The Kashmir Files & Brushing Off of a Genocide under the Carpet
We were fortunate to get tickets to watch the movie The Kashmir Files last evening. One word review — STUNNED. In two words — STUNNED. SHOCKED. In three words — STUNNED. SHOCKED. SHAKEN. Four words review — STUNNED. SHOCKED. SHAKEN. SAD. And so it seemed was the entire crowd in the full capacity cinema hall in Portland Oregon. I couldn’t go to sleep last night and can’t stop thinking about it since I woke up this morning.
In India the movie is being termed as a “movement”. A very low budget film that has set the box office on fire. Of course there has also been enough criticism from sympathizers of the separatist forces in Kashmir who believe that this is just a propaganda film of the current Indian government. Some have actually gone to say that the movie is fictional which makes me feel sick to my stomach. Obviously some fictional characters and names had to be introduced for the sake of storytelling but they represent reality of the 1990s. The movie also highlights how today’s Kashmiri youth is being misled with misinformation and recruited to pick arms. I thought the writer has done an amazing job overall by weaving reality with the help of fictional characters. How else could it be told? Given the complexities and nuances of the 20th and 21st century Kashmir, the 14th century forced conversions, the 1,200 years of overall conflicts in the region, and a 5,000 year old History of Indian Civilization of which Kashmir has always been an integral part (it was after all the highest center of learning and academia in ancient India); the only other alternative was a pure documentary based on interviews alone.
Regardless of the political bickering and mud flinging, my point here is that it is high time the world comes to know the tragic story of the Kashmiri Pandit community. The story of the original residents of the state of Kashmir in India who over the centuries were relegated to a minority of just 2% by 1990 and today less than 10% of that 2% remain in their homeland!
I believe this movie should be watched by everyone for the same reason that movies based on the Holocaust need to be watched -- so that History does not repeat itself. The world needs to know about a genocide that was labelled as an exodus. The plight and the suffering of this peaceful community needs to be heard. As one character in the movie says, “The reason why you think we have not been talking about our story is because it is not to be told, it is to be heard”. They were helpless and voiceless refugees who were violently uprooted, penny less, shaken, terrorized and traumatized having lost their loved ones in the most brutal, unimaginable ways. Remember, it was not the era of social media. Forget the internet or mobile phones, India had only one television channel and that too was controlled and run by the government of the time which apparently was insensitive to the plight of these refugees is what I am left to conclude. Otherwise why were the refugees not resettled in a proper way? Why did they not receive even basic financial help to feed their families? Why were there only a handful of refugee camps set up? Was it because the Kashmiri Pandit community was such a tiny fraction of the vote bank that they were expendable? And therefore neglected? The government of the time never bothered to even keep proper records and official counts of deaths and survivors!
I call up on every Indian who has even an ounce of humanity to watch this movie simply to stand in solidarity with a community that has suffered horrific tragedies and has been neglected for no fault of theirs. To those calling this movie a political stunt, I want to say that the conspiracy to stay silent or mask the truth is a crime against humanity. The world needs to know the truth, it needs to know about the brutal savagery with which the peace loving Kashmiri Pandits were killed or driven out of their ancestral homes and from their centuries old homeland. And to deny their unthinkable suffering by calling it fiction is like denying the Holocaust!!
I was in college in 1990 when news first started trickling down that the Pandit community of Kashmir was fleeing their homes in the valley. I recall two Kashmiri female students arrived on campus in the middle of the year in 1992. The news always mentioned a rising “militant” insurgency in Kashmir. A “militant” is defined as one who engages in combat and fights aggressively, in a confrontational way, for a cause he believes in. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, some labor unions have a more militant approach to pay negotiations. And it also likens the term to militant animal-rights activists. Terrorism on the other hand is a calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear, in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological. A Terrorist is defined as one who uses violence and coercion methods to strike fear and terror in the hearts of innocent civilians.
When Kashmiri Pandits refused to either convert to Islam or flee their ancestral homes, “hit lists” were pasted on their front doors with their names. They were dragged out on the streets and shot in cold blood. Sometimes their bodies were hung on trees. Women were raped and sometimes even cut to pieces with a chain saw while still alive. Men dipped in acid tanks… (There are now several first-hand accounts of survivors who witnessed these horrendous crimes). Was this really a militant activity?? The answer is obvious. Then WHY was it called Militancy and not Terrorism? The origin of the word militant comes from military. The word terrorist comes from the word terror. The purpose of militants is to fight for what they believe in is right and that of terrorists is to create and spread fear. A militant fights for justice for his cause, a terrorist fights for control. Militants fight the military while terrorists fight civilians.
I recently read an op-ed written by a Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza who is an author and a human rights activist from Mirpur in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK), a part of Kashmir. He currently lives in exile in the UK. He writes that it is estimated that around 122,500 Hindus and Sikhs went missing from POK during and soon after the 1947 Pakistani invasion of Kashmir. He says that by 1951, only 790 non-Muslims were alive out of a total population of 114,000 Hindus and Sikhs in POK. Today there are none. The Mirpur massacre death toll alone is put over 20,000. (His home town). To this day, November 25th is observed as Mirpur (Massacre) Day by the family members of those who were lucky to reach the state of Jammu in India. According to him, the genocide of Hindus was repeated in Rajouri, Baramulla, Muzaffarabad, Bhimber just to mention a few, and continues to this day in Kashmir. He says, the movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ has just revealed the tip of the iceberg. He says that the horror of the Hindu genocide is far more deep-rooted and horrific than it might seem on a silver screen. (I have included a link below to his article with its chilling details).
Where were the women’s rights activists and human rights activists when thousands of non-Muslim women and girls in POK were raped and tossed in rivers and lakes to die? Where were these activists and the pseudo secularists when women in POK were sent to Pakistani cities to… I leave the rest to your imagination.
There was a time in my childhood when Kashmir was this heavenly place on earth which every Indian including myself dreamt of visiting some day! Romanticized in Bollywood movies it was the Indian Dream Vacation similar to the Hawaiian Dream Vacation in America. I recall how every time an uncle, aunt or a cousin went on a Kashmir trip we would gather around excitedly to listen to their stories and see their photographs. Years later my husband’s uncle went to Kashmir. He brought back heart breaking videos showing row after row of crumbled or burnt down houses that once belonged to the Pandit community. Those in good shapes were taken over by the separatist supporters. Fruit exports and tourism used to be the bread and butter of the people of Kashmir. Both had been destroyed.
Coming back to the movie, I personally think that the The Kashmir Files is purely telling the story of Terrorism and not at all targeting the Muslim religion in any way. What can the movie makers do if the perpetrators in real life were Muslims and the persecuted were Hindus? They can’t help it, can they? Also to me, the narrative did not come across as absolutely one sided either. Every point of those asking for a separate state has been made. Loud and clear. I have been hearing similar arguments since my college days. And lately the same are being repeated by the western media outlets in print and on television. It is time now that the voices of the Kashmiri Pandits are also heard as much.
The Jews were tortured in concentration camps and given slow torturous deaths. Everybody knows about it. The Kashmiri Pandits were met with extremely violent, gruesome and savage deaths. Then WHY does my children’s generation need to watch movies like The Kashmir Files to learn more about this very dark chapter in the history of humanity? WHY is their chapter not included in history books? At least in India? WHY has the media not demanded justice for the Kashmiri Pandit community over the last 32 years? Is it not the responsibility of the media to give voice to the voiceless? Then WHAT is stopping it?
A Genocide was labelled as a mass exodus and brushed under the carpet by the world’s media. The ruling Lutyens media in India at the time only gave a very watered down and filtered version of what was going on. (Link below on what is Lutyens). This is unforgivable. What is astounding is how the western media too has always ignored and overlooked the genocide in Kashmir. I consider myself to be politically left of center. But I object how the left leaning media has always found a way to justify the separatist movement in Kashmir and blame the Indian government while ignoring the genocide of the Kashmiri Pandits. I am saddened that notable news outlets like the New York Times and Washington Post in US are yet to even acknowledge this film and the BBC has termed it as a film made on the “exodus” of Kashmiri Pandit community. It has given more space to write about the film’s criticism rather than its content pertaining to the atrocities on the minority community; and in doing so, once again failed to acknowledge their genocide. Naturally, how can I not help wonder WHAT is or WHO is stopping them all?
As far as the Kashmiri Pandit community is concerned, how can their healing process even start without first acknowledging the horrors they have lived through or witnessed as children? In November of 2019, a US Congressional Commission’s hearing on human rights situation in Jammu and Kashmir was set up by supporters of the separatists. (Separatists who are clearly backed by Pakistani terror groups and military). The panel was obviously biased.
Testifying before the Commission, Sunanda Vashist, an Indian-American columnist, a Kashmiri-American, told lawmakers that her community witnessed ISIS level of brutality 30 years ago before the west was introduced to radical Islamic terror. Her grandfather stood holding knives and an axe to kill her and her mother were they to fall in terrorist hands, for had that happened, it would have been a far worse fate. On January 19th 1990 all mosques in Kashmir were blaring that they wanted Kashmir with Hindu women but without Hindu men. “Where were the advocates of human rights when my rights were taken away?” Vashisht asked the panelists who were present at the hearing. She insisted Kashmir has been an integral part of secular India. Her family however was given three choices -- convert, flee or die.
Scenes from the movie match her Congressional testimony. It is true that many names of the victims in the movie are fictional but the real names of those victims can be heard in her testimony. I have included a link to her testimony at the end of this blog.
Another Kashmiri Pandit refugee journalist came from India to give her testimony. Her name is Aarti Tikoo Singh. I have included a link to her complete statement as well. In an interview from the steps of the Congress, (also included below), she said she was disappointed in American democracy. She was heckled at and interrupted during her speech. And interestingly, there was no coverage on these testimonies in any major news outlets in the US. I happened to be in India at the time and read about this in Indian newspapers after which I did some online search for more details. I couldn’t find any coverage on the popular American news outlets and websites.
As I was writing this blog, I read an AP News headline this morning that said, “ US to declare Rohingya repression in Myanmar a genocide.” Any genocide is horrific and cannot be ignored. So this is a very welcome step. What is more, it took only five years to recognize this genocide! I have always sympathized with the Palestinians since my college days. I have done my best to help refugees from Syria and now helping those arriving from Afghanistan. I sympathize with any people who are displaced and terrorized by war or terrorism or for no fault of theirs. Today’s headline news makes my argument here even stronger. WHEN is the world going to recognize the genocide in Kashmir? The Kashmiri Pandits have awaited for over three decades already!!! When will this community get its justice?
Why are western nations and so called secularists in India itself more sympathetic towards a terrorist movement rather than the plight of a peace loving harmless minority in Kashmir? The Pandits never picked arms. The Pandits never attacked the majority community. Yet they bled to death. The separatists could have and should have taken a non-violent approach to make their demands. The Indian army in that case would have never been deployed on the streets of Kashmir. But as is mentioned in the movie as well as the Congressional Testimony statement of Miss Aarti Tikoo Singh, even the moderate Muslims in Kashmir were not spared.
I firmly believe no negotiations should be held with any terrorist backed organization or movement. In any part of the world. Ever. Terrorism in any form and against any people ought to be condemned. And fought. The ethnic cleansing of the Kashmiri Pandits from 1990–93 in the Indian state of Kashmir and 1947–1951 in the Pakistani occupied Kashmir is no different than the ethnic cleansing of 1994 in Rwanda. If Hotel Rwanda can win awards and accolades I dare the academy awards committee and Golden Globes, The Brit Awards and Film Festivals worldwide to consider The Kashmir Files as much worthy. Doing this will finally help bring out the untold horrors of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Kashmiri Pandits from under the carpet and draw the world’s attention to it.
We need to mention the Genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in History books just as the Holocaust. We should never be allowed to forget the horrors inflicted on a community that believed in a peaceful coexistence. Forgive but Never Forget. Otherwise History will keep repeating itself in other parts of the world. Therefore this is an obligation that rises above religion and ethnicity and nationalism. All of us at an individual level owe this to the future of our human race. And to humanity itself so that we can preserve our ability to love and have compassion.
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Cinematic trailer of the movie The Kashmir Files:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A179apttY5
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Genocide survivor Sunanda Vashist’s Testimony at the Congressional hearing on Kashmir - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYjER9oauaY
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Journalist Aarti Tikoo Singh’s Statement at US Congressional hearing:
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/Tic-Tac-Toe/my-speech-at-us-congressional-hearing/
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Journalist Aarti Singh Tikko’s press conference immediately after her US Congressional hearing in DC:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCnwQjPKmZQ
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Opinion: The Kashmir Files is Just Tip of Iceberg. Genocide in PoJK is Far Worse (By Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza) Please copy paste on your browser:
https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/opinion-the-kashmir-files-is-just-tip-of-iceberg-genocide-in-pojk-is-far-worse-4883102.html
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Here is an interview with the real Bitta Karate, the terrorist from the movie The Kashmir Files. He admits having received training in Pakistan and killing 20 Pandits. (Unfortunately the Hindi language interview has no subtitles) Please copy paste on your browser:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VsDhlCBCD7Q&pp=QAFIAQ%3D%3D
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The genesis of Kashmir issue (Palki Sharma)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n8ASKI_EC9E
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What is Lutyens Media? Please copy paste on your browser:
https://www.organiser.org/india-news/lutyens-media-how-they-set-the-agenda--5313.html
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