By Rachit Raj

I did not watch The Kashmir Files. Not because I was not interested in the truth behind the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990. I feel that is an important subject and that it is the fault of our previous generation that we were never told about this episode of history before it got painted in distinct, jingoist colours. The reason I did not watch the film is that I firmly believe a feature film should not be an introduction to a historical event.

A feature film’s core is to entertain an audience. Entertain, not just in terms of laughter, but also engaging them emotionally. A brilliant example of that is Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Academy Award-nominated Lagaan, a story set in colonial India. That film was a terrific piece of art, decorated with terrific performances, and a stellar soundtrack. It also gave a picture of life in colonial India. But here is the important bit. The film’s representation of colonialism was designed not as a truth-telling machine, but to cater to the needs of the plot. Capt. Russel’s (Paul Blackthorne) brutality and Elizabeth’s (Rachel Shelley) empathy were not to be seen as gospel truth. They were just characters with traits that aided the film to move in a certain direction. A direction where it could build up to the fantastic climax of the film.

Watching videos of people finding ‘truth’ in The Kashmir Files forced me to think more about this. Vivek Agnihotri is not a bad filmmaker, and I am sure his recent film gives us a rousing, emotional story that gives voices, and tears to an episode that is extremely important. But given its intentions to be a feature film and not a documentary, one needs to remember that everything that the film shows has a simple purpose – cater to the need of the story it is telling.

This little knowledge can make a world of difference in how we recognize ‘truth’ in fiction. These films come with a slide that claims that any resemblance with a real person is coincidental. Over the years we have gotten so used to that slide that we have almost forgotten to remember what it means. That slide is a subtle excuse by the filmmaker to play with facts for the larger purpose of entertainment. It promises you some realism, with a tinge of fiction that one needs to remember while being aroused by the story being told.

If you are well-aware of that historical period, then you are not radicalised by the tinkering of facts. If not, those tinkered images can become your only understanding of that event. This was true globally in the case of James Cameron’s Titanic, which became the go-to image for everyone when we thought of the 1912 incident.

But a lot of that film was designed to make us want to feel for the star-crossed lovers Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Rose (Kate Winslet). The film had impressive accuracy, but it was more focused on Jack and Rose’s love story, using the sinking of the ship as the conflict in their romantic haven. It was a wonderful film – a great introduction for a young audience to that horrific incident – but it was not a documentary on the sinking of that ship.

At best a film like this can intrigue the audience into reading, and researching more about the actual incident. That is what Cameron’s film did to a young me. I read books upon books about the ship, eventually realising that a doomed love story was probably the banalest of all the real-life stories that found a forced, unsettling climax on that chilly night.

When I first saw the trailer of The Kashmir Files, I wished that it results in people reading up about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits (and honestly go beyond 1990 and into the deeper historical lanes of Kashmir), but clearly, the film has been received as the defining truth on the subject. We have refused to factor in ideas like a filmmaker’s politics, producer’s demands, and a simple thought that an event like that cannot be understood by one piece of work.

As a community, we like to paint things in broad strokes. It is easy to do that than be careful with a thin brush and shade the canvas with precision. There is a reason why kids like broad strokes, and artists dwell in minor details. The same is true for historical events too. We like the broad binary of good-and-evil. The demarcation is easy. Convenient. But there is no truth in these strokes. They simplify a complex story, turn humans into paper cut-outs, and stories into a logline.

To truly research a subject is to be proactive, and open to changing viewpoints. There is a reason why everyone is not a scholar of a subject. As we continue seeing the fantastic box-office performance of The Kashmir Files, it is important to remind ourselves that one film does not tell us anything about the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. It just tells a point-of-view, a version of the reality. One that needs to be seen as a feature film, and not the authoritative voice on the theme it covers.