Month: March 2022

A free and prosperous Indo-Pacific is more important than ever, President Joe Biden said while meeting with his Singaporean counterpart against the backdrop of a raging conflict in Ukraine, which Biden has painted as a global struggle between liberal democracy and autocracy. Singapore’s leader said this is a battle for a rules-based global order. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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The phenomenal box-office success of a new film set in 1990s Kashmir has sharpened political divisions in India and prompted a re-examination of a violent campaign against Hindus in the Muslim-majority region three decades ago.

“The Kashmir Files,” directed by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, depicts the flight of Kashmiri Hindus, known as “Pandits,” from the region in early 1990s. It is a fictional narrative about a college student who learns that his Kashmiri Hindu parents were killed by Islamist militants, not in an accident as he was told by his grandfather.

The film is being enthusiastically promoted by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which pursues a Hindu nationalist agenda and has been accused of fomenting animus toward the nation’s 200 million Muslims as an electoral strategy.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally met with the director and producer of the film immediately after its release and expressed his appreciation.

Celebrities and political leaders also have urged people to see the film. The Union minister for Women and Child Development, Smriti Irani, tweeted, “Watch … so that this history soaked in the blood of innocents may never repeat itself #TheKashmirFiles.”

A goods and services tax that boosts the price of movie tickets has been waived in most BJP-ruled states including some of India’s most populous. In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, police have been offered a day off work to watch the film. In the national capital territory of Delhi, however, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal rejected a demand from BJP legislators to declare the film tax-free, saying, “Well, put it on YouTube, it will be free.”

Sushil Chaudhary, the founder and chairman of the digital movie theater chain Picture Time DigiPlex, told VOA he was pleased that the controversial subject had been addressed in a film.

“And the storytelling was very different compared to other Indian films. The way the director handled the film — it was quite amazing, at the same time very sensitive. This film has huge impact and reminded me of the much-celebrated ‘Schindler’s List,’” a 1993 film about a German businessman who rescued more than 1,000 Jews from the Nazi Holocaust.

On social media, commenters have described the movie as “the most hard-hitting film” about Kashmir made to date.

BJP’s support of ‘The Kashmir Files’

The film also has detractors, many of them in the conflict-torn region of Jammu and Kashmir itself. While expressing appreciation for the movie’s dramatic qualities, these critics say it oversimplifies the complex history of the conflict, and that it offers a clichéd representation of Kashmiri Muslims.

“Hindu supremacists in India have weaponized the Kashmiri Pandit exodus” wrote Nitasha Kaul, a Kashmiri Pandit and novelist based in London.

“The movie dwells on Kashmiri Pandit suffering alone and makes ample use of Islamophobic tropes – all Muslims in the movie are violent, barbaric or lecherous,” she wrote.

She argued that the movie “feeds into cycles of hate and revenge. It collapses Kashmir’s history and politics into an Islamophobic morality tale that is palatable and profitable to Hindutva India.”

Ashok Swain, the head of the department of peace and conflict research at Sweden’s Uppsala University, told VOA he believes the film was made purely for political purposes by a Hindu right-wing filmmaker with support from the ruling authorities.

The purpose of the movie is not to tell the history or support the cause of displaced Kashmir pundits, Swain maintained, “but to make economic gains for the filmmaker and political gains for the ruling regime by selling Muslim hate in the country.”

Regional take

The movie also has been met with criticism by Muslim leaders of the Peoples Democratic Party, a Kashmir-based regional political bloc. PDP leader and former chief minister Mehbooba Mufti has accused the BJP of doing nothing for the Kashmiri Pandits who remained in Jammu and Kashmir.

Earlier, she said the move is “ill-intentioned” and will not contribute to healing old wounds.

Mufti also argued that while the filmmakers were mainly interested in profits, Modi and the BJP were supporting the film in order to instigate people along religious lines.

Kashmir resident Sameer Kaul told VOA that some of the gory incidents portrayed in the documentary-style film actually occurred, but that the movie falsely suggests the entire Kashmiri Muslim community played a part in the violence. In fact, he said, some Muslims opposed the violence and others were simply frightened.

Kaul said the impact of the movie will be to increase religious polarization and potential intercommunal discord. “Never before has the justification for institution of an unbiased judicial probe by central government seemed as convincing. Truth should hopefully pave the way for closure, reconciliation and desperate peace.”

A similar view has been expressed by one Kashmiri Pandit girl, Sagrika Kissu. “Not every Muslim is a terrorist/militant or a terrorist sympathizer,” she posted on social media. “We should be very sensitive when we paint all of them in one color. This movie sets in a very bitter emotion for Kashmiri Muslims as whole.”

Real-life impact

Meanwhile, the impact from the movie is being felt in real life. A hotel in Delhi recently refused to accommodate a Kashmiri man even after he provided appropriate identification and other credentials.

The hotel’s receptionist said the Delhi Police had told the hotel not to accept reservations from guests from Jammu and Kashmir. A video of the incident went viral, prompting Delhi Police to deny having issued any such order.

In an immediate reaction, the hotel chain Oyo Rooms removed the hotel from its platform.

Nevertheless, the film is doing blockbuster business despite a lack of promotion and marketing, appearing on 700 screens across India and grossing $3 million since its release on March 11. It is also being shown in the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, taking in $1.38 million in its first week on international screens.
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For more than two months, Muska, a 35-year-old Afghan woman who preferred not to reveal her last name for security concerns, has gone to various Taliban government offices in Kabul literally begging officials for a new passport.

“I’ve been beaten by Taliban guards, insulted verbally and have been turned away and told that there is no passport for me,” Muska told VOA by phone.

A former government official with a master’s degree, Muska was fired from her job after the Taliban took power last August. The Taliban government has fired women from all public jobs with some exceptions in health and education sectors.

Terrified for her future under Taliban leadership, Muska applied for graduate programs at universities abroad and received a generous scholarship at a university in the U.S.

“I have to fill out my I-20 form and submit a visa application on time in order for me to be able to start the program in the fall, but without a passport I can do nothing.”

Two other Afghan women also told VOA their applications for a passport were rejected without explanation.

“When we go to the passport department, [Taliban guards] order us to go away and don’t let us in as if we’re some kind of a virus,” said Nasreen Ahmadi, adding that she had received a research fellowship in the U.S.

The passport ban also impacts Afghan women who live and work outside Afghanistan but need valid passports in order to travel internationally.

“When my passport expires next year in May, I have no idea what I will do,” Pashtana Dorani, director of an Afghan educational organization and a fellow at Wellesley College, told VOA.

Taliban authorities have not officially announced a ban on women’s passports, but an announcement on the passport department’s website states that “new passport registration is suspended until further notice.”

A spokesman for the passport department told reporters in Kabul on March 29 that issuance of new passports “will resume soon,” but he did not clarify whether women, especially those without a male chaperone, will be given passports.

Discriminatory

Even if women and girls have valid passports, they cannot travel outside the country unless they are accompanied by a religiously-approved male chaperone (father, brother, husband, son), according to new restrictions the Taliban enforced.

“It is obviously a manifestation of gender-based discrimination that also affects their fundamental right of freedom of movement and education,” Reem Alsalem, U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women, told VOA.

While the passport and travel restrictions deprive Afghan women and girls from work and education outside the country, Taliban authorities have also enforced a series of restrictions on women’s work and education inside Afghanistan.

Despite previous assurances about the resumption of secondary education for girls in March, last week Taliban authorities announced middle and high schools will remain closed for female students.

The announcement was met with widespread international condemnation and led to a cancellation of scheduled U.S.-Taliban talks in Qatar last week.

“Denying girls secondary education is one of the many manifestations of structural discrimination that women and girls are subjected to and a reminder that the de facto authorities are continuing with their policies to erase women from public life and to stunt their ability to enjoy their fundamental human rights,” said Alsalem.

Taliban officials have said the ban on girls’ post-elementary education is temporary, until appropriate religious arrangements are made — an assertion experts repudiate.

“It is incomprehensible to me that the Taliban justify their actions citing religious doctrine as countries across the Organization of Islamic Conference have achieved or are actively pursuing gender equality in education,” the U.N. special rapporteur said.

Women’s rights activists say the international community should do more to hold the Taliban accountable for their repressive policies.

“Put the Taliban on travel sanction list,” said Dorani of Wellesley College. “I find it ironic how the U.S. and any other country can tweet but won’t lift a finger for women’s rights.”

Waiver sought

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul is closed, forcing all Afghan passport holders to travel out of the country to apply for U.S. visas.

That further complicates the ability of women like Muska to obtain an education and receive work opportunities outside Afghanistan.

“I cannot travel because I don’t have a passport and even if I get a passport I cannot travel without a male guardian,” she said. “It’s a double whammy made to ensure women like me remain trapped in a cycle of denials.”

Both Nasreen and Muska said they are calling on the U.S. government to grant women like themselves waivers to travel to the U.S. and start their education without a Taliban passport.

“It’s not enough just condemning the Taliban for their brutal misogynistic policies, the world needs to help us achieve what Taliban denies us,” said Nasreen.

The U.S. government has evacuated tens of thousands of Afghans over the past seven months and has offered humanitarian parole to those who have entered the U.S. without travel documents.

“We will continue to engage diplomatically to resolve any issues and to hold the Taliban to their public pledge to let all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from other countries freely depart Afghanistan,” a State Department spokesperson told VOA, adding that there are no U.S. consular services available inside Afghanistan and visa applicants had to seek appointments in third countries.

Senior Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine contributed to this report.
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