In Kashmir, Journalism Is Out And Films Are In

In Naya Kashmir, as it becomes more difficult to express your thoughts or to practice journalism, it also becomes easier to make films—with riders, of course.

The Kashmir Files may have been shot mostly in Mussoorie and Dehradun (the team filmed in Kashmir for a week), but filmmakers have returned in full force to Kashmir after four decades (350 film crews have been permitted to shoot over the last two years, according to one estimate). Though an Inox multiplex opened in Srinagar after 32 years last September to much fanfare, it’s still the lone glitzy wonder in the Valley.

This year will see a steady stream of releases that showcase Kashmir. Prominent among these are Meghna Gulzar’s Sam Bahadur, about Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, who had a ringside seat during Kashmir’s accession to India; Rajkumar Hirani’s Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Dunki; and Telugu romantic comedy Kushi starring Vijay Deverakonda and Samantha Ruth Prabhu.

Pathaan director Siddharth Anand’s next—Fighter—starring Deepika Padukone and Hrithik Roshan, is scheduled to release in January 2024 and SonyLIV has announced that Onir will direct an eight-part series on the Pulwama terror attack. “These days lots of films are being made around the army and military heroes,” says Khawar Jamsheed, a line producer who has helped filmmakers organise shoots in Kashmir since 2010, when he got a break with Imtiaz Ali’s Rockstar.

Even off centre filmmakers such as Tejas Vijay Deoskar and Sudhir Mishra, have zeroed in on the troubled Union Territory. Onir’s This Is Us, shot in Gurez valley with a 60% Kashmiri cast, will hit the festival circuit early next year. Kashmiri filmmaker Danish Renzu’s Songs of Paradise, about the legendary Raj Begum, the first female singer at Radio Kashmir, is now in post-production. 

“Things have changed a lot from when I shot Half Widow in 2016,” says Renzu. “Srinagar is more open and friendly to film production…The scene in Kashmir is very different now, very open and welcoming.” Agrees Onir: “I got a lot of support from the locals, the district collector in Bandipora, the army and the J&K police.

Though J&K’s 2021 film policy offers many incentives—such as free security and quick police clearances—filmmakers who seek permission to shoot must sign a declaration on official letterhead confirming that their work will not include anything inappropriate, including “defamation of the state” and “false claim”. They must submit a copy of the script/screenplay too. 

Who knows if a film that tackles the subject of ‘half widows’ would even get permission to be made under the new rules? The term was coined for those Kashmiri women who have no idea if their husbands, detained by security personnel, are dead or alive.

“The films produced, to patronize the feeling of “One Nation, Best Nation” (Ek Bharat Shresth Bharat), and on certain other themes” are also eligible for subsidies, the film policy states. 

In a video shared on Twitter by the Jammu & Kashmir Directorate of Information and Public Relations, director Karan Johar, who visited Kashmir after 11 years earlier this year, said he wished to come back every year.

After Johar (Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani) and Sameer Vidwans (Satyaprem Ki Katha) shot one key song for their respective movies in Kashmir, Jamsheed predicts that the Kashmir song is likely to be the next trend.

Film industry biggies may flood Instagram with picture perfect images and videos of their work visits to Kashmir (see here, here and here), but a Deccan Herald reporter who recently wandered through one of the world’s most heavily militarised regions titled his report ‘Wordless Valley’. 

“…four days had passed and not a single civilian had spoken to me at length yet,” he noted. He wanted them to answer one question: What’s it like to live under the shadow of the gun?

A member of one film crew says he asked his Kashmiri taxi driver a version of this question. The man replied that he had seen state brutality and the resistance to it. Now he just wanted to work quietly and earn a living. After a prolonged shutdown post the redaction of Article 370 and the pandemic, the influx of tourists and film crews are offering him the chance to do just that. 

Incidentally, when Johar’s team shot in the last two weeks of snow season in March, the hotels in Gulmarg and Pahalgam, some of them with tariffs in the lakhs, were overrun with tourists. 

In 2024, it will be 75 years since Barsaat, Bollywood’s first foray to Kashmir, that opens with two tourists exploring its slopes and lakes. Filmmakers are going deeper into Kashmir’s villages now, though old-favourite Pahalgam continues to rule. “Apart from its beauty, there’s a lot of variety … a meadow, forests, water, two or three kinds of mountains, small villages and a market also. There are lots of locations in one place,” says Jamsheed.

Kashmir and states such as Gujarat and Chhattisgarh are just following in the footsteps of Uttar Pradesh, one producer tells me. If you’re wondering why you’ve seen so many TV shows and movies set in U.P. in recent years, it’s because the state offers generous subsidies to filmmakers.

Amid all the glib lines about Kashmir’s beauty, I found an actor who shared what she really felt when she visited there. “It’s a mixed sort of feeling when you shoot a film in Kashmir,” Sheeba Chadha, who is in Renzu’s film, wrote on Instagram. “Whilst the proverbial beauty can do your head in, so can the feeling that this land has seen, endured, survived so much … And yet it stands resplendent though ravaged.”

The real filmmaking revolution will come when young Kashmiris begin making their own films. “A lot of questions the world is asking can be answered then,” says Jamsheed. “We have lost a lot of time during which we have not captured our good and bad stories.” Onir believes Kashmir deserves its own film institute. As the director says in an interview to Kashmir Observer: “So many stories remain untold.”

Priya Ramani is a Bengaluru-based journalist and is on the editorial board of Article-14.com.

The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of BQ Prime or its editorial team.