The Kashmir Files
The Kashmir Files is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri. The film presents a fictional storyline centered around an exodus of Kashmiri Hindus in the disputed region of Kashmir. It depicts the early 1990s exodus to be a genocide, a notion that is widely considered inaccurate and associated with conspiracy theories. "The Kashmir Files" stars Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumar, and Pallavi Joshi. The plot follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student. Displaced in the exodus as a child after his family was killed, he is raised by a schoolteacher  who had witnessed the deaths, but shielded him from the knowledge of their circumstances. After his adoptive father's death, the student, who had come to believe at college that the exodus was benign, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his family's deaths. The plot alternates between the student's quest in the present time, 2020, and his adoptive father's travails of thirty years before. The film was released in theatres on 11 March 2022. It has been a commercial success, seemingly benefitting from promotion by India's ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. The critical reception  have been mixed, with the cinematography and the acting thought to be compelling, but the storyline attracting criticism for attempting to recast established history and propagating Islamophobia. Supporters have praised the film for showing what they say is an overlooked aspect of Kashmir's history. Theatres across India have witnessed hate speech against Muslims, including incitement to violence. , the movie, which cost approximately to make, had grossed worldwide, making it the highest grossing Hindi film of 2022. Plot. The plot frequently switches between the contemporary period set in the year 2020 and flashbacks to 1989–1990 throughout the film. Circa 1989–1990  In 1989–90 Kashmir, Islamic militants storm and banish Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Kashmir valley using the slogans "Raliv Galiv ya Chaliv" ("convert (to Islam), leave or die") and "Al-Safa Batte Dafa" ("with god's grace whole Kashmiri Pandit community will leave valley"). Pushkar Nath Pandit, a teacher, fears for the safety of his son Karan, who has been accused by the militants of being an Indian spy. Pushkar requests his friend Brahma Dutt, a civil servant, for Karan's protection. Brahma travels with Pushkar to Kashmir and witnesses the violence against Kashmiri Pandits. He takes up the issue  with the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), who suspends Brahma. Militant commander Farooq Malik Bitta, also a former student of Pushkar, breaches Pushkar Nath's house. Karan hides in a rice container but is found and shot by Bitta. Pushkar and his daughter-in-law Sharda plead for their lives. Bitta compels Sharda to eat rice soaked in Karan's blood in exchange for their lives. After Bitta and his gang leave the house, Pushkar begs his doctor friend Mahesh Kumar to bring an ambulance and save Karan's life. However, the hospital gets taken over by militants , who forbid the hospital staff from treating non-Muslims. Subsequently, Karan succumbs to injuries from the gunshots. To ensure their safety, Pushkar and his family are taken by their journalist friend Vishnu Ram to Kaul, a Hindu poet who maintains a cordial relationship with Muslims. Kaul takes in many Pandits into his home but a group of militants arrives to pick Kaul and his son up under the guise of offering protection. The rest of the Pandits leave the place but are later shocked to find corpses of Kaul and his son hanging from trees. The refugee Pandits from the  Kashmir valley settle in Jammu and live on meagre ration and in poor conditions. Brahma is appointed as an advisor to the new Governor of J&K. At his request, the Home Minister visits the Jammu camps where Pushkar demands the removal of Article 370 and the resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits. Brahma manages to get Sharda a government job in Nadimarg in Kashmir, and the family moves there. One day a group of militants headed by Bitta dress up as members of the Indian Army and arrive at Nadimarg. They start rounding up the Pandits living there. Sharda resists when the  militants get hold of her elder son Shiva. Angry Farooq strips her and saws her body in half. He lines up Shiva and the remaining Pandits and shoots them into a mass grave. Pushkar is spared to spread the word about what happened. 2020 In the present day, Sharda's younger son Krishna is brought up by Pushkar. He believes that his parents had died in an accident. A student of ANU, Krishna is under the influence of professor Radhika Menon who is a supporter of Kashmiri separatism. Pushkar's friends Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, and police officer Hari Narain, who  had served in Kashmir when Karan was killed, recall the events of Kashmir from their memory that Brahma calls a "genocide". Krishna contests the ANU's student election. Following the advice of professor Radhika Menon, he holds the Government of India responsible for the issue of Kashmir, much to the anger of Pushkar. Later, when Pushkar dies, Krishna travels to his ancestral home in Kashmir to scatter the ashes per Pushkar's last wish. Menon asks Krishna to record some footage in Kashmir to expose the government's supposed atrocities. With the help of one of Menon's contacts, Krishna  meets Bitta and accuses him of being responsible for the situation of the Pandits. But Bitta declares himself to be a new-age Gandhi who is leading a non-violent democratic movement. Bitta claims that it was the Indian Army, who killed Krishna's mother and brother. When Krishna questions Brahma about this claim, Brahma hands him newspaper cuttings (collected by Pushkar), which had reported that militants disguised as Indian Army soldiers killed them. Krishna returns to Delhi and gives his scheduled speech for the university presidential elections to a roaring crowd at the ANU campus. He elaborates on the  history of Kashmir and the plight of his family and other Kashmiri Hindu victims that he perceived from his trip. This is shocking to his mentor Professor Menon and her other students. Krishna is then met with resistance and ridicule from students and an eventual embrace by a few. Production. On 14 August 2019, Agnihotri announced the film with its first look poster with an intent to release it on 15 August 2020, coinciding with India's Independence Day. The subject of the film was the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits that took place between the late 80s and early 90s . Agnihotri touted the film to be the second instalment of his trilogy of "untold stories of independent India", which includes the films "The Tashkent Files" (2019) and an upcoming "The Delhi Files". As a part of the production, Agnihotri claimed to have interviewed more than 700 emigrants from the exodus and recorded their stories over a period of two years. Actor Anupam Kher joined the cast as the lead actor of the film in December 2019. The first schedule of the film, supposed to take place in March 2020, was called off due the COVID-19 pandemic in India, and was  started later the same year in December in Mussoorie. The entire film was shot in 30 days, largely in Mussoorie and Dehradun, along with a week-long shooting schedule in Kashmir, including at Dal Lake. Yograj Singh was removed before the production started in December 2020 for his speeches at the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest<ins>,</ins> and Puneet Issar was brought in as the replacement. A line producer, Sarahna died during the production by suicide. The production was wrapped up by 16 January 2021. Release. Certification. The Indian Censor board, Central Board of Film Certification gave "The Kashmir  Files" A certificate, which is restricted to adults (aged 18 and above). According to CBFC, it is a feature film in the genre 'drama' and there is no mention of the film being commercial/documentary in the CBFC records. The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) certified the film as 15, suitable only for viewers aged 15 years and over. BBFC noted that the film contained "strong bloody violence". Australian censors have given the film an 18+ plus rating. "The Kashmir Files" received an R16 classification from the New Zealand Classification Office, with a scheduled release date of 24  March 2022. The Muslim community in New Zealand raised concerns with chief censor David Shanks that the film could promote Islamophobia, citing inter-communal tensions relating to the film's release in India. Shanks stated that the film's R16 classification did not mean that the film was being banned. On 26 March, the NZ Classification Office raised the film's rating to R18, with Chief Censor Shanks citing "the nature and intensity of the violence and cruelty depicted." Shanks stated that the age restriction was consistent with film ratings in Australia and India. Litigations. A public interest litigation (PIL ) was filed by an Uttar Pradesh resident which sought a stay on the film's release on grounds that the film may portray the Muslims as killers of the Kashmiri Pandits, presenting what it described as a one-sided view that would hurt the sentiments of Muslims and could trigger violence against Muslims. The PIL was dismissed by the Bombay High Court on grounds that the filer should have challenged the certificate issued to the film by the Central Board of Film Certification. Another lawsuit was filed by the widow of an Indian Armed Forces squadron leader who died during  the Kashmir Insurgency. The widow's lawsuit said that the film portrayed a false depiction of events related to her husband and sought a stay on its release. Accordingly, the court restrained the makers from showing the relevant scenes. Theatrical release. "The Kashmir Files" was set to release theatrically worldwide on 26 January 2022, coinciding with India's Republic Day, but was postponed due to the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. It was initially released in over 630 screens in India on 11 March 2022 and was later increased to 4,000 screens. Home media. The film will be  streaming on ZEE5 from 13 May 2022. Government and ruling party support. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has endorsed and promoted the film in explicit terms, which has led to significant audience at theatres making it a runaway commercial success. Union Minister Smriti Irani was one of the most vocal in promoting it. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attacked critics in response to negative reviews, claiming that there is a conspiracy to discredit the film, which according to him "reveals the truth"; he met with Agnihotri to congratulate him, as did Home Minister Amit Shah. The BJP Information and  Technology Cell, known for being the party's propaganda unit promoted the film with its head raising calls for people to watch it. Pro-government media were also involved in its promotion; "OpIndia" — a pro-Hindutva news portal — published several articles raining praises on the film and questioning the motives of critics as well as opposition parties while television channels hosted multiple shows and debates to the same ends. Following the release of the film, Agnihotri was provided with a Y-category security detail from the Central Reserve Police Force by the Ministry of Home Affairs, based on what an  official described as inputs of perceived threat to the director's safety. The film was declared tax-free in multiple BJP governed states—Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar and Himachal Pradesh—with calls by several chief ministers and Members of Parliament for "everyone to watch the movie". Assam and Madhya Pradesh granted vacations to government employees and police personnel respectively, if they planned to watch the movie, and Assam, Karnataka and Tripura governments held special screenings of the film. In addition, in the states of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, which have opposition parties  in power, BJP legislators have called for their respective state governments to make the film tax-free. Across the country, BJP legislators have bought out screens for audiences to watch the movie for free. Critical reception. Stutee Ghosh, reviewing for "The Quint", rated the film 3.5 out of 5 and found the film to have made a compelling case for Kashmiri pandits and their "hitherto unaddressed wounds" but wished for more nuance; the cinematography (especially the colour palette), Anupam Kher's acting, and realist depictions were praised in particular. Likewise, Jagadish Angadi of "Deccan Herald" was effusive in his praise  — Agnihotri's use of non-linear narratives and strong dialogues, enviable background research, and strong individual performances produced an "intense watch". Avinash Lohana of "Pinkvilla" rated the film 3 out of 5 stars, praising the cast performances—particularly that of Kher's—and behind-the-scenes research, but criticised the lack of balance. Rohit Bhatnagar of "The Free Press Journal" found the screenplay and the individual performances to be sloppy, thus failing to make any mark; however, he admired the effort that went behind the film and rated it 2.5 out of 5 stars. Shubhra Gupta reviewing for "The Indian Express  rated the film 1.5 out of 5 stars<ins>,</ins> criticising the film for being uninterested in nuance and describing the film as propaganda aligned with the ruling party, that aimed to stoke the deep-seated anger" of Pandits. However, she also stated that the film did tap "into the grief of the displaced Pandits," and commended Kher's performance. Anuj Kumar reviewing for "The Hindu" described the film as being composed of "some facts, some half-truths, and plenty of distortions" with brutally intense visualisations and compelling performances, aimed at inciting hatred against Muslims. Rahul Desai reviewing for  Film Companion, called the work a "fantasy-revisionist" rant lacking in clarity, craft, and sense where every Muslim was a Nazi and every Hindu, a Jew; with an unconvincing screenplay and weak characters, it was propaganda that strove only to tune in with the Hindu nationalist mood of the nation rather than offer genuine empathy to the displaced victims. Tanul Thakur, reviewing for "The Wire", was scathing: the film—"monotonous", "inert", and boasting of an "objectively poor screenplay"—was set up in an alternate reality and felt like iterations of collected Whatsapp screeds in service of a Hindu majoritarian state and especially  Narendra Modi; Agnihotri lured the audience with facts only to distort and communalize them, and target those who are critical of the incumbent political regime in India. Asim Ali, reviewing for "Newslaundry", was also critical of the film, finding it to have exploited the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits in peddling a Hindu Nationalist worldview where no Muslim in Kashmir had any aspiration except persecuting Hindus. Shilajit Mitra of "The New Indian Express" panned the film with a rating of 1 out of 5 stars and castigated Agnihotri for exploiting the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits by doing away with all nuance  in service of a "communal agenda". Debasish Roy Chowdhury, co-author of "To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism", found the film to be a prominent marker of India's "descent into darkness"; rather than offering genuine closure for the Pandits, Agnihotri inflamed hatred against Muslims, secular parties, and liberal media in pursuance of a Hindu Supremacist cause. Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit academic, reviewing for "The News Minute", held the work to be a communal and masculinist propaganda that collapsed the complex politics of Kashmir into a one-sided moral tale palatable to the current Hindutva dispensation  in India; Agnihotri appropriated Pandit sufferings to portray all Kashmiri Muslims as barbarian invaders, undeserving of any solidarity. Alpana Kishore, one of the few journalists who had covered Kashmir in the 1990s (as part of Newstrack), found the film to be a set of factual episodes but strung together in a contextless fashion; Agnihotri did not bother to even portray the other side of the divide, and was brazen in pushing a pro-right agenda. Political messaging and historical accuracy. The film's producer Vivek Agnihotri claims the film to be a depiction of the "truth of Kashmir". Its key  message is that what is known as the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits is actually a "genocide" — which it claims to have been kept out of history textbooks and mainstream discourse deliberately. The film depicts the Jawaharlal Nehru University as an unpatriotic institution sympathetic to terrorism. Article 370 of the Constitution, that granted nominally autonomous status to Jammu and Kashmir and was revoked by the Modi government in 2019, is named as one of the factors behind the displacement of Kashmiri Pandits. Blame is also attached to Farooq Abdullah, the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir prior to the 1990 exodus ; the former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi; and Indian home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, a person of Kashmiri heritage. The serving prime minister V. P. Singh (in 1990), and the Bharatiya Janata Party that supported his government, appear to be absolved of responsibility by the film. The central character Krishna Pandit is shown as being provoked by terrorists to turn against the present-day prime minister Narendra Modi. The former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is also subtly derided for attempting to win the hearts of Kashmiris. A Kashmiri separatist militant named Farooq Malik Bitta is depicted in the movie , fashioned after Farooq Ahmed Dar ("Bitta Karate") and Yasin Malik rolled into one. But he is also shown as being involved in the 2003 Nadimarg massacre, which was of neither's doing. Sharda, fashioned after Mrs. Ganjoo, is shown to have been killed in this massacre, which was not the case in real life. Further, local Muslims are portrayed as passive participants in the event and the local cleric even denounced Sharda, moments before she was sawed to death; in reality, the massacre transpired in the dead of the night with almost no witness and the sawing was extrapolated from  a separate case involving one Girija Tickoo, some 13 years ago. Neither are the facts of Bitta Karate's long years of incarceration despite a lack of conviction or Malik's eventual conversion to non-violent means of struggle mentioned. The film's exclusive focus on violence of Muslims on Hindus—with limited attention given to the overall history of human rights abuses in the state—and especially, the painting of all Muslims as active or passive participants in the exodus has been seen as promoting Islamophobia and Hindu Nationalist cause. The film has also faced charges of historical revisionism  and unnuanced storytelling. Several critics have compared Agnihotri with Riefenstahl, a Nazi propagandist. Reception among Pandits has been mixed with some regarding the film to be a cathartic experience while others have been critical. Hate speech. At the theatres, Hindutva activists raised slogans advocating for fatal violence against Kashmiri Muslims as well as Indian Muslims in general. In one instance, calls were made to "[s]hoot the traitors to the nation" by members of the Hindu Jagran Manch, a member of the Sangh Parivar. Agnihotri has defended such cases, citing freedom of expression. In Jammu, a Kashmiri Pandit activist and his  family were heckled by a mob of activists allegedly belonging to the BJP, for he had labelled the film exploitative of the Pandit community. Box office. "The Kashmir Files" opened to box office with an earnings of , and in India respectively on its first three days, taking its opening weekend collection to and an estimated in India and overseas, respectively. After the response from the first two days, the screens were increased to 2,000 on 13 March 2021. With a collections growth of 323% on its first Monday compared to the release day, the film broke the record for the  highest increase in collections for an Indian film on its first Monday. At the end of the first week, the film earned at the Indian box office. After the response from the first week, the screens were increased to 4,000 on 18 March 2021. The film emerged as a box-office success within its first two days of release. , the film grossed in India and overseas, for a worldwide gross collection of , making it the highest grossing Hindi film of 2022. The movie also became the most successful movie commercially in aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic in India and first to  cross the figure of 250 crore. Soundtrack. The music of the film is composed by Rohit Sharma and Swapnil Bandodkar with lyrics written by Faiz Ahmad Faiz.