and that led to discontent among poor Muslims — a classic bourgeoisie vs proletariat presentation of the situation. But these words were actually spoken by journalist Barkha Dutt during her coverage of the KP exodus from the valley.

Yasin Mallik was formally charged for the murders of Air Force personnel only in 2020. However, no one has ever been charged or convicted with the murders of Kashmiri Pandits and their forcible eviction from the valley.

By all accounts, The Kashmir Files is doing remarkably well at the box office and may turn out to be the biggest blockbuster of the year. But the real question is: Why does this movie have such a strong impact on its viewers? It’s not just because the audience knows all of it is true. Nor is it because the movie, as a cynical Left wing critic infamously and shamelessly remarked, is “violence porn”.

It’s much more than that. To paraphrase our Kashmiri Pandit first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, “A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance.” The Kashmir Files is that moment for our time to redeem that pledge.

When Pushkar Nath Pandit dies, heartbroken, pining to return to his home in Kashmir, it echoes directly in the hearts of thousands of Kashmiri Hindus who relive the trauma of their past that was suppressed for many years.

Yes, I cried bitterly on watching this film and the tears continue to flow even today. For them. And for my parents and grandparents, for my Sindhi community that went through the same trauma during Partition when they were forced to vacate their homes overnight and move to other cities as refugees under threat of extreme violence. They too bore it stoically and rebuilt their lives. It is also the lived reality of millions of Bengali Hindus who faced state sponsored Islamist violence in 1971 in what is now Bangladesh.

This review was first published on the author's website, and has been republished here with permission.