Mediaboss Marketing

I saw The Kashmir Files. The incidents that it vividly and truthfully portrayed were not new to me as I had read several books and heard first hand accounts of the victims and have written many articles on this site on Kashmir. But for most Indians and the world the truth has finally been revealed.

This is also about how democracy failed in the state that was captured by the worst elements of radical Islam with the help of Pakistan and worse the politicians who ruled the state happened to be in bed with both Pakistan and the Separatists who hated India.

The end result was that the original inhabitants of Jammu and Kashmirthat contributed most to Indias philosophy and language-Sanskrit- were ethnically cleansed from their land by Islamists. Just like the Jews who constantly got discriminated against time and again, the Kashmiri Hindus had seven Exoduses from the time of the Islamic invasion of India to the 1990s, where the state I was married in was destroyed and turned into a highly radicalised Islamist society. The only state in India where cinema was banned and where the mosques blared messages for Hindus to leave Kashmir but leave their women behind. It was even more direct with the posters and rallies that rang with the slogan Convert, Leave or Die. It was Indias Kristallnatch where Hindu shops and houses were looted and burnt; targeted killings were the order of the day and neighbours turned hostile. It almost seemed that doctors, teachers, bureaucrats, policemen were brainwashed against Hindus overnight. How could this have happened? But it did and for decades.

I am ashamed to say even Hindus and Muslims of India looked the other way. The media, the state and Central government were complicit as were the so called Liberals. The few voices that rose up were instantly quelled. The environment was such that nobody really cared as the Kashmiri Hindu vote bank was minuscule, while the Muslim vote bank in India, even after Partition was sizeable.

Jinnahs two nation theory that insisted that Muslims and Hindus could not live together and that is why India had to be partitioned into West and East Pakistan, did not work out as a change of populations. In spite of the cruel dismemberment of India, more Muslims stayed in India than went to Pakistan.

The frightening fact after viewing Kashmir Files, is that there are still apologists who come on mainstream media and try to sell the dubious legend that Kashmiris were not driven out by genocidal diktats but went off their own free will. They even try to blame the Governor of Kashmir Jagmohan who first under Rajiv Gandhi the PM, warned him in several letters that the separatist forces, radical Islamists and Pakistan were creating havoc in the valley, but according to sources, Rajiv said that Farooq Abdullah was a friend and he did not want to hear anything against him.

This at a time when Kashmiri Hindus were being discriminated at work places, made to give up their land and homes under the Draconian Roshini Act that was clearly for the Muslims of the state and against the Hindus.

This was the not the first time it had happened. Farooq Abdullahs father Sheik Abdullah, who Nehru made the virtual PM of Kashmir also had a land reform act where several thousand Hindus lost their land and livelihoods to Muslims.

It was politics, Pakistan and and the personal agenda of Muslim leaders that brought about the horrifying genocide of Kashmiri Hindus. But it is still possible to have a Reconciliation pact between the original inhabitants of Kashmir and the Muslims, as long as we dont allow the old political games and Pakistan to create an Islamist narrative.

Vivek Agnihotris film is a warning of what can happen when the state absolves its responsibility along with the Centre to protect its citizens. The Kashmir Files is now in theatres all over the world. I pray that policy makers, people of all faiths and the media see it, not with any biases but as justice and recognition to a people wronged. Just as the Holocaust is seen today.

Unless every citizen of India recognises this film for the truths it tells and reaches out to those who have been deprived of their homeland for 32 years, there can be no justice or reconciliation.

Views expressed above are the author's own.

END OF ARTICLE

Read more:
The Kashmir Files Where democracy failed - Times of India