Aside from being an inconvenient truth about how the jihadists massacred Hindus in Kashmir, the Kashmir Files reminds us that Indian cinema is much more than the idiotic and nepotistic Bollywood garbage. Vivek Agnihotri showed us what the ‘ecosystem’ is in his previous film Buddha in a Traffic Jam. In the Kashmir Files we see the left-jihadi ecosystem at work and this time Kashmir is the case study, so to speak.

There are spoilers ahead so read with caution. The film starts with little kids playing cricket and a Hindu kid is seen cheering for Sachin Tendulkar as a cricket game is heard on the radio and soon jihadis much older than him beat him up as he’s cheered for a kafir – Sachin. This sets the film’s tone fast, and we know what will follow next. Agnihotri wastes no time in setting the stage for the film and dives us deep into the heart of the conflict in the first few minutes.

The exposition and rising action take the audience through the homes and hardships of Hindus. A Hindu man, one of the estimated 4,000 massacred is gunned down in front of his father and wife while hiding in a rice grain storage gin and the jihadi terrorist makes the widow eat the blood-soaked rice as her infant child cries. There is an eerie, deafening silence in the film hall at this point. Agnihotri makes no mistakes about who is responsible for whose genocide.

As the film progresses, we see conflict – conflict in the main character, Krishna Pandit who has grown up in a refugee camp set up for Kashmiri Pandits and was sent to school with great difficulty by his grandfather – Anupam Kher who had left the valley with zero belongings. Kher plays the role as if he has never had to rehearse it. Kher taped an informal chit-chat with his elderly mother about the situation back then and her responses are stoic and unrelenting. Kher’s character also portrays the same unrelenting attitude while being stuck in the refugee camp, continuously lobbying for the abrogation of Article 370 and writing thousands of letters and petitions to the government of India while going blind due to his deteriorating diabetic condition.

Krishna is now grown up and is enrolled at a pro-jihadi, anti-India university where the brilliant Pallavi Joshi plays the part of a jihadi sympathizer and Professor. She is seen to teach activism and is obsessed with the Kashmir cause which in her eyes is the freedom struggle of Kashmir. She is banking on Krishna Pandit to take up the student president role and thereby the cause of jihadists in the valley. As the movie goes on, we learn that Krishna struggles to know the truth about his parents’ death and also the truth about Kashmir, and in a sense, a truth about his own self. This conflict is the greater conflict that is seen in Indian society today. Much of the society, especially the elites and academics have almost-successfully brainwashed generations of Hindu and Indian youth to believe lies. Lies about what happened in Kashmir and lies created by fake narratives. It is fashionable to peddle narratives that the state or government of India is the enemy and that the oppressed are the muslim youth. On the contrary, all evidence, if one bothers to look, points at the atrocities which have and continue to be committed by Islamists on kafir Hindus.

The falling action is when Krishna takes his grandpa’s ashes to be scattered in his old house in Kashmir and has long conversations with those who had been part of the conflict in the 90s – a media personnel, a doctor, a police officer, and a government official. These guys too are going through their own conflicts wondering if they should tell Krishna the truth or not and they are all haunted by their pasts and what-if moments about if and how they could have prevented the Kashmiri Pandit genocide. Kher plays the role as if he has never had to rehearse it. Kher taped an informal chit-chat with his elderly mother about the situation back then and her responses are stoic and unrelenting. Kher’s character also portrays the same unrelenting attitude while being stuck in the refugee camp, continuously lobbying for the abrogation of Article 370 and writing thousands of letters and petitions to the government of India while going blind due to his deteriorating diabetic condition. This character echoes the sentiment of many Indians who have continuously fought for justice which was never quite delivered. Article 370 might have been scrapped, but so what? Have any Kashmiri Pandits been rehabilitated in the homes they had to flee? Has the state taken any measures to provide any semblance of justice to this so-called privileged community that has raised a generation and half of youth in refugee colonies in their own country? Agnihotri makes us think about the pending situation as the story moves from a flashback to the present, back and forth.

A source cited below shows Census of Jammu Kashmir 1941 and states that A survey conducted by Snedden and published in 2012 indicates “there are no estimates of Hindus or Sikhs left today in the region and the entire population is assumed to have either been expelled or killed”.

Sources: Census Jammy Kashmir, 2018; https://www.news18.com/news/opinion/opinion-the-kashmir-files-is-just-tip-of-iceberg-genocide-in-pojk-is-far-worse-4883102.html

This film shows how there is no way to reconcile or co-exist with jihadis. The “raliv, galiv ya chaliv” (convert, die, or leave) rings in the moviegoers’ ears long after one leaves the movie theater. The film also highlights the cluelessness of various governments, and especially of pro-Hindu governments who have been Hindu in name only. Kashmiri Pandits are still in refugee camps and violence against Hindus in other states across India has not subsided. In fact, the violence against Hindus has continued. Agnihotri leaves the audience to answer the “what happens next?” question. Social media has taken up various other offshoots such as the Bengal Files and the Mumbai Files where Hindu kafirs are openly butchered day after day. The Kashmir Files simply scratches the surface of the types of demon(s) Hindus are up against. The situation is much worse than it seems and kudos to Agnihotri and his team for serving as an alarm bell for the soporific masses. Azan is blasted from mosques five times a day in kafir-dominated Bharat. This is not just a call for prayer, but a constant reminder of Raliv, Galiva ya Chaliv.

Read the entire Opinion piece below for context and chronology for the table above.

Opinion: The Kashmir Files is Just Tip of Iceberg. Genocide in PoJK is Far Worse

The movie released in India called The Kashmir Files is a brave attempt to reveal the atrocities committed by the Pakistan-sponsored Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front and other Jihadi proxies and with the conformity of a significant number of local Islamists in the Valley of Kashmir.

The atrocities were executed against the indigenous Hindu minority living in Kashmir during the 1990s and led to the genocide and forced exodus of nearly 500,000 Kashmiri Hindu Pandits from the Valley.

However, what the movie reveals is like peeling the first layer of the onion. The genocide of the Kashmiri Hindus in the valley, in modern-day and age, did not begin in 1990. It goes way back to when the Pakistan army attacked the independent state of Jammu and Kashmir on October 22, 1947.

At the time of partition of India, Jammu and Kashmir territories occupied by Pakistan today (PoJK) had a thriving Hindu and Sikh population. The table below gives a breakdown of the Hindu and Sikh demography in several districts in PoJK in 1941.

A survey conducted by Snedden and published in 2012 mentions that “there are no estimates of Hindus or Sikhs left today in the region and the entire population is assumed to have either been expelled or killed”.

The report, widely quoted by research scholars, confirms that they were not able to find a single Hindu or Sikh in the entire region of PoJK. It is estimated that around 122,500 Hindus and Sikhs went missing from PoJK4 during and after the 1947 invasion of PoJK.

Let us not forget that thousands of Hindus and Sikhs had fled the communal riots in Punjab and had sought sanctuary in today’s PoJK towns bordering Punjab. This resulted in the number of Hindus and Sikhs in PoJK in 1947 to swell. For instance, Bhimber received at least 2000, Mirpur 15,000, Rajouri 5000, and Kotli an unaccounted number of Hindu and Sikh refugees.

The Hindu population in Bhimber tehsil was 35%. None have survived the 1947 Pakistan-sponsored Hindu-Sikh genocide. But the worst atrocity, to my knowledge, was committed in my hometown of Mirpur where 25,000 Hindus and Sikhs were rounded up, mutilated, shot, and beheaded and our women raped by ‘Allah O’ Akbar’ chanting Pakistan army and religious fanatic members of Lashkar.

To this day, November 25 is observed as Mirpur (Massacre) Day by the family members of those who were lucky to reach Jammu. On that ill-fated day in 1947, the Pakistan army and the mercenaries of Lashkar entered Mirpur setting on fire several parts of the city burning down shops and houses of ‘Kafirs’.

A couple of days before the fall of Mirpur, a convoy of 2500 Hindus and Sikhs had managed to make their escape along with the state troops of Jammu Kashmir and reach Jammu safely. Those who were left behind were rounded up and marched to Ali Baig where the invaders said that a Gurdwara had been converted into a refugee camp.

What was thought to be a march to safety soon turned into a death march as the Pakistan army and members of the mercenary Lashkar killed over 10,000 Hindus and Sikhs along the way. They abducted a further 5000 women most of who were sold in the bazaars of Rawalpindi, Jhelum, and Peshawar.

Out of 25,000 Hindu and Sikh captives, only 5000 made it to Ali Baig. However, the killing and rape of the captive men and women continued unabated by their prison guards. Only 1,600 were later rescued by the International Committee of Red Cross who brought the survivors to Rawalpindi and transferred them to Jammu.

By 1951, only 790 non-Muslims were alive out of a total population of 114,000 Hindus and Sikhs in PoJK. Today there are none. The Mirpur massacre death toll is put over 20,000. Many women committed suicide by consuming poison or by jumping over a cliff. Similarly, numerous men also committed suicide.

The genocide of Hindus was repeated in Rajouri, Baramulla, Muzaffarabad, Bhimber just to mention a few, and continues to this day in Kashmir. The movie ‘The Kashmir Files’ has just revealed the tip of the iceberg. The horror of the Hindu genocide is far more deep-rooted and horrific than it might seem on a silver screen.

Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza is an author and a human rights activist from Mirpur in PoJK. He currently lives in exile in the UK. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.