The real reason why the Left eco-system has launched a scurrilous attack on the movie Kashmir Files

The film Kashmir Files is under attack. It is being described by the leftist “liberal” ecosystem as a movie that peddles bigotry against Muslims. The makers of the movie are accused of painting hateful half-truths on the silver screen at the behest of the Hindutva brigade wanting to demonise Kashmiri Muslims. This lobby believes that a more honest endeavour would have encompassed a depiction of how ordinary Kashmiri Muslims were also forced to leave their homes due to Pakistan-sponsored terror and alleged violence sanctioned by the Indian state.

This is humbug. Countless movies have been made on the Gujarat riots. Each of these were hailed as an inquisition against Hindu majoritarianism and essential viewing if India’s plurality is to be saved. No one said that the movies were peddling half-truths because their makers didn’t also depict the Godhra Train burning (the trigger for the Gujarat riots) in which 59 Hindu “Kar Sewaks” perished at the hands of Islamist extremism.

So why are the “crusaders of tolerance” using a totally different yardstick to judge the film Kashmir Files, which exposes the malignancy of Islamist hate?

Well, that’s because the film shreds certain carefully cultivated myths associated with the “troubles in Kashmir.”

First, it ends the Kashmiri Muslim monopoly over “Insaniyat” (humanity) in the valley.

Ever since the problems in Kashmir began the Muslim Kashmiri has been cast exclusively as a victim. Pro-azadi rights activists, in India and abroad, have justified their advocacy in favour of the Muslim Kashmiri as a moral obligation. A necessity in the face of a brutal Indian state that forcefully condemns the Muslim Kashmiri to a life of servitude. The most often uttered lament by the so-called “Khan Market consensus” is that “Insaniyat” has been crushed under the jackboot of an Indian occupying force denying Muslim Kashmiris their right to self-determination.

Through a graphic re-telling, Kashmir Files pierces this lie. The movie establishes the existence of a deep-seated conspiracy against the Hindu minority community in the Valley. The Muslim Kashmiri who ought to have denounced this act of “Haivaniyat” (Satanism) is depicted as a silent accomplice.

The movie therefore begs a question. Can the valley’s Muslim-majority continue to project itself as a hapless victim? Can it continue to claim the moral high ground against the Indian state? Who continued to de-hyphenate the valley’s Muslim majority from blame for the exodus?

In an ideal world the Muslim majority should have been called out just like the Hindu majority has been in other parts of India. After all those who deny a minority (in this case Hindu Kashmiris) their individual rights cannot be regarded as the custodians of “Insaniyat.”

But that requires unusual moral rectitude. Which history, as depicted in the Kashmir Files, now tells us the lobby fighting for the Kashmiri cause has always lacked.

The next best available option available to this lobby was to deny that ethnic cleansing ever happened in the Kashmir valley. The scurrilous attacks on the bona fides of the film are a step in that direction. Isn’t it often said that if you can tell a lie once compellingly all the subsequent truths become questionable?

Secondly, Kashmir Files demolishes the principal motive for the “azadi” movement in Kashmir. It is often stressed that the “intifada” in Kashmir is a battle waged by the proponents of a distinct and syncretic culture (Kashmiriyat) in the quest for self-determination. The movie however shatters this claim.

Kashmir Files portrays the “intifada” for what it was – Pakistan-sponsored religious terrorism aimed at turning the valley into a caliphate that swears not by the polychromatic “Kashmiriyat” but a dour monochromatic wahabbism. A veritable second Pakistan.

Exposed as such, the fabled “intifada” now looks like a medieval crusade against a tolerant, plural, modern Indian state. The members of the left eco-system who have earned millions of dollars jetting into seminars organised to champion the so-called “just cause of Kashmiriyat” realise this. Exposed by the movie as being apologists for Islamist delusions all that the outed activists can now do is to attribute motives to the movie’s makers. And so, the project to besmirch the Kashmir Files gathers pace.