A Grotesque Irony

The Kashmir Files winning the Nargis Dutt Award for the Best Feature Film on National Integration at the 69th National Awards ceremony held recently at Vigyan Bhawan, is not only a slap on secular credentials of the awards but a blot on the prestigious nature of the venue, i.e., the Vigyan Bhavan, built in 1954 to host conferences of national and international level seminars and award ceremonies drawing audiences that included distinguished world leaders and dignitaries.

The selection of the film compromises the dignity of the award. And as has been observed by several politicians, constitutes a mockery of the award instituted to promote harmony.

Not only that, it is no less shocking that actress Ms. Pallavi Joshi has been conferred the National Award for the Best Supporting role for the film.

The category chosen for the award is a clear indication of ruling regime’s choice of awarding a film that exploited the sufferings of the Kashmiri Pandits for weaponising it for its Hindu nationalism project and to foment Islamophobia.

There is no gainsaying that the award fulfills the purpose of adding yet another element to its armoury of hate to be unleashed by the current dispensation in its run-up to the 2024 elections.

The film reviewers were unanimous that the film was neither ‘cinematic nor historical’ and ‘pushed only pro-overt right propaganda’. The less critical ones had held it ‘monotonous’, ‘inert’ and one featuring ‘objectively poor screenplay’.

But what came from more authoritative and authentic sources was the comment from Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid who had dubbed it “propaganda” and “vulgar movie”, inappropriate for an artistic competitive section of such prestigious film festival.

Nadav had also expressed ‘shock’ for the film meriting even an inclusion into the Foreign Film category at IFFI. It is not difficult to guess that a lot of public relations and political pressures must have been at work in the selection.

Viewed in the backdrop of award-winning films such as Sookha (Drought) 1983 directed by legendary M. S. Sathyu and based on Kannada novel Bara penned by eminent writer U. R. Ananthamurthy; Do Boond Paani (two drops of water), 1971 directed by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas on the water crisis faced by desert folk of Rajasthan that led to building of a dam; Tamas (1978), Garam Hawa (1973), Pinjar (2003) narrating the pangs of Partition, the Best Feature Film Award for The Kashmir Files takes the stature of the award several notches down.

It is nobody’s case that films based on antipathy among communities and social or ethnic conflicts should not be made.

But films such as Roja and Bombay (both by Mani Ratnam) dealt with religion, terrorism and the vested interest involved with extreme sensitivity, lest they arouse hate, foment fears and fan phobias as is the case with The Kashmir Files.

They are expected to interpret the events and issues in a manner that the audiences analyse them rationally, rectify the social behavior and mend their ways in a manner that hostilities get ironed out rather than inflaming passions.

It is perhaps a grotesque irony of the present times that a film such as The Kashmir Files has been selected for the Nargis Dutt National Integration Award.