Communal Catharsis

In telling the story of the Pandits’ brutal expulsion from the Valley, Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files ends up caricaturing voices of dissent

- SUHANI SINGH

Few would have predicted that a nearly three-hourlong, A-rated heavy political drama on the persecution of Kashmiri Pandits by separatist militants and their subsequent exodus from the Valley in 1989-90 would become a blockbuster. Made on an estimated budget of Rs 15 crore, The Kashmir Files amassed around Rs 60 crore within five days of its release, with the collections growing by the day. Trade forecasts suggest that, at this pace, the film will collect Rs 300 crore. The Kashmir Files has struck such a chord with the audience that multiplexes are adding more shows to meet the demand and single screens are embracing the film, especially in the Hindi-speaking belt. Written and directed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, best known thus far for Hate Story and The Tashkent Files, the plot of The Kashmir Files revolves around Krishna (Darshan Kumar), a young Kashmiri Pandit who travels to Kashmir to fulfil his grandfather’s (Anupam Kher) last wish: spread his ashes in the ancestral house they were forced to leave in January 1990, and involve his four friends in the act. Over the course of two days, Krishna confronts, seemingly for the first time, the atrocities the community endured and learns the grim truth about family members who perished.

It isn’t, however, just a film about the plight of the people who became refugees in their own country. Agnihotri uses the tragedy to launch a broadside against his favourite bete noir: ‘liberals’, most prominently caricatured here by a professor (played by Agnihotri’s wife Pallavi Joshi) who vilifies the government for its atrocities on Kashmir’s Muslim majority and seeks to ‘appease’ Kashmiri Muslim students on the campus of ‘ANU’ (reminiscent of Delhi’s JNU). She’s the kohl-eyed, smiling provocateur who sings Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s