‘The Kashmir Files’ has been made to weaponise the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits and market their pain for possible electoral dividends, according to a report issued by the Concerned Citizens’ Group (CCG) headed by former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha.
“Almost the entire opinion spectrum in the Valley conveyed to our group that the film sought to give a spin to the deeply tragic and unfortunate exodus of Pandits by weaponising their suffering and marketing their pain for politico-commercial considerations and possible electoral dividends,” the report claimed.
Not surprisingly, the producers of the Bollywood blockbuster are said to have grossed a thousand percent return on their investment, the report added.
The report says that the film has jeopardized the safety and security of the Pandits living in the valley as well as the mainstream political leadership. “If Kashmiri Pandits are unsafe, do you think pro-India politicians are safe? I think we would be the first in the line of fire of the militants here. And we have become equally unsafe in
the rest of India. Anything can be engineered, anyone can shoot us – all it needs is an emotionally provoked person and one bullet,” the report says quoting an unnamed mainstream political leader.
The report further says that the Bollywood movie delegitimize the pain and sufferings of Kashmir’s majority community. “Civil society groups conveyed to us that the film—more ‘reelty’ than ‘reality’, as a leading academic put it—seeks to slander, vilify and delegitimize the Valley’s majority community’s own pain and suffering of three decades during which period tens of thousands of youths were killed. Every family lost a member and has a story to tell. All Kashmiris have suffered and all need justice,” it added.
“But The Kashmir Files, in a brutal and dehumanising manner, people averred, describes every Kashmir Muslim as barbaric, devious and jihadi to boot. This at a time when hotels in Kashmir are chock-a-block full of tourists from the rest of India,” the report adds.
The report said that “in strategic and comprehensive security terms, The Kashmir Files has the potential to have a damaging impact on national cohesion, unity and solidarity. In Jammu Kashmir, the impact has been direct and pressing”.
This time, only four members of the CCG Wajahat Habibullah, Sushobha Barve, Air Vice Marshal (Retd.) Kapil Kak and Bharat Bhushan undertook this visit from March 20 -25. Veteran politician Yashwant Sinha could not join because of pressing personal reasons, but he has endorsed the report. During the visit, the CCG members met several political leaders including former J&K chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Omar Abdullah of the National Conference, Peoples’ Conference chairman Sajjad Lone, Chief Spokesperson of the Peoples’ Alliance for Gupkar Declaration Mohammad Yusuf Tarigami of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) among others, civil society and business leaders, trade organisations, journalists, village panchayat heads and community leaders both in Srinagar and Jammu.
The visit took place after the Delimitation Commission had made its report public which led to considerable consternation amongst the political parties in the Union Territory, especially those in the Kashmir Valley.
The CCG visited both the Kashmir Valley and Jammu to interact with political leaders, civil society and business organisations as well as community leaders to passess their perception of the current social and political situation in the Union Territory. UNI