The Kashmir Files lands a sudden punch on the gut of a people prone to historical and moral blackouts. It is a mighty strike against the conspiracy of silence that sought to suppress and invalidate the terrors on Kashmiri Hindus inflicted by Islamist terrorists. It is a punch up against decades of denial and hiding of a genocide by the Indian state.
Brutalities against Kashmiri Hindus from the Valley remained hidden under political disinformation, creation of alternate realities and administered memories — save a few valiant, articulate, unrelenting voices from the pandit community who could never be bullied into silence.
The film has broken the cowardly silence and destroyed the pile of lies in a glorious display of cinematic power. As raw wounds are unveiled, the atrocities committed against a minority community are now engraved in the collective memory of a nation, manifesting the events that had existed only in oral history. The praxis of a tortured, uprooted community is finally finding wider expression.
