Uddhav Thackeray Shiv Sena’s Sanjay Raut, recently released from jail on bail, has opened his mouth against and waded into the controversy stirred after Israeli filmmaker and Palestinian sympathiser, Nadav Lapid, called the Kashmir Files movie by Vivek Agnihotri a “propaganda” movie.
On November 29, an Israeli filmmaker and International Film Festival of India (IFFI) jury chairman Nadav Lapid called filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri’s film ‘The Kashmir Files’ “vulgar” and “propaganda”. During his closing remarks at the festival, he said he was “shocked” and “disturbed” by the inclusion of the film in the competition section. The 53rd edition of IFFI was held in Goa between November 20 and November 28.
When asked about the comments made by Lapid, who was once accused of hating his own motherland, Israel, Sanjay Raut said that he agreed with the comments made by the IFFI jury chairman. Commenting on Kashmir Files, Sanjay Raut claimed that there were more Kashmiri Hindus who were murdered after the release of the movie Kashmir Files than ever before – essentially insinuating that more Hindus were killed in Kashmir after the movie was released than by Islamists in the 1990s.
It is pertinent to note that while Sanjay Raut has agreed with Lapid and blamed the movie for the killings of Hindus instead of Islamists, the Israeli Ambassador to India apologised for the remarks by Nadav Lapid and said, in an open letter, that he was ashamed of the comments made denying the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir.
“It’s true about #KashmirFiles if some jury member said it. There was propaganda by one party against another. A party Govt, wherever there was a BJP govt, was busy with publicity. But maximum number of killings in Kashmir occurred after this film. You must have seen, Kashmir Pandits, security personnel were killed. Where were these Kashmir Files people then? This anger was displayed by the orphaned children of Kashmiri Pandits also, where were they then? Nobody came forward then, nor were there plans for a Kashmir Files 2.0 – make that too”, Sanjay Raut said.
Interestingly, when asked about the word “vulgar” used for the film by the Lapid, Sanjay Raut said that he had not watched the movie.
The video of the comments made by Sanjay Raut was posted by Zee Marathi. The same video that was posted by ABP Manjha was soon made private, so people could not access it.
Sanjay Raut has been against the movie Kashmir Files by Vivek Agnihotri, which shows the genocide and exodus of Kashmiri Hindus by Islamists in the 1990s, since its very release. After the movie’s release, Raut had taken to Saamna, the Shiv Sena’s official mouthpiece, to allege that the movie was being promoted by BJP with an eye on the Gujarat and Rajasthan Assembly Elections. He had also branded Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the chief promoter of the movie.
In March 2022, a Saamna editorial had gone as far as to brand the Kashmir Files a “fake narrative” that was created by the BJP. The editorial piece in Saamana highlighted how Congress is unable to fight ‘fake narratives’ created by the BJP. It pointed out that Congress should employ innovative methods to counter the narratives the BJP allegedly creates through movies like The Kashmir Files and through the hijab issue.
For the first time in over three decades, an honest attempt in the form of ‘The Kashmir Files’ brought to the silver screen the trials and tribulations faced by the minority Kashmiri Pandits in the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir. This had, predictably, raised the hackles of the left-liberal intelligentsia, who has for years engaged in the pursuit of whitewashing Islamic terrorism and pinning the blame of the exodus on the policies implemented by New Delhi. After the release of the movie, several Left-Liberals blamed the movie for targeted killings of Hindus in the valley, saying that it had angered the Muslim population against the Hindus. What the Left-Liberals had said then and what Sanjay Raut seems to be saying now is that Hindus would only inspire more attacks against themselves if they dare to talk about their own persecution and therefore, it is the vocal Hindu who should be blamed when Islamists murder them out of sheer religious hatred.
The liberals, including politicians like Sanjay Raut, blamed Kashmir Files for the killings of Hindus because firstly, they need to discredit any attempt to create awareness about a Hindu genocide and secondly, because they are incapable of talking about the real cause of Hindus being murdered in the valley – Islamic terrorism. While the liberals seem to be incapable of talking about Islamic terrorism either because they align with the supremacist ideology against Hindus, a common enemy, politicians like Raut seem to be shielding the Islamists simply because their political survival depends on the Muslim vote bloc, with Hindus electorally abandoning parties like Uddhav Thackeray’s Shiv Sena faction and politicians like himself.
The 1990s in Kashmir saw an onslaught of Islamic barbarity against Hindus. Kashmir Files depicts several such brutal murders and rapes from the 1990s. For example, the movie depicts the brutality heaped upon Girija Tickoo when she was murdered. On the 4th of June 1990, Girija came to the valley to collect her salary and met her local Muslim colleague at her home. She was not aware that Jihadi terrorists were tracking her movement. Girija was kidnapped from her colleague’s home and was taken to an unknown location. Everyone, including her colleague and people in the locality, watched her being taken silently. After a few days of the kidnapping, her dead body was found on the roadside in horrible condition. The autopsy revealed she was brutally gang-raped and tortured. Girija was cut into two pieces using a mechanical saw while she was still alive, right from the middle of her body. Her family still awaits justice, just like the hundreds and thousands of other Kashmiri Pandits whose suffering has been deemed as ‘propaganda’ by the ‘liberal’ section of the media and society.
One of the most heart-wrenching scenes of the film directed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri is where a woman is force-fed rice soaked in her husband’s blood. This is the recreation of a brutal murder from 1990 when terrorists had come searching for engineer BK Ganjoo, who had hidden in a rice barrel. He would have been alive today had his location not been disclosed to the terrorists by his own neighbours. He was shot dead by the terrorists who fired multiple rounds at the rice barrel allowing the blood to drip out of the container. The rice soaked in the blood was then forcefully fed to Ganjoo’s wife.
With the movie depicting such cases of violence against Hindus, Sanjay Raut endorsing the views of Nadav Lapid and saying that more killings took place in Kashmir after the release of the movie, only means that blames Hindus for their persecution simply because they dared to narrate tales of their genocide.
