The Agnihotri film is indeed the talk of the town. I have not watched it yet. But I find its theme genuine. This film gives a voice to untold miseries, to millions of muted lives.
What I find rather funny and quite surprising about the debate surrounding the film is the what-about-ery. Whatsapp group after whatsapp group, a message is making rounds. It lists YouTube links. These are videos about, for example, the Babri Masjid violence. In an aggrieved and in a quite threatening "what about" tone, the message asks the reader to watch such videos before watching The Kashmir Files.
Yes, every violent act is BAD. Any discrimination is horrendous. No issues about this leitmotif at all. Yet it must be remembered that each and every violence mentioned in the message has been, and continues to be, addressed, and in multiple ways. True, these violences are indeed despicable. The gruesome murder of Dabholkar, for instance, should not have taken place. Undoubtedly!
Yet it must be remembered and accepted that the exodus the film details has never ever been given any platform, any forum at all in the public sphere. For decades, innocent people have suffered for absolutely no fault of theirs. Nobody bothered about 'their' human rights. The indignities and cruelties they suffered were atrocities. Why not at least now accept that they must be delivered some humane consolation, fair justice, even if much delayed.
Nobody is doing them any favour thus. It is their birth right denied to them like their birth place, their hometowns. It is absolutely wrong to bring caste in to the debate. Victims are victims are victims. It is wrong to gloat that some eons ago their powerful ancestors could have been masters, and so their successors should suffer now. Anyways, this is only one version of the history. 'Their' chronicles could be vastly different! Nothing justifies victimisation. For sure!
Moreover, justice must be delivered, wrongs must be righted, the guilty have to be punished. It is not proper to say, forget the past, whatever happened, happened. Nobody can thus minimise a pain throbbing eternally in the heart, and wounding the soul by the second.
Neither what-about-ery nor party politicking can be the answer. Justice has to seen to be delivered, and at the earliest!
Pratima@ "The moral arch of the universe is," says Martin Luther King, "long. But it always bends towards justice."
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