In his small, muggy Delhi house, Pushkar Nath Pandit shivers thinking of the first sheen of snow back in Kashmir. He wraps his arms around himself and sings songs from his homeland, the way a mother comforts her baby with lullabies.
Exile never sat well on Pushkar Nath. He carries the memories of Kashmir in his gut. The ones of love and friendship are to be brought out of the box on special occasions, like a chat with his only surviving grandson, Krishna. The darkest ones are to be forever buried in the chest; never told.
If Anupam Kher was the face of a common man’s anger against a corrupt and slothful system in the award-winning Saraansh in the ’80s, then he is now the soul of a whitewashed genocide in The Kashmir Files.
The blue paint of Ramlila on Pushkar Nath’s face, with which he witnesses unthinkable horror and personal loss, seems like the metaphor of the Maryada Purushottam’s nation gone helpless against hatred. His tears in the transit camp are the tears of a wounded civilisation.
Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files is the hard-hitting, nearly unwatchable truth. The power of the story, and the performances of Mithun Chakravarty, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumaar, Bhasha Sumbli, Chinmay Mandlekar, Puneet Issar, Prakash Belawadi, Mrinal Kulkarni, Atul Srivastava and others leave you shaken.
Even in that line of electric performances, Kher’s stands out.
He spoke exclusively to Firstpost, delving into the backdrop of the events, the interplay of his personal bond with the cause and professional engagement as an actor, and why this film is so important for him.
“It is the truth about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits which people had hidden somehow or the other. The judiciary, media, politicians, intelligentsia, writers…everybody just tried to put it under the carpet,” said Kher. “It was not a simple thing. It was not 10-12 people who were killed. Countless people were killed, women raped, houses burnt. And then came January 19, 1990. More than 4 lakh people were thrown out of their houses that particular night. My mother’s younger brother was also there. It is the biggest exodus and genocide in independent India.”
Six years ago, Kher made a video, ‘Haan main Kashmiri Pandit hoon’. It went viral.
“मै एक कश्मीरी पंडित हूँ!” This video about #KashmiriPandits exodus was shot 4 years back at @TimesNow studio. It is not a short story. It actually happened 30 yrs back on 19th Jan, 1990. Watch it, retweet it. 🙏
30 years of Kashmiri Pandit's exodus https://t.co/0V2NseQFEW— Anupam Kher (@AnupamPKher) January 18, 2020
“When Vivek came to me about this film, when I heard the script, and he offered me this role, I knew I had to be a part of this story being told to the world,” he stated. “In a movie, you cannot show fourt lakh people running away. You cannot show all that actually happened. So, I had to use my soul to portray that. In Saraansh, I had to use my craft. I was getting ready to be an old man. But The Kashmir Files needed both the actor and the person to be on the same page.”
What do you think is the most powerful scene in the movie?
“There is a silent scene wherein the refugee camp he eats a biscuit and he cries and he slaps himself. Or the scene in which he feels cold and starts singing that Kashmiri song. Even the death scene,” he said. “When we were doing the truck scene, they were actual Kashmiri Pandits in the truck. In the movie, they are told that two people are hanging. The lady next to me started howling. I said what happened? She said one of the people who were hanged was her cousin.”
Even in the ’70s and ’80s, whenever Kher went home to Kashmir, people would say, “Amp India se aaye ho (you’ve come from India)?” The address that he quotes in the film, 84, Karan Nagar, Srinagar, was his own maternal house. By the mid-’80s, sporadic killings had started.
“Otherwise, I have beautiful memories of Kashmir. I have memories of Handwara, and I have memories of Sopore. My uncles were professors in a medical college and a girls’ college. In Baramulla, cherries would come into my house through the window. My memories of Kheer Bhawani, Nishad Garden, Dal Lake. It is the most beautiful place in the world and I have traveled the whole world.”
He says the PILs, vilification campaign against the movie, motivated reviews and attempts to ban it make KPs live the pain, go through the trauma again.
“No government should be able to stop the film now. Because who are they pleasing. It is not that the terrorists have only killed Pandits. They killed young Muslim officers, Sardars. And why should good infrastructure, hospitals, education not reach Kashmiris?” he says.
He talks about how Jews have kept the memory of the Holocaust alive. "Films like Schindler’s List were made. Why not films on Kashmiri Pandits, anti-genocide museums?" he asked.
Kher and the larger KP community are disappointed in the Supreme Court of India, which has twice dismissed appeals to reinvestigate the Kashmir genocide of the ’90s. It cited a lapse of time as a reason to not reopen the cases. Now, coinciding with the film’s launch, citizens are planning a candlelight vigil before the court to make the judges reconsider.
Stating that he recently placated a senior police officer who had called about the movie’s law and order implications, he says there is no need for a particular community to be defensive about terrorism. Terrorism kills people worldwide, a majority of them in the Islamic world.
So, why didn’t Bollywood make movies like The Kashmir Files earlier? And what makes Anupam Kher so bold and outspoken?
“Because everybody wants to be liked. The problem begins when you want to be liked by everybody. But I will tell you why I am the way I am. I’m eight years younger than my country’s Independence. We grew up with those feelings. The ’62 war, the ’71 war. We were still talking about how we got Independence. We were still talking about Bhagat Singh, Gandhi, Nehru, Lala Lajpat Rai. It’s in my bones, my blood. I can’t change that. I need to respect myself. That can only happen if you stick to your convictions,” he says.
“Who can stop me? I have come from the gutter. I had come to Mumbai with just Rs 37 on June 3, 1981. Today, I am a crorepati and doing so well. I’m trending for the last six hours on Twitter because of my birthday. I have 522 films in my kitty. Who can threaten me?”
Kher lives in a rented apartment. It may seem jarring for a multi-millionaire Bollywood star, but such decisions set him apart from the rest in the industry, giving us a glimpse of the man’s mind.
“The day I decided I will not buy a house and stay on rent, I became the richest man on earth. I have a car. I have AC. What else do you need? Our needs make us feel small,” he says.
Kher is shooting for Sooraj Barjatya’s Uunchai, a movie completely different from The Kashmir Files. It is a grand multi-starrer with Amitabh Bachchan, Boman Irani, and Danny Denzongpa; a happy bonanza. But the film about his ravaged homeland will remain special.
“When you leave home, you don’t leave concrete. You leave behind memories of corners, of smells, of aab-o-hawa. The film is not going to change that. But sometimes, catharsis happens when people cry — in Jammu, In Delhi, in Mumbai, all over America — because they did not even have the chance to have catharsis about it.”
For them, a movie may not be able to drown the Islamist cries of “raleev (convert), galeev (be killed), ya chaleev (or flee)” from mosque speakers and neighbourhood walls. But tears do heal, and Kashmiri Pandits at least deserve to shed them.
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March 12, 2022 at 11:37AM
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