The sneering contempt and the smearing attempts of putting down the makers of 'The Kashmir Files' are just not working. Th sooner they accept the better it is for them. I personally know of several filmmakers out there who are in a state of denial about the success of The Kashmir Files.
They firmly believe that the BJP is “sponsoring” the success of KF’; that the government is buying off entire theatres and putting houseful boards at the front gate. This line of thought is so insane, absurd and comical it just shows how insecure KF has made them in their smug liberalism that comes from generations of delusional lordship over the entertainment industry. A handful of directors and stars think they own the taste buds of moviegoing audiences.
A producer actually told me recently, “Mujhe maloom hai unhein (the audience) kya pasand hi. Woh apni mehnat ki kamai gyan batorne ke liye nahin dete(they don’t pay their hard-earned money to be preached in movies). Unhe full entertainment chahiye (They want full entertainment).”
But my view is that the moviegoing audience now expects more than glass eyed heroes gleefully gunning down victims, or over-sized moronic heroes leaning out of speeding trains to woo heroines half their age. Think about this: why is KF such a roaring hit(and hit, it is, no one is fudging the figures so can those conspiracy theories). I will tell you why? The reason is that it is telling us something we have all never heard before in cinema. It is not sugar-coating the truth. It is not afraid to call a spade a spade.
In brief, KF is a no-bullshit deal. When you enter the theatre, you enter the chamber of truth. When you come out of the experience you are forever branded and burdened with a truth that you cannot disregard or delete from your memory. A movement has been started by Agnihotri’s film. The right wing doesn’t like it. The liberals who make a living out of spewing venom at practicing Hindus (I am not one of them) are doing their best to not only discredit the film by questioning its startling genocidal statistics, but also its very existence.
“Yeh film ussne banayi kyon? Mussalmanon ko zaleel karne ke liye?” a dear Muslim editor-friend asked me this morning with a heavy heart. To this I will have to say that the Kashmir Files is not an anti-Muslim film.” Why are Muslims taking it personally. It is a belated chronicle of a sad, sorry and shameful chapter of Indian history that needed to be exposed. It is the other side of what Anubhav Sinha attempted to show in Mulk. Sinha’s film had asked: what happens when the son of a god-fearing Muslim family is radicalized by militants?
The Kashmir Files asks the question from the other side: what happens to the family that the radicalized boy from Anubhav Sinha’s film is brainwashed into attacking? The self-appointed embodiment of Kashmiriayat Shri Omar Abdullah says about The Kashmir Files that what it depicts is “far from the truth”. He is right. The tragic traumatic truth is chronologically so far removed from its arrival on screen that its seems unreal. There is disbelief, suspicion, rejection. Aisa kaise ho sakta hai? How can an act of such savagery be hidden for so long? But it was. It did happen. Like it or not, Vivek Agnihotri’s film has opened up a debate that won’t die down with time.
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha.
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