The Kashmir Files

For the 2023 TV series, see The Kashmir Files: Unreported.

The Kashmir Files
The Kashmir Files
Theatrical release poster
Directed byVivek Agnihotri
Written by
  • Vivek Agnihotri
  • Saurabh M. Pandey
Produced by
Starring
CinematographyUdaysingh Mohite
Edited byShankh Rajadhyaksha
Music byRohit Sharma
Production
companies
Distributed byZee Studios
Release date
  • 11 March 2022 (2022-03-11)
Running time
170 minutes[2]
CountryIndia
LanguageHindi
Budget₹15−25 crore[3][4]
Box officeest. ₹340.92 crore[5]

The Kashmir Files is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language drama film[2] written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri.[6] The film presents a fictional storyline[1][7] centred around the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from Indian-administered Kashmir.[8][9] It depicts the exodus and the events leading up to it[10] as a genocide,[11][12][13][14] a framing considered inaccurate by scholars.[15][16] The film claims that such facts were suppressed by a conspiracy of silence.[17][18]

The Kashmir Files stars Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumar, and Pallavi Joshi.[19] The plot follows a Kashmiri Hindu college student, raised by his exiled grandfather and shielded from the knowledge of the circumstances of the death of his parents. After his grandfather's death, the student, who had come to believe at college that the exodus was benign, becomes driven to uncover the facts of his family's deaths. The plot alternates between the student's quest in the present time, 2020, and his family's travails of thirty years before. The film was released in theatres on 11 March 2022.[6] It has been a commercial success.[1][20]

The Kashmir Files received mixed reviews upon release,[1] with praise directed to its cinematography and the performances of the ensemble cast;[24] however its storyline attracted criticism for attempting to recast established history[11][12][25] and propagating Islamophobia.[7][12][25][26][27] Supporters have praised the film for showing what they say is an overlooked aspect of Kashmir's history.[7][25][28][29] Made on a production budget of approximately ₹15 crore (US$1.8 million)[30] to ₹25 crore (US$3.0 million)[4] the film grossed ₹340.92 crore (US$41 million) worldwide,[31] becoming the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2022.

At the 69th National Film Awards, The Kashmir Files won 2 awards – Best Feature Film on National Integration and Best Supporting Actress (Joshi).[32] At the 68th Filmfare Awards, the film received 7 nominations, including Best Film, Best Director (Agnihotri), Best Actor (Kher) and Best Supporting Actor (Kumar and Chakraborty).[33]

  1. ^ a b c d Sebastian, Meryl (15 March 2022). "Kashmir Files Vivek Agnihotri's film exposes India's new fault lines". BBC News. Archived from the original on 27 April 2022. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
  2. ^ a b "The Kashmir Files". British Board of Film Classification. 9 March 2022. Archived from the original on 9 March 2022. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  3. ^ "Vivek Agnihotri's the Kashmir Files becomes first Hindi movie to cross Rs 250 crore post-pandemic". Archived from the original on 30 May 2022. Retrieved 30 May 2022.
  4. ^ a b Saeed, Umaima (21 March 2022). "The Kashmir Files: Here's how many crores the movie made in 10 days". GQ India. Archived from the original on 30 May 2022. Retrieved 31 May 2022.
  5. ^ Cite error: The named reference bo was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  6. ^ a b Seta, Fenil (8 February 2022). "Vivek Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files to Clash with Prabhas-starrer Radhe Shyam on March 11". Bollywood Hungama. Archived from the original on 18 March 2022. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  7. ^ a b c "Kashmir Files, hailed by Modi, triggers anti-Muslim hate speech". Al Jazeera. 17 March 2022. Archived from the original on 22 March 2022. Retrieved 23 March 2022.
  8. ^ Akhtar, Rais; Kirk, William, Jammu and Kashmir, State, India, Encyclopaedia Britannica, archived from the original on 20 August 2019, retrieved 7 August 2019, Jammu and Kashmir, state of India, located in the northern part of the Indian subcontinent in the vicinity of the Karakoram and westernmost Himalayan mountain ranges. The state is part of the larger region of Kashmir, which has been the subject of dispute between India, Pakistan, and China since the partition of the subcontinent in 1947.
  9. ^ Jan·Osmaczyk, Edmund (2003), Mango, Anthony (ed.), Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements: G to M, Taylor & Francis, p. 1191, ISBN 978-0-415-93922-5, archived from the original on 17 January 2023, retrieved 2 April 2022, Jammu and Kashmir: Territory in northwestern India, subject to a dispute between India and Pakistan. It has borders with Pakistan and China.
  10. ^ The exodus followed the rise of violence in an insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir
  11. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference Shilajit Mitra was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  12. ^ a b c Kumar, Anuj (14 March 2022), "'The Kashmir Files' movie review: A disturbing take which grips and gripes in turns", The Hindu, archived from the original on 14 March 2022, retrieved 14 March 2022
  13. ^ Cite error: The named reference Asim Ali was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  14. ^ Cite error: The named reference Ipsita Chakravarty was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  15. ^ *Evans, Alexander (1 March 2002). "A departure from history: Kashmiri Pandits, 1990-2001". Contemporary South Asia. 11 (1): 19–37. doi:10.1080/0958493022000000341. ISSN 0958-4935. S2CID 145573161. My own interviews with a number of KPs in Jammu, many of whom hold Pakistan responsible, suggest suspicions of ethnic cleansing or even genocide are wide of the mark. The two conspiracy theories already described are not evidence based. As Sumantra Bose observes, those Rashtriya Swayam Sevak publications' claims that large numbers of Hindu shrines were destroyed and Pandits murdered are largely false, to the extent that many of the shrines remain untouched and many of the casualties remain unsubstantiated.
    • Bose, Sumantra (2021), Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-century conflict, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, p. 122, ISBN 978-0-300-25687-1, In 1991 the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the movement's parent organisation, published a book titled Genocide of Hindus in Kashmir. (Footnote 38: Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Genocide of Hindus in Kashmir (Delhi: Suruchi Prakashan, 1991)) It claimed among many other things that at least forty Hindu temples in the Kashmir Valley had been desecrated and destroyed by Muslim militants. In February 1993 journalists from India's leading newsmagazine sallied forth from Delhi to the Valley, armed with a list of twenty-three demolished temples supplied by the national headquarters of the BJP, the movement's political party. They found that twenty-one of the twenty-three temples were intact. They reported that 'even in villages where only one or two Pandit families are left, the temples are safe ... even in villages full of militants. The Pandit families have become custodians of the temples, encouraged by their Muslim neighbours to regularly offer prayers.' Two temples had sustained minor damage during unrest after a huge, organised Hindu nationalist mob razed a sixteenth-century mosque in the north Indian town of Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. (Footnote 39: India Today, 28 February 1993, pp.22–25)
    • Bhatia, Mohita (2020), Rethinking Conflict at the Margins: Dalits and Borderland Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir, Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 123–124, ISBN 978-1-108-83602-9, The dominant politics of Jammu representing 'Hindus' as a homogeneous block includes Pandits in the wider 'Hindu' category. It often uses extremely aggressive terms such as 'genocide' or 'ethnic cleansing' to explain their migration and places them in opposition to Kashmiri Muslims. The BJP has appropriated the miseries of Pandits to expand their 'Hindu' constituency and projects them as victims who have been driven out from their homeland by militants and Kashmiri Muslims.
    • Rai, Mridu (2021), "Narratives from exile: Kashmiri Pandits and their construction of the past", in Bose, Sugata; Jalal, Ayesha (eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia, Routledge Contemporary South Asia Series, Routledge, pp. 91–115, 106, ISBN 9781000318845, archived from the original on 14 March 2023, retrieved 4 April 2022, Among those who stayed on is Sanjay Tickoo who heads the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (Committee for the Kashmiri Pandits' Struggle). He had experienced the same threats as the Pandits who left. Yet, though admitting 'intimidation and violence' directed at Pandits and four massacres since 1990, he rejects as 'propaganda' stories of genocide or mass murder that Pandit organizations outside the Valley have circulated.
  16. ^ Rai, Mridu (1 August 2011). "Kashmir: The Pandit question" (Interview). Interviewed by Azad Essa. Al Jazeera. Archived from the original on 11 May 2022. Retrieved 29 June 2022. [T]here is agreement at least that the number has to be a substantial proportion of the total population of the group. And here the numbers of Kashmiri Pandit killings do not technically support the use of the label of genocide. There are [also] several other factors, beyond the question of numbers, according to which the Pandits cannot be considered to be the victims of genocide.
    For one, they were not the sole victims of targeted killings in Kashmir since 1990.
    Kashmiri Muslims who dissented from the ideologies of various militant groups have also been systematically liquidated in the way in which Pandits had been. This does not conform to the accepted definition of genocide that is waged against a group defined collectively as the 'other', since Pandit claims of genocide rests on their being targeted for their religious identity.
    Secondly, genocide is preceded and accompanied by the dehumanisation of its victims. There is no evidence of such denial of humanity of the Pandits having taken place among the Kashmiri Muslims accused of perpetrating their mass destruction.
    And finally genocides are extremely well-organised acts involving the training of armed groups, indoctrinated fully into an ideological inflexibility so severe that it can override wider social opinion and consensus.
    There is no evidence of this having been the case in the valley.
  17. ^ Roy Chowdhury, Debasish (30 March 2022). "Column: How One Film Marks India's Descent Into Darkness". TIME. Archived from the original on 3 April 2022. Retrieved 3 April 2022. The "truth" that the film claims to reveal is that there was a "genocide" of Pandits in the 1990s, hidden by a callous ruling establishment and a servile media. Pandits were killed in their thousands, it claims, and not in the low hundreds as the government and Kashmiri Pandit organizations have stated.
  18. ^ Kumar, Anuj (14 March 2022), "'The Kashmir Files' movie review: A disturbing take which grips and gripes in turns", The Hindu, archived from the original on 14 March 2022, retrieved 14 March 2022, The film is based on the testimonies of the people scarred for generations by the insurgency in the State, and presents the tragic exodus as a full-scale genocide, akin to the Holocaust, that was deliberately kept away from the rest of India by the media, the 'intellectual' lobby and the government of the day because of their vested interests.
  19. ^ Negi, Shrishti (9 March 2022). "The Kashmir Files Producer Pallavi Joshi: Am I Making the Film for Hindu Rashtra? I'm Just Telling a Story". News18. Archived from the original on 11 March 2022. Retrieved 11 March 2022.
  20. ^ Poddar, Umang (17 March 2022). "How the BJP is promoting 'The Kashmir Files': Modi's endorsement, tax breaks, leave from work". Scroll.in. Archived from the original on 18 March 2022. Retrieved 18 March 2022.
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference Quint review was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ Cite error: The named reference TKFDH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  23. ^ Cite error: The named reference pinkvilla2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  24. ^ [21][22][23]
  25. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference BBC News2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  26. ^ Cite error: The named reference Shubhra Gupta was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  27. ^ "'The Kashmir Files' is Hindutva's latest anti-Muslim weapon". The Siasat Daily. 14 March 2022. Archived from the original on 15 March 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  28. ^ "India's Hindu hardliners jump on Kashmir blockbuster". France 24. AFP. 8 April 2022. Archived from the original on 10 April 2022. Retrieved 10 April 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  29. ^ "The Kashmir Files: Videos of Anti-Muslim Hate, Slogans in Theatres Go Viral". TheQuint. 17 March 2022. Archived from the original on 17 March 2022. Retrieved 24 March 2022.
  30. ^ Singh, Suhani (15 March 2022). "Why the Kashmir files is a blockbuster". India Today. Archived from the original on 16 March 2022. Retrieved 16 March 2022.
  31. ^ "The Kashmir Files Box Office". Bollywood Hungama. 11 March 2022. Archived from the original on 4 May 2022. Retrieved 24 April 2022.
  32. ^ "69th National Film Awards 2023 complete winners list: Rocketry, Alia Bhatt, Kriti Sanon, Allu Arjun, RRR, Gangubai Kathiawadi win big". 24 August 2023.
  33. ^ "Nominations for 68th Filmfare Awards 2023". filmfare.com. Retrieved 24 August 2023.