Hardly anyone in Kashmir has seen the movie that is being vigorously debated in op-eds, social media and drawing rooms. They couldn’t have. Cinema halls, like several other manifestations of life, were closed down during the height of militancy and remain so. “You’ve come from India. You must have seen it. How’s it?” people ask.
Not many in Kashmir know that the Indian Army screened The Kashmir Files at its Chinar Auditorium in Srinagar’s cantonment for a week, three shows a day, to spread the “nationalistic message”. Overlooking the snow-clad Himalayas, the auditorium had glistening army shops by its side, one of which was selling quality liquor. Present during a matinee show among army men and their families, I, perhaps the only civilian in the hall, found people checking on their phones which JNU professor the character of Pallavi Joshi was based on. Two men, in the dark of the auditorium, googled Arundhati Roy and separatist leader Yasin Malik, seen together in a photograph in a scene of the movie.