Banerjee says The Kashmir Files mostly fiction, ‘conspiracy’

The Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee today called the controversial director Vivek Agnihotri’s film The Kashmir Files a ‘conspiracy’. “The film is mostly fiction and it is all planned”, Mamata Banerjee said on the floor of the assembly.

There are several religious festivals/celebrations ahead be it Holi, Shab e Baraat or Eid ul Fitr, Mamata Banerjee believes that there are conspiracies in making to create unrest in the state.

Banerjee said, “there are meetings happening to create troubles in Bengal, you can watch the movie, but cannot react to it”.

“The movies are based on fiction”, Banerjee said. However, the West Bengal chief minister did not directly mention the name of the movie.

Earlier, the former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Mehbooba Mufti said that the aggressive manner in which the government of India is promoting the film and “weaponising” the pain of Kashmiri Pandits makes its “ill intention” obvious.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief said instead of healing old wounds and creating a conducive atmosphere between the two communities, the GoI is “deliberately tearing them apart”.

In Mufti’s imagination, as people are watching the movie in theatres, those in the audience wearing saffron kurtas and shawls-was are making genocide calls against Kashmiris and Muslims!

While genuine videos show people unable to hold back their tears, doctored videos with imposed audio show the audience shouting slogans against the Muslims of Kashmir. In one such fake video, the audience after watching the movie can be heard saying “shoot the traitors”.

However, it is true that a lot of social media users are asking for films on the atrocities perpetrated on Hindus by Muslims, in connivance with different ruling parties, in Kerala, West Bengal, Delhi and many other places.

A Kashmiri Pandit outside a theatre in Delhi complained that the Arvind Kejriwal government was coming in the way of filing FIRs against Kashmiri Muslims who tortured and chased out the Hindu people from the valley.

Pertinently, in July 2021, the Delhi High Court ruled that the disclosure of personal information, which has no relation to any public activity or interest and revelation of which can cause “unwarranted invasion” into the privacy of an individual, cannot be disclosed under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Curiously, however, the courts could hear and issue verdicts on the 1984 anti-Sikh pogrom that happened six years before the genocide of Hindus in Kashmir.

In another video, the audience vows to boycott movies of Salman Khan, Amir Khan and Shahrukh Khan, the three Muslim superstars of the Indian cinema, and take revenge from those responsible for the migration.

Another gathering outside the cinema in Delhi, most of them wearing saffron shawls and Kurtas, chanted Vande Mahtaram slogans and also called for ‘revenge’.

One video shows dozens of men and women including elderly people standing in a queue and chanting slogans like “We want justice, Kashmiri Pandits still exist, Punish the culprits”.