Comment

It was August 24, 2007. Independence Day was still fresh in the memory.A group of politically aware girls pursuing journalism from the prestigious Kamla Nehru College in New Delhi, in association with a youth forum, Roots In Kashmir, were about to screen a documentary, ...And the World Remained Silent, by filmmaker Ashoke Pandit to question the state’s silence on the ethnic cleansing of exiled Kashmiri Pandits. On the eve of the screening, the organisers called it off. At Roots In Kashmir, the activists, mostly Pandits, were distraught. Again their voice had been silenced.

The organisers, however, quietly invited another filmmaker, Sanjay Kak, to screen his controversial film, Jashn-e-Azadi, which had been denied a public screening certificate by the censor board. It became clear within hours how some powers had changed the schedule. It didn’t need a political analyst to guess who had silenced the voice of the Pandits in exile. Though, as expected, the Delhi police asked Kak not to break the law and the screening was cancelled.

Yet another screening of Kak’s film has now been withdrawn by Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce in Pune after the special branch of the police wrote to it asking it to refrain from showing the film during its three-day seminar, Voices Of Kashmir.

Activists from the local ABVP unit also objected to the film’s provocative content. The college has organised the event in association with the University Grants Commission, which also received complaints against the director.

Kak, who has raised an alarm in the media over this apparent scuttling of his ‘freedom of expression’, was, however, singing a different tune a few months ago against the first literary festival planned in the Kashmir valley. The organisers of the Jaipur Literature Festival had planned a similar exchange — Harud Literature Festival — last September. While news agency AFP described it as “another sign at easing tensions in the revolt-hit Himalayan territory”, London’s The Independent described it as the “cultural rebirth” of Kashmir and “an attempt to aid the area’s cultural renaissance.” The Times of India wrote that the “valley had turned a page” and related the event to the fact that Germany had lifted its travel advisory against visiting Kashmir.

But normalcy wasn’t acceptable to a few fringe groups, who took it upon themselves to confront the free flow of ideas among writers from across the globe who would have assembled in Kashmir. Fundamentalist groups told the media that stones would be thrown at the venue. Kak and a group of cheerleaders became part of this campaign asking the organisers to cancel the event.

Before amnesia sets in, it is important to narrate how dangerous half-truths on Kashmir came into being. It all began on the evening of March 13, 2007, at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi where Kak invited the cream of cultural and social activists who were regulars on the Page 3 circuit for the premiere of his much talked about documentary on Kashmir — Jashn-e-Azadi (Celebration of Freedom). On the front seat of the jam-packed auditorium was a frail man in his early forties. He was the centre of attention of the organiser all through the evening.

Yasin Malik had never been a film buff or social crusader. He had never been seen behind the camera either. Often, cameras were directed at him for all the wrong reasons. In 1989 he was part of a large group of Kashmiri Muslims who were brainwashed and sent to Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) for training on Kalashnikovs that would later that year and the following decade be used against the minority Kashmiri Pandits, who were seen as Indian agents.

Malik’s Jammu Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), which was banned till 2000 as a terrorist outfit, had the main role in orchestrating the forced exodus of Pandits after their selective killings in the valley increased. And here was the revolutionary of freedom among an elite audience to witness a film revolving around the separatist movement. Kak, main organiser for the evening, had already ensured that Pandits were denied entry into the auditorium. As a result, several young and old Pandit scholars, professionals, journalists and activists stood outside the closed main gate.