Mission Kashmir (2000). Hrithik Roshan starrer movie that was screened at Stockholm International Film Festival, narrates the story of a Kashmiri boy Altaf whose whole family is accidentally killed by cops.
Set in the early 1990s, Altaf was adopted and brought up by a police officer who held himself responsible for the killing of his family.
The movie tries to focus on the tragedy and agony that the children in conflict suffer through intense levels of violence. The colossal impact of conflict is such that Altaf resorts to armed violence and becomes a rebel to seek revenge against the killers of his parents.
Though the movie adopted the genre of fiction, there are scores of real incidents in Kashmir that resemble the toxic plot of Mission Kashmir in one way or the other.
One such case reported widely was about a boy described as a budding cricketer who joined militancy at the age of 15 after his brother was allegedly assaulted by security men in 2010 (Barkha Dutt, Nazir Masoodi, Sheikh Zaffar Iqbal, July 09- 2016, NDTV).
Roll in Mission Frontline (2022). Rohit Shetty in his OTT debut show for a Discovery+ episode, released this January. Rohit spends one day with J&K Police’s Special Operation Group (SOG), promising on the ground insight into the lives of its armed forces.
Besides acquiring firsthand experience with the newest weapon technology used in counter-insurgency, Rohit becomes an anchor of two parallel poignant tales running in sync. In the show, Rohit asks one of the cops- “I have always seen that the SOG men never reveal their faces; you are always wearing up masks.
Why is it so?” The cop answers that since SOG originates from natives, they cover their faces to prevent the locals from recognizing them. In a way, it depicted the sense of insecurity they harbor about themselves and their families who are a part of the extended social fabric of Kashmir.
In another sequence, a high-ranking police officer narrates his distressing tale of losing his father to this bloody conflict. He reveals when he was just 22-years-old, he was a distant witness to his father’s killing.
He painfully recollects the anecdotal account of leaves falling on him by the hailstorm of bullets that were fired on his father. He tells Rohit that after his father’s assassination, he decided to “bounce back”, and joined the police force.
Since then, he claimed to have “lost the count of the number of operations he has done”. To this, Rohit responds with an intelligent remark- “When tragedy strikes, man can either become destructive or constructive”.
The moot point is that vengeance is an emotion leading to complex behavior. Usually, the cycle of revenge is extremely vicious, and it continues to hover all across Kashmir.
Typically, when people decide to take revenge, they are often unjust in their retaliation as their emotions overwhelm their rationale. When the motive for the revenge is emotion deeply embedded in hate, it tinkers the concept of conscience and sentiment of patriotism.
There is a famous story of Hazrat Ali (RA) on the battlefield when he was locked in a fight with an opponent whom he overpowered. The moment his opponent spat on him, he instantly withdrew his sword. When asked why, he replied that if he had killed him, it would have been for his own vengeance, not for the cause and conviction
No gainsaying conflicts get intractable because of the standpoint of settling of scores. The cycle of revulsion, reprisal and rivalry has to stop somewhere before it consumes our generations. It needs an honest and humane approach, bereft of any vendetta and recompense.
If the ‘normalization’ of revenge and violence in Kashmir is institutionalized, it will have precarious ramifications. We can’t be insensitive to the agony of the mother whose son, the sole bread-earner of the family, is shot dead because he is a cop.
We can’t turn blind eye to the wailing mother whose young son gets buried somewhere in oblivion. There is a tragedy called Kashmir that is real and somber.
Back to Mission Kashmir and Mission Frontline, it seems nothing is drastically changed. There seems no genuine connect between Bollywood and Kashmir.
As of now, it seems Bollywood and Indian media has transformed tragic stories from Kashmir, stuffed with hyperbole and exaggeration, into partisan products.
In a way, it raises concern over the pernicious impact of fervently populist or ideological rhetoric displayed in the name of art. Whether Hrithik Roshan or Rohit Shetty, the blatantly partisan messages through high-choice elites/celebrities leaves public opinion mostly unchanged but the level of political polarization becomes a formidable challenge.
American poet and journalist Walt Whitman wrote-“The real war will never get in the books”. Whitman’s proclamation makes one wonder what is the “real” war and how many of us have knowledge of the real war? Indeed, we all have some bias due to the plethora of media ‘misinformation’, taking one side or the other, but if we see away from the plausible reasons for the cycle of revenge presented in the elite visual medium, then conflict in Kashmir is certainly beyond any mission Kashmir or mission frontline.
DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK