Kashmir Files and its Director Vivek Agnihotri continue to draw attention with right-wing extremists hailing the movie as an exposure of an allegedly “hidden truth”. On March 11, 2022, Agnihotri even went so far as to claim that 4,000 Kashmiri Hindus were allegedly killed during the Kashmir insurgency. However, it is worth questioning where the Director found this data considering neither official nor unofficial data nor the two combined confirm such a big figure in thousands.
An RTI report doing the rounds on social media states how 89 Kashmiri Hindus (Kashmiri Pandits) and 1,635 people of other faiths were killed by terrorist attacks since militancy inception in 1990. The RTI was filed by an activist P. P. Kapoor on November 27, 2021, months before the movie was released.
The document was used and posted by media houses, including the Times of India, to question the overwhelming killings implied in Kashmir Files. Kapoor has since switched off the phone number mentioned in the document.
On the other hand, media channels like India Today said that the report only provides half the information because the information is gathered from 1990 and does not account for the killings in 1989. It cited an Indian Express report from 2008 that estimated 209 killings, 100 of which occurred in 1989. This is closer to the 2011 data provided by the state government that estimated 219 deaths.
Similarly, a Kashmiri Pandit organisation Kashmir Pandit Sangharsh Samiti (KPSS) stated in the same year that at least 399 Pandits have been killed since 1990, with 75 percent of the people killed in the first year alone. The then incomplete survey estimated the deaths to rise to 650 deaths.
Yet all of this still falls far short of the mammoth 4,000 deaths figure announced by Agnihotri. In fact, according to the Economic Times, KPSS President Sanjay Tickoo categorically refuted claims of 3,000-4,000 Pandit deaths since 1990 as propaganda. The highest number claimed by anyone after the incident was by an RSS-publication in 1991 and even that number only rose to 600 deaths.
Following the release of the movie, the KPSS tweeted, “Kashmir files makes resident Kashmiri pandits feel unsafe.” This hinted concerns that the movie will amplify the communal sentiments rampant in India nowadays. Accordingly, there were viral videos of people entering theatre halls and decrying the Muslim community.
It is in this background that Agnihotri chose to cite a death figure that is likely to garner a strong response. Quoted retweets of Agnihotri’s tweet with the ‘4,000’ figure indicates the same.
Meanwhile, the few voices speaking for the survivors of the incident are struggling to maintain the communal harmony in the valley. Some netizens even called out the Director for his fabricated numbers.
Every kashmiri Muslim is not terrorist every Kashmiri pandit is not communal we both respect, love and share our pain which every kashmiri has gone through last 32 years
— KPSS (@KPSSamiti) March 16, 2022
Where from have got this https://t.co/Si3Ei3c6xm are pedalling https://t.co/NMx0KajDv0 per Kasmir Pandit Sangarash Samiti,399 Hindus were killed. However nobody endorses the killing of innocent people belonging to any faith. https://t.co/tp7c2eDMUB
— zahoor ahmad shah (@zashah62) March 12, 2022
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