Mumbai: At 10 am Thursday, 50-year-old Laxman Gupta, an auto-rickshaw driver who lives in a Mumbai slum, stepped into a cinema hall for the first time in 15 years. It was his first taste of an air-conditioned theatre with cushioned seats and advanced sound quality.
Gupta was watching The Kashmir Files at Gold Cinema in the western Mumbai suburb of Santacruz along with 319 other people, all of whom had been given tickets by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) corporator Renu Hansraj.
“There was pin-drop silence throughout the film,” Gupta told ThePrint. “Jaise picture khatam hui, log krodhit, aakramak hue. (As soon as the film ended, the audience got angry and aggressive.)”
The audience raised slogans such as “Pakistan Murdabad” and “Bharat Mata ki Jai”, some sloganeered against the Muslim community, and many others hoisted the Tricolour, while a few also broke into tears, Gupta said. He had brought along about 50 other auto-rickshaw drivers as well as his 24-year-old son to the cinema hall.
Like Hansraj, several BJP leaders across Maharashtra are booking entire theatres, sponsoring shows and mobilising BJP karyakartas (workers) as well as people from their wards and constituencies to watch The Kashmir Files, a Vivek Agnihotri-directed film based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley in the 1990s.
All of them have the same thing to say — the youth need to know the “facts of Kashmir”, and those like Gupta who cannot afford to watch films “should especially have access to this one”.
During the state assembly session last week, the BJP submitted a memorandum, signed by 92 of its MLAs, to the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra government, urging it to make The Kashmir Files, released on 11 March, tax-free.
State Finance Minister Ajit Pawar said the Centre should waive the Goods and Services Tax on the movie, prompting the BJP MLAs to stage a walkout.
“This film should have been released a long time ago, but had it not been for Modiji, it would have never cleared the Censor Board,” said Gupta, a BJP worker and vice-president of the Seva Sarathi Autorickshaw Taxi & Transport Union in Mumbai.
Also read: Looking beyond ‘Kashmir Files’, catharsis & closure need justice, for all cases of mass injustice
‘People are understanding relevance of scrapping Article 370’
Ameet Satam, a BJP MLA from Mumbai’s Andheri West, booked two full shows of the movie — a total of 400 tickets — at the Fun Republic theatre in his constituency on Sunday.
Satam told ThePrint that a citizen from his constituency, Ketan Kanakia, had sponsored the tickets. “We allotted tickets to our booth pramukhs, office-bearers. I thought our workers, mainly the youth, should know the facts of Kashmir.”
For Hansraj, Shyam Shroff of Shringar Films came forward with the sponsorship for the free screening.
“We had a mix of people, from residents of slums to our karyakartas, to residents from more affluent areas of Juhu and Vile Parle too. There was a gamut of emotions. We were all overwhelmed. Everyone was speaking about how facts have been hidden,” Hansraj said.
“It is not just a movie. People were trying to understand the relevance of scrapping Article 370,” she said, adding that she plans on hosting more such free screenings.
One leader books 10 shows, another offers student discounts
“Everybody should see the events that transpired in 1990 in Kashmir, the bloody truth that wiped out the identity of Hindus, what Hindus had to go through, the oppression that Hindu women had to bear…”
This was a message circulating on WhatsApp in Maharashtra’s Aurangabad city, announcing free shows of The Kashmir Files for those who cannot afford movie tickets.
Behind the free shows, organised under the banner of a charitable organisation called the Shrivardhan Foundation, is Shirish Boralkar, a BJP leader from Aurangabad, who has booked 10 shows across four theatres in the city over Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.
Speaking to ThePrint, Boralkar said: “A lot of youngsters and people were calling me and talking about how tickets are expensive in multiplexes. They were saying we want to watch this movie, how can you help. In 1990, I was 23-24 years old, but I didn’t know the details of what had exactly happened in Kashmir. I thought people should know the history, the injustice.”
“About 3,500 people have approached us wanting to register for the screenings, but we are scrutinising at our end and giving preference to those who really can’t afford the tickets. We will cover at least 1,600-1,700 people,” Boralkar said, adding that he was not doing this “as a BJP leader but as a social worker”.
Next weekend, he plans to host more free screenings of the film in Aurangabad district’s industrial area of Waluj.
BJP MLA Nitesh Rane, meanwhile, is subsidising the film’s tickets for college students.
In a statement last week, Rane announced that from Monday onwards, college students will be able to watch the 9 am and 12 noon shows of The Kashmir Files at ‘Lakshmi theatre’ in Kankavli in the Sindhudurg district for just Rs 100.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also read: Forgotten Kashmir File: How India destroyed a terrorist network 50 yrs ago, without a shot