I have not watched the movie. I am unlikely to watch it either. I did not watch The Kashmir Files either. The topics and subjects cut too close and hurt so much that if I watch the movie my rage will probably make me go insane.
A bit of overreaction I guess. It's a movie after all. Movies always take artistic liberty and tend to paint the picture in a color that generally does not have a gray color. Unlike the gray area in that, most of these controversial issues reside. Or so the so-called liberals and rationalists would like us to believe. But then sometimes, the situation is so drastic, full of blood red that people then try to paint it gray. It is sort of a defense mechanism. Since, it is too hard to digest the bloodiness, hard to accept the reality, and hard to fathom the failure. Sadly, gray color or not, the reality does not change. The blood-soaked rice was forced on some people, Kashmiri Hindu women were raped and killed, and mutilated for being Hindu, the region of Kashmir was rinsed of Hindu presence, Hindu girls of Kerala were indoctrinated, converted to Islam, sold off to sexual slavery only because that's all that kafir Hindu girls deserves. And all this happened in the last 30 - 40 years only. In the age of TV, digital media, social media, and activism. This happened without any protest from Hindus despite the perpetrators doing all this without even an iota of shame. The Islamists of Kerala or Kashmir wanted more people to know this since they know the 'secular' governments of Kerala or Delhi will not do anything against them. In fact, in Kerala especially, the government will help them abduct, convert and sell Hindu girls. The Islamists wanted the limelight, they want to advertise. They want to spread the terror. They want to show their supremacy - "we will kill kafirs, rape their women, sell their children into slavery and no one can do anything. No one will dare touch us"
I will not even talk about the visceral reaction from so-called secular, liberal, progressive people. In India, these labels are usually garb for being staunchly anti-Hindu. Never bother talking to these folks since they are already brainwashed. How are you going to make any sense to them or have a logical discussion with them when they don't own their mental faculties? They are more rabid, more fundamentalist, and more irrational than even the rabid, most fundamentalist, and most irrational Islamists of Pakistan! The reaction was expected. It made movies more popular. It led people to the theater. Both movies went mainstream and both became mainstream hits. I say, we should not engage these rabid secularists or liberals but we should let them shout shrill.
But one key point I do not see discussed when people defend the movies or the subject is the historical precedence of Hindu genocide by Muslims in Kashmir or Islamic slavery of Hindus in Kerala. The tactics, the objective, the modus operandi, and the rationale behind it, are nothing new. Islamists and Muslims have been doing it for centuries. During the first onslaught of Islamic invasions in Sindh - they looted our temples, killed men in lakhs, destroyed cities, and sold Hindu women en mass. It is documented that they used to send 1/8 of women abducted for sex slavery, to their Caliphs in Arabia! Genocide had been common in Afghanistan and Pakistan for centuries. Take a look at the Hindu population in Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan post-1947. Either Hindus were forced out, killed, raped, or forcibly converted without impunity in all these three countries. The Islamic supremacy and with that justification, the ability to unleash violence, met out sub-human treatment to Hindus has been a routine. The Godhra train burning? The massacres in Noakhli, WB during partition? The Mophala riots, rapes, and forced conversions of thousands in Kerala? The geography is different, the rationale is the same, the justification is the same, and the conviction is the same. "Hindu men are not men and so, Hindu women are fair game" "Kafirs do not have any place on earth" "Killing kafirs is a good deed" and "Raping Kafir women is ordained" One will not find any of this in so-called news articles, in so-called scholarly journals or for that matter even in public discourse. And that's the reason the Islamists get to kill, maim, rape, loot and destroy again and again and again!
And yet, Hindus are the ones justifying the movie that shows the reality! And Muslims and Islamists cry, victims. Jihadis get the batch of secularists and Islamic terrorists are called martyrs. Unless the language does not change, unless we do not sugarcoat their deeds, unless we call a spade a spade, the situation will keep repeating.
As it had been for centuries.
