Acclaimed director Ashvin Kumar’s new film, “Inshallah, Kashmir : Living Terror” is a new milestone in not only bringing forth the many untold stories of the Kashmir Conflict, but also in the way they have been told, with honesty, bereft of rhetoric. Nilim Dutta and Shehla Rashid reviewed the film on the eve of its release to the public on YouTube at midnight of 26 January, 2012, India’s 63rd Republic Day in order to by pass the Censor Board. The review was published in print in the 25 January, 2012 edition of the Financial World and reproduced here with permission.
They make a desolation and call it peace – Agha Sahid Ali.
The narration of the Kashmir Conflict is often ‘Rashomonic’. There are always several versions of the ‘truth’ to almost any incident that has had a critical bearing on the course of events that has either exacerbated the conflict or even abated it. To the world outside Kashmir, the voices of pain and suffering of the common Kashmiris, whether Pandits or Muslims, are rarely heard in their heartrending authenticity, lost in the hegemonic narratives that nation states create, sustain and perpetuate to legitimize their claim on Kashmir. Ashvin Kumar’s documentary feature ‘Inshallah Kashmir: Living Terror’ comes as a refreshing change, bringing to our attention the contentious and competing narratives of the conflict as lived by its many victims, recounted with sincerity, in a resigned, matter-of-fact manner, stripped of any rhetoric.
Kashmir has been under a siege for more than two decades now, bunkers, barbed wires, concertina protected check posts are an all too common daily sights.
The film begins with three poignant successive snapshots:
Acclaimed Kashmiri cartoonist and artist Malik Sajad almost laconically stating how perhaps a Kashmiri ‘tortured’ outside Kashmir would still feel at home because ‘home’ itself is akin to a torture chamber.
The melancholic melody of a Kashmiri folk song where the singer is mourning the loss of a loved one –
“tse kamyu soni myaane brahm dith nyunakhov”
(Who has stolen you away from me?)
“tse kyoho zi gayi myeni dreii”
(Why have you become indifferent towards me?)
This being sung in the background of words quoted from acclaimed Kashmiri Pandit writer Nitasha Kaul:
Burn your Bollywood movies.
Come to Kashmir.
Walk through our cities.
The bridges. The ruins.
The graves.
Look at what we eat. Our buildings.
Our shrines. Our architecture. Our speech.
Our history.
Speak to us. How we live.
Ashvin Kumar stating in a voiceover while the camera roams the streets of Srinagar–
“On 21st of August, 2011, the Indian state made a historic announcement. The state human rights commission admitted to 2156 unidentified bodies from 38 unmarked graves from Kashmir.”
The tone is unambiguously set right at the beginning for the recounting of the many stories that make up the tangled skein that Kashmir has become.
Former Hizb-ul-Mujahideen militant Bashir Baba who is one of the major narrators in the film
For the first time perhaps, former militants belonging to groups ranging from Hizb-ul-Mujahideen to Lashkar-e-Taiba have spoken at length about what motivated or coerced them to join the militancy, their own ideological differences, what they understood of Azadi or of a call for Jihad, their capture and unimaginable torture during captivity, the reasons they chose to come away from the militancy or were compelled to do so. All have spoken with disarming sincerity, without rancour, in a resigned, introspective, matter-of-fact manner, without a word of rhetoric.
The film touchingly narrates, through the voice of a resident Kashmiri Pandit, the shared history and heritage of the Kashmiri Pandits and the Kashmiri Muslims, the rupture of this bond, Exodus of the Kashmiri Pandits, and the desolation and void their departure has rendered to ‘Kashmiriyat,’ hauntingly reinforced by the depiction of the deserted Pandit neighbourhoods in ruins. This Kashmiri Pandit, Dr. Amit Wanchoo is among those whose family refused to leave Kashmir in spite of having his grandfather assassinated by militants. There are other stories too, that of Khemlata Wakhloo, a former minister and member of legislative assembly who was kidnapped along with her husband by militants in early 1991 and held as hostage for release of twelve militants in prison. They narrated without rancour their captivity and rescue, the way their relationship with those who had kidnapped them unfolded and how years later they had met a number of their former captors who have come away from militancy. Their stories of refusal to leave Kashmir also puts forth questions worth pondering, could the Kashmiri Pandit exodus have been prevented? Couldn’t the state have done better in offering them protection?
Kashmiris with pictures of their 'disappeared' family members.
Also for the first time perhaps, we get to hear in her own voice how Parveena Ahangar transformed from an illiterate Kashmiri homemaker, whose heartrending search for the son taken away by security forces never to return, compelled her to even defy social norms, turn a blind eye to peace at home, overcome spouse’s disapproval, to become a solace, strength and hope for the many others who live in the unimaginable pain of not knowing whether their beloved, husband, son or brother has died; languishes in illegal custody, broken in body and spirit or lives on somewhere as a fugitive hunted by the state, unable to come back home.
Through the many voices of the ordinary Kashmiri men and women who have endured the brutal conflict, the atrocities inflicted on them both by the state and by militants become hauntingly clear. Some recounted how they had to provide shelter to militants at gun point and then suffer being rendered homeless at the middle of winter after the army burnt down their houses when soldiers lost lives in the ensuing encounter. As if that was not enough, the militants came back and shot dead the family’s head because their brothers in arms had perished while taking shelter in his house.
The sense of betrayal is tellingly recounted by none other than Wajahat Habibullah, one of the most insightful and sober voices on Kashmir, who had himself served in Kashmir as a civil servant and had to play a role in many momentous happenings during his long tenure in the state’s administration. It is, thus, as Commissioner of Kashmir that he had to investigate the allegations of mass rapes during a search operation by the army at Kunan Poshpora in 1991. That his recommendation for detailed further enquiry, because the allegations were believably from the circumstantial evidence, was expunged from the published report and that even more than two decades later, justice awaits the victims is a telling admission by one who represented the Indian state himself and was left helpless and disappointed by where it fell short in upholding the lofty principles it ostentatiously swears by. Habibullah also candidly admitted that it was the Gaw Kadal Massacre that lit the fuse of unrest with certainty.
The authenticity of the film also lies in the unintended depiction of the many quotidian facets of daily lives of Kashmiris caught in the camera, from serving of “Rani Juice” to guests to serving of food on beautifully engraved copper plates in Muslim homes.
The film ends with a poignant observation, stated without any pretense by Dr. Amit Wanchoo, who, inspite of being a Kashmiri Pandit continues to live and work in Kashmir. He says:
“Unfortunately, India has never been able to rule the hearts of Kashmiris. That’s a common fact. Kashmiris don’t like India. Especially this generation has seen India as a person with a gun. For my friends, India is a BSF wallah with a gun, a CRPF wallah with a gun. For him, India is not Ashvin.”
This admission of an unvarnished truth shouldn’t despair Indians. Rather, in offering an insight into the ways India had gone wrong, it perhaps offers India an opportunity to redeem itself, to bring to the Kashmiris ‘freedom’ that so many in India take for granted, in myriad quotidian ways, in their daily lives.
Films, have always been a powerful medium in re-exploring, re-interpreting and bringing to the fore contentious narratives sought to be marginalized and silenced, particularly if it involved prolonged violent conflicts where the state finds itself enmeshed willingly or unwillingly and had come to violate the very rights it guarantees to its ordinary citizens. Films like ‘When the Mountains Tremble,’ ‘State of Fear,’ or ‘Granito’ by the acclaimed director Pamela Yates, or ‘Earth Made of Glass’ by another acclaimed director Deborah Scranton, have played an immensely transformative role, not only in helping restating the paradigms of some of world’s worst conflicts and rights violations, but by helping to bring justice and reconciliation too.
Ashvin’s ‘Inshalla, Kashmir : Living Terror,’ helps in taking the first tentative step in acknowledging the wrongs the Indian state has committed against innocent ordinary Kashmiris. The significance of the film lies in making us introspect to take our own first steps towards acknowledging these wrongs, if we are to ever hope for a reconciliation.
Nilim Dutta is the Executive Director of Strategic Research & Analysis Organisation, Guwahati. He tweets as @NilimDutta.
Shehla Rashid is a research associate in an Oral History initiative to re-explore the Kashmir Conflict through the undocumented oral narratives. She tweets as @ShehlaRashid.
The Kashmir Oral History Initiative 