Jammu: The Jammu Files — a story of another ethnic cleansing

Nadav Lapid, head of the jury at the International Film Festival of India, has castigated Vivek Agnihotri’s film The Kashmir Files as “vulgar” and “propaganda”. Several Indian film critics made exactly the same criticism when the film was released.Agnihotri’s response to Lapid was “terror supporters and genocide deniers can never silence me”. But Lapid did not ask him to be silent. The Israeli director — later backed by three fellow jurors from the US, France and Spain in a joint statement — merely said what many Indian film critics already had.These are not “terror supporters”, as he called them. Israel has suffered from Islamic terror for decades. Spain has suffered from Basque terrorism. In France Islamic terrorists killed reporters of the Charlie Hebdo magazine that published cartoons of the Prophet. As for genocide, Jews suffered most of all from this fate. To call a Jew like Lapid a genocide denier sounds somewhat comic. What would one call a Nazi? medium96055260Lapid has also clarified that his intention “was never to insult people or their relatives”. Neither is mine. The terrible fate of Kashmiri Pandits deserves telling. Agnihotri has done so with considerable directorial skill. He insists he has told true stories. The problem is not what he has portrayed but what he has not. In theatres where the film was screened, audiences broke into cries demanding vengeance against Muslims.The film’s simmering message is evident not just to urban Naxals, denizens of Lutyens’ Delhi, and film festival jurors, but even to Singapore. That country banned the film for “its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims” which had “the potential to cause enmity between different communities and disrupt social cohesion and religious harmony in our multiracial and multi-religious society.”Kashmiri Pandits suffered terribly, but can you call this ‘genocide’? An RTI reply says that since 1990, 89 Kashmiri Pandits and 1,635 people from other faiths were killed in Kashmir. Many have pointed out that these figures don’t consider killings that happened before 1990. Other reports taking into account deaths in 1989 say the total death tally for the Pandits is 219. medium96055683Every death is a tragedy. What Hitler did was genocide — murdering 6mn Jews and attempting to wipe out an entire race. Also, what would you call the death of 1,635 Kashmiris from other faiths?Since Agnihotri wants to tell untold stories, what about making a new film on the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Jammu in 1947? Everybody knows about Kashmir’s accession to India and the consequent war between India and Pakistan. But very few people know that the Jammu region including Poonch at the time was a Muslim majority area. Today it is a Hindu majority area.How did that transformation occur? In 1947, rampaging Hindu and Sikh mobs in Jammu killed or forced expulsions of lakhs of Muslims into what is now Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). Muslims in Poonch district of Jammu had sparked a revolt earlier in 1947. The maharaja cracked down by disarming the Muslims, who included many ex-soldiers.Remembering JammuBefore the partition, now Rajinder Bazar was known as Urdu Bazar. Mainly the people living in th… https://t.co/DwHYTSyXTw— Jammu Genocide (@JammuGenocide) 1632551051000When Partition riots began in neighbouring Punjab, the same communal hatred swept over Jammu too. The police sided with the Hindus, who were therefore able to drive out Muslims in most districts. The western-most part of Jammu became part of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, and thousands of Hindus were killed or driven out of there.Contemporary journalists’ reports suggest that the numbers killed and displaced exceeded one lakh. Academic Christopher Snedden’s book Kashmir: The Unwritten History cites estimates of 70,000 to 237,000 Muslims killed in Jammu. Scholar Ian Copland estimates deaths at 80,000. Historians Arjun Appadurai and Adrian Mack in India’s World give a hair-raising estimate of 200,000 killed and 500,000 displaced.Agnihotri accuses the mainstream media of a conspiracy of silence on Kashmiri Pandits. Is there not silence on the great Jammu slaughter of 1947? Since the filmmaker so dislikes silences, here is a golden opportunity to prove Lapid wrong. He could call his next film The Jammu Files. Cover both the Muslim and Hindu tragedies of the time. His formidable directorial skills might win him a film festival award. medium960549411. Why should Centre tell 'free media' what to run?2. No gloom and doom, we have solutions for climate change3. Medha Patkar was wrong on Narmada project. Will she apologise? medium96054987