The Kashmir Files: Breaking of Silence
It is said, History is a set of lies agreed upon. In the case of Kashmiri Pandits, it’s a story agreed by a set of players to be ignored upon. But, a deliberate attempt to deny a tragedy attains an even strong fervor to break this conspiracy of silence. The roaring response to the Kashmir files is the breaking of this silence.
While the film did a great job in showcasing the tragedy of the KP’s ethnic cleansing, its important to to understand the full story, as to what were the incidents that lead to this exodus and here I attempt to map the timeline and connect the characters, incidents shown in the film to the real characters and situations.
The genesis for the conflict in Kashmir lies in the Soviet-Afghan (1979 -1989) war. In order to defeat the Soviet union, the USA, Saudi Arabia, UK allied with Pakistan. Through CIA, USA provided arms and money to the Pakistan’s ISI which trained and indoctrinated the Afghan fighters with Wahhabi Islam (puritanical form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia) to wage Jihad on Communist Russia. After seeing this strategy working in Afghanistan, Pakistan ISI thought this was also the way to defeat India after losing to India in two previous wars in 1965 and 1971. This was the beginning of their doctrine to bleed India with a thousand cuts.
Under the leadership of Zia-ul-Haq, the above doctrine was introduced using covert terrorist infiltration in Punjab and Jammu&Kashmir. Through the 1980’s the cross border terror infiltration’s increased and also the separatist terror organization JKLF (Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front) was armed and trained for this operation. The JKLF even established their headquarters in Muzaffarabad, Pakistan. While these terrorists and Pakistan maintained that, this was freedom struggle & the fight was for “Azad” Kashmir, It is well understood that the “Azad Kashmir” is just the username while the Password was always establishing a Islamic rule and merge Kashmir with Pakistan. The terrorist shown in The Kashmir Files is inspired from two terrorists of JKLF i.e. Bitta Karate and Yasin Malik. Yasin Malik killed 4 unarmed IAF officers and the same scene is depicted in the movie. He even admitted to it in an interview with BBC, please see the below YT clip. The chilling interview scene was taken from the below Interview of Bitta Karate to news track.
While Pakistan was waging this proxy war with India, there were many missteps from the Indian Government at the center under Rajiv Gandhi’s regime. The first one being, dismissing the Government of Farooq Abdullah and installing Gul Shah as the CM, who turned rouge and openly aided the separatist movement and did not stop the first major riots of Kashmir in 1986 where Kashmiri Pandit’s were targeted and many Hindu temples were destroyed. Governor Jagmohan dismissed the Gul Shah Government after this and established President’s rule. Through the 80’s KP’s could see the changes in the conversations with their fellow Muslim’s, the kids of KP’s were told to be silent and not openly support India during cricket matches, they would be fearful of entering into any confrontation with Muslims but were of the opinion that this phase would be over and it was a temporary disturbance. The next nail in the coffin came when Rajiv Gandhi’s Government along with Farooq Abdullah’s NCP rigged the 1987 elections which further alienated many Kashmiri’s and fueled the support for the Separatist movement. The Muslim United Front which had leaders like Syed Ali Shah Geelani also contested this elections but lost due the rigging and then this party got morphed into a separatist Organization as Hurriyat Conference.
Things in Kashmir further deteriorated from here on and as the Soviet war was coming to close in Afghanistan, Pakistan used the militants who fought the Afghan war and further intensified the strife in Kashmir. In September 1989 Kashmir witnessed the first killing of a major KP leader Pandit Tika Lal Taploo. The intoxication of Islamic fundamentalism with full force in Kashmir mosques coincided with the General elections in India which saw the defeat of Congress and formation of the V.P. Singh Government at the center with the support of BJP from outside. On 2nd December 1989, V.P.Singh became the PM and Mufti Mohammad Sayeed became the Home Minister of India. The final nail in the coffin for KP’s was on 8th December 1990, when Mufti Mohammad Sayeed ’s daughter Rubaiye Sayeed was kidnapped by the JKLF terrorists and the V.P.Singh Government capitulated by releasing 5 terrorists in exchange for release of Rubaiye Sayeed. This meek surrender by a mighty nation in front of a Terror organization galvanized the JKLF and their supporters. Lakhs of Kashmiri Muslims came on to the streets demanding “Azadi” and KP’s were being targeted and many prominent members of their community like Neelkanth Ganjoo (Session courts Judge) was gunned down as shown in the movie. The tragedy for KP’s was that they were not only targeted by the terrorists but also their long time neighbors and friends actively aided and abetted the terrorists. By this time, even two papers carried out advertisements asking the KP’s to leave Kashmir or die. Desperate calls for help by Kp’s were ignored. On the fateful night of 19th Jan 1990, mosques across Kashmir started blaring slogans calling for Kp’s to die or convert. Please see this below video where Rahul Pandita, a Kashmiri Pandit and Author of the book “Our moon has blood clots” describes the horrific slogans they endured.
There are two genocides that were committed on KP’s. one is the physical one but the other was the mental, where in all these years the left liberals, media elites, successive Governments not only ignored their plight but even actively denied the ethnic cleansing. This active denial by the left liberal is portrayed by the Professor character — Radhika Menon in The Kashmir Files, which is inspired by two real life people — Arundhati Roy and Nivedita Menon. Nivedita Menon is a professor at JNU. People like them even facilitated and described terrorists like Yaseen Malik as an icon of peace while maintaining complete silence on the genocide of KP’s. This is the silence that has been broken by The Kashmir files.
