The Kashmir Files lands a sucker punch on the gut of a people prone to historical and moral blackouts

When my editor urged me to write on The Kashmir Files, I was a little hesitant to put pen to paper before I had watched the film. Getting hold of tickets in sync with my routine was proving an uphill task as the film has been creating a tsunami in box office. I finally managed to do so this Sunday.

I knew what to expect, still, when the movie ended, I had trouble getting up from the chair — tottering from the punch at my gut. To be honest, I didn’t find The Kashmir Files to be a very ‘well-crafted’ film. The script could have been tighter, the narration could have been smoother. The protagonist’s transition from a sceptic to a believer appeared too abrupt. But all this is irrelevant.

It has taken courage and conviction for director Vivek Agnihotri and his crew to make this film. Before The Kashmir Files came along, Indian film industry had chosen to ignore this ‘sensitive’ topic, create false equivalences or doctored history so as not to imperil “secularism”. It is to Agnihotri’s credit that instead of treading gingerly on the issue of minority Hindus becoming a victim of jihadism, murderous separatism and ethnic cleansing, he holds up a mirror.

And in so doing, The Kashmir Files lands a sucker punch on the gut of a people prone to historical and moral blackouts. It is an almighty strike against the conspiracy of silence that sought to suppress and invalidate the horrors on Kashmiri Hindus inflicted by Islamist terrorists. It is a punch up against decades of denial and concealment of a genocide by the Indian state.

Brutalities against Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley remained buried under a debris of political disinformation, creation of alternate realities and administered memories — save a few valiant, articulate, unrelenting voices from the pandit community who could never be bullied into silence.