The Kashmir Files is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language drama film written and directed by Vivek Agnihotri. The film presents a fictional storyline centred around the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from the Kashmir Valley in Indian-administered Kashmir. It depicts the exodus and the events leading up to it as a genocide, a framing considered inaccurate by scholars. The film claims that such facts were suppressed by a conspiracy of silence.
The Kashmir Files stars Mithun Chakraborty, Anupam Kher, Darshan Kumar, and Pallavi Joshi. 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. It was a commercial success.
The Kashmir Files received mixed reviews upon release, with praise directed to its cinematography and the performances of the ensemble cast. However its storyline attracted criticism for attempting to recast established history and propagating Islamophobia. Supporters have praised the film for showing what they say is an overlooked aspect of Kashmir's history. Made on a production budget of approximately ₹15 crore (US$1.6 million) to ₹25 crore (US$2.6 million) the film grossed ₹340.92 crore (US$35 million) worldwide, becoming the third highest-grossing Hindi film of 2022.
Plot
The plot frequently switches between the contemporary period set in the year 2020 and flashbacks to 1989–1990 throughout the film.
Circa 1989–1990
In 1989–90 Kashmir, Islamic militants storm and banish Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir valley using the slogans Raliv, Chaliv ya Galiv ("convert (to Islam), leave or die") and Al-Safa Batte Dafa ("with god's grace whole Kashmiri Pandit community will leave valley"). Pushkar Nath Pandit, a teacher, fears for the safety of his son Karan, who has been accused by the militants of being an Indian spy. Pushkar requests his friend Brahma Dutt, a civil servant, for Karan's protection. Brahma travels with Pushkar to Kashmir and witnesses the violence against Kashmiri Pandits. He takes up the issue with the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), who suspends Brahma.
Militant commander Farooq Malik Bitta, also a former student of Pushkar, breaches Pushkar Nath's house. Karan hides in a rice container but is found and shot by Bitta. Pushkar and his daughter-in-law Sharda plead for their lives. Bitta compels Sharda to eat rice soaked in Karan's blood in exchange for their lives. After Bitta and his gang leave the house, Pushkar begs his doctor friend Mahesh Kumar to bring an ambulance and save Karan's life. However, the hospital gets taken over by militants, who forbid the hospital staff from treating non-Muslims. Subsequently, Karan succumbs to injuries from the gunshots.
To ensure their safety, Pushkar and his family are taken by their journalist friend Vishnu Ram to Kaul, a Hindu poet who maintains a cordial relationship with Muslims. Kaul takes in many Pandits into his home but a group of militants arrives to pick Kaul and his son up under the guise of offering protection. The rest of the Pandits leave the place but are later shocked to find corpses of Kaul and his son hanging from trees.
The refugee Pandits from the Kashmir valley settle in Jammu and live on meagre ration and in poor conditions. Brahma is appointed as an advisor to the new Governor of J&K. At his request, the Home Minister visits the Jammu camps where Pushkar demands the removal of Article 370 and the resettlement of Kashmiri Pandits. Brahma manages to get Sharda a government job in Nadimarg in Kashmir, and the family moves there.
One day, a group of militants headed by Bitta dress up as members of the Indian Army and arrive at Nadimarg. They start rounding up the Pandits living there. Sharda resists when the militants get hold of her elder son Shiva. Angry Farooq strips her and saws her body in half. He lines up Shiva and the remaining Pandits and shoots them into a mass grave. Pushkar is spared to spread the word about what happened.
In the present day, Sharda's younger son Krishna is brought up by Pushkar. He believes that his parents had died in an accident. A student of ANU, Krishna is under the influence of professor Radhika Menon who is a supporter of Kashmiri separatism. Pushkar's friends Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh, and police officer Hari Narain, who had served in Kashmir when Karan was killed, recall the events of Kashmir from their memory that Brahma calls a "genocide".
Krishna contests the ANU's student election. Following the advice of professor Radhika Menon, he holds the Government of India responsible for the issue of Kashmir, much to the anger of Pushkar. Later, when Pushkar dies, Krishna travels to his ancestral home in Kashmir to scatter the ashes per Pushkar's last wish. Menon asks Krishna to record some footage in Kashmir to expose the government's supposed atrocities. With the help of one of Menon's contacts, Krishna meets Bitta and accuses him of being responsible for the situation of the Pandits. But Bitta declares himself to be a new-age Gandhi who is leading a non-violent democratic movement. Bitta claims that it was the Indian Army, who killed Krishna's mother and brother. When Krishna questions Brahma about this claim, Brahma hands him files of newspaper cuttings (collected by Pushkar), reporting that militants, disguised as Indian Army soldiers, had killed them.
Krishna returns to Delhi and gives his scheduled speech for the university presidential elections to a roaring crowd at the ANU campus. He elaborates on the history of Kashmir and the plight of his family and other Kashmiri Hindu victims that he had discovered from his visit. This shocks his mentor professor Menon and her other students, and Krishna is initially met with resistance and ridicule at the meeting. Some students eventually welcome and applaud Krishna's speech.
Production
On 14 August 2019, Agnihotri announced the film with its first look poster with an intent to release it on 15 August 2020, coinciding with India's Independence Day. The subject of the film was the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits that took place between the late 80s and early 90s. Agnihotri touted the film to be the second instalment of his trilogy of "untold stories of independent India", which includes the films The Tashkent Files (2019) and an upcoming The Delhi Files. As a part of the production, Agnihotri claimed to have interviewed more than 700 emigrants from the exodus and recorded their stories over a period of two years. Actor Anupam Kher joined the cast as the lead actor of the film in December 2019.
The first schedule of the film, supposed to take place in March 2020, was called off due the COVID-19 pandemic in India, and was started later the same year in December in Mussoorie. The entire film was shot in 30 days, largely in Mussoorie and Dehradun, along with a week-long shooting schedule in Kashmir, including at Dal Lake. Yograj Singh was removed before the production started in December 2020 for his speeches at the 2020–2021 Indian farmers' protest, and Puneet Issar was brought in as the replacement. A line producer, Sarahna died during the production by suicide. The production was wrapped up by 16 January 2021.
Produced by Tej Narayan Agarwal, Abhishek Agarwal, Pallavi Joshi and Vivek Agnihotri under the banners of Zee Studios, IAmBuddha and Abhishek Agarwal Arts, the film was made on a budget of approximately ₹15 crore (US$1.6 million) to ₹25 crore (US$2.6 million).
Soundtrack
The music of the film is composed by Rohit Sharma and Swapnil Bandodkar.
Theatrical release
The Kashmir Files was set to release theatrically worldwide on 26 January 2022, coinciding with India's Republic Day, but was postponed due to the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19. It was initially released in over 630 screens in India on 11 March 2022 and was later increased to 4,000 screens. The film was re-released on 19 January 2023.
Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 40% of 5 critics' reviews are positive.
Jagadish Angadi of Deccan Herald rated the film 4 out of 5 stars and was effusive in his praise — Agnihotri's use of non-linear narratives and strong dialogues, enviable background research, and strong individual performances produced an "intense watch". Aditi Sharma for Zee News rated the film 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote "Lending a voice to broken souls" and that the film was based on actual incidents narrated from a Kashmiri Pandit point of view; showcasing the plight of Kashmiri Pandits with all its grime and gore. Stutee Ghosh, reviewing for The Quint, rated the film 3.5 out of 5 and found the film to have made a compelling case for Kashmiri pandits and their "hitherto unaddressed wounds" but wished for more nuance; the cinematography (especially the colour palette), Anupam Kher's acting, and realist depictions were praised in particular.
Avinash Lohana of Pinkvilla rated the film 3 out of 5 stars, praising the cast performances—particularly that of Kher—and the behind-the-scenes research, but criticised the lack of balance. Rohit Bhatnagar of The Free Press Journal found the screenplay and the individual performances to be sloppy, thus failing to make any mark; however, he admired the effort that went behind the film and rated it 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Shubhra Gupta reviewing for The Indian Express rated the film 1.5 out of 5 stars, criticising the film for being uninterested in nuance and describing the film as propaganda aligned with the ruling party, that aimed to stoke the "deep-seated anger" of Pandits. However, she also stated that the film did tap "into the grief of the displaced Pandits," and commended Kher's performance.Shilajit Mitra of The New Indian Express panned the film with a rating of 1 out of 5 stars and castigated Agnihotri for exploiting the suffering of Kashmiri Pandits by doing away with all nuance in service of a "communal agenda". Suparna Sharma, reviewing for Rolling Stone India, panned the film with a rating of 1 out of 5 stars: "neither cinematic nor historical", Agnihotri simply attempted to weaponize the tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits in pandering to the current sociopolitical climate. Uninterested in nuance and context, dripping with gore, and pushing an overt pro-right agenda, it was not even well made propaganda.
Rahul Desai reviewing for Film Companion, found the work to be a "fantasy-revisionist" rant lacking in clarity, craft, and sense where every Muslim was a Nazi and every Hindu, a Jew; with an unconvincing screenplay and weak characters, it was propaganda that strove only to tune in with the Hindu nationalist mood of the nation rather than offer any genuine empathy to the displaced victims. Tanul Thakur, reviewing for The Wire, was scathing: the film—"monotonous", "inert", and featuring an "objectively poor screenplay"—was set up in an alternate reality and felt like iterations of collected WhatsApp screeds in service of a Hindu majoritarian state and especially Narendra Modi; Agnihotri lured the audience with facts only to distort and communalize them, and target those who are critical of the incumbent political government in India. Asim Ali, reviewing for Newslaundry, was also critical of the film, finding it to have exploited the sufferings of Kashmiri Pandits in peddling a Hindu Nationalist worldview where no Muslim in Kashmir had any aspiration except persecuting Hindus.
Writing for The Outlook Magazine, Ashutosh Bharadwaj noted the film to be deeply insensitive to Muslim claims and memories concerning the exodus; it bore evidence of India's refashioning into a Hindu majoritarian state. Anuj Kumar reviewing for The Hindu described the film as being composed of "some facts, some half-truths, and plenty of distortions" with brutally intense visualisations and compelling performances, aimed at inciting hatred against Muslims.
Debasish Roy Chowdhury, co-author of To Kill a Democracy: India's Passage to Despotism, found the film to be a prominent marker of India's "descent into darkness"; rather than offering genuine closure for the Pandits, Agnihotri inflamed hatred against Muslims, secular parties, and liberal media in pursuance of a Hindu Supremacist cause. Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit academic, reviewing for The News Minute, held the work to be a communal and masculinist propaganda that collapsed the complex politics of Kashmir into a one-sided moral tale palatable to the current Hindutva dispensation in India; Agnihotri appropriated Pandit sufferings to portray all Kashmiri Muslims as barbarian invaders, undeserving of any solidarity. Alpana Kishore, one of the few journalists who had covered Kashmir in the 1990s (as part of Newstrack), found the film to be a set of factual episodes but strung together in a contextless fashion; Agnihotri did not bother to even portray the other side of the divide, and was brazen in pushing a pro-right agenda.
Reception by Kashmiri Pandits
Reception among Pandits has been mixed with some regarding the film to be a cathartic experience while others have been critical. Journalist Rahul Pandita, who fled from Srinagar during the exodus, said that the experience for Pandits watching the film was like "an emotional catharsis." A Kashmiri Hindu immigrant to New Zealand told Stuff that The Kashmir Files was a good representation of the exodus, requesting that Muslims watch it to understand the other side of the conflict. President of the Kashmiri Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS) Sanjay Tickoo criticized the film for its misrepresentations and added that this film is making Kashmiri Pandits feel unsafe in the Kashmir Valley.
Box office
The Kashmir Files opened to box office with a slow start and competed with Prabhas-starrer Radhe Shyam, which was released on the same day, but has quickly gained higher share of collections within days. The film recorded an earnings of ₹3.55 crore (US$370,000), ₹8.5 crore (US$880,000) and ₹15.1 crore (US$1.6 million) in India respectively on its first three days, taking its opening weekend collection to ₹27.15 crore (US$2.8 million) and an estimated ₹5 crore (US$520,000) in India and overseas, respectively. After the response from the first two days, the screens were increased to 2,000 on 13 March 2022. With a collections growth of 323% on its first Monday compared to the release day, the film broke the record for the highest increase in collections for an Indian film on its first Monday. At the end of the first week, the film earned ₹97.3 crore (US$10 million) at the Indian box office.
After the response from the first week, the screens were increased to 4,000 by 18 March. In an interview with The New Yorker in June 2022, Agnihotri stated that ZEE Studios did not have faith in the film and thus the production studio had only released the film in 400 screens; and that the increase in the shows was in response to the audience demand. However, ZEE Studios clarified that the gradual increase in the number of screens was a "pre-decided business strategy" which was also agreed upon by the director.
The film emerged as a major box-office success within its first two days of release. It received massive push in the form of government support, national news coverage, social media forwards and word of mouth and rode on them following its opening weekend. By the end of April, according to Bollywood Hungama's estimates, the film grossed ₹297.53 crore (US$31 million) in India and ₹43.39 crore (US$4.5 million) overseas, for a worldwide gross collection of ₹340.92 crore (US$35 million), making it the third highest grossing Hindi film of 2022. It was the first film to cross the figure of ₹250 crore (US$26 million) in the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic in India.
The film became a major competitor for the Akshay Kumar-starrer Bachchhan Paandey, which was released one week after The Kashmir Files, and eroded its box office collections.
