Of Inteqaam, Azaadi And Indian Propaganda- Haider (An Angry Brown Man Review)

So I saw Haider. Probably the first Hindi film in ages I was eager to watch. Now, I was always wary ofcourse. This is Bollywood, after all. Not an MC Kash song. Or even a Sanjay Kak documentary. This is freaking Bollywood. Okay before I get ahead of myself, full disclosure. I am a middle class savarna hindu man from Bihar who has a personal relationship with Kashmir. As a protest artist, I have written “Tale Of Afzal Guru”, a song that attempts to tell one of many thousands of stories of Kashmiris murdered by the Indian state. I have visited the state a couple of times, attended a pro-azaadi remembrance rally for Kashmiris slaughtered by Indian forces and have a number of Kashmiri friends and comrades whose views and perspectives educate and inform mine. My views on Kashmir are far removed from the mainstream. I am pro-Azaadi, pro-resistance and anti-indian occupation. Having said that, I do have a fair amount of privilege as an indian hindu commenting on a film that has been written by one of the most celebrated Kashmiri authors of our generation, Basharat Peer.

So before you read what I have to say, I would prefer you read the Kashmiri perspective on this film. Read what the brilliant Basharat Ali has to say about Haider being condescending and unjust. Read Sameer Bhat’s piece on Shakespeare in Srinagar. Or read Parallel Post’s Haider: Setting The Wrong Precedent.

I do not claim to represent the Kashmiri perspective. No non-Kashmiri should ever make that claim. I do not claim to represent the Indian perspective either. But what I can do is share how the movie made me feel, how the politics of this film came across to me. I usually just rant on twitter when something bothers me, but 12 hours after watching this film, I feel like this requires something more than 140 character-sized releases. And so here we are, with my first blog post in six months. So let’s get to it.

Now this movie is as most people know, an adaptation of Hamlet set in Kashmir in 1995. It is important to understand that from the get-go. Hamlet is a story about revenge, with a fair bit of Oedipus Complex thrown in. Haider does not deviate from that. This is indeed a film about revenge, about a son looking for his father. But this is not just another Vishal Bhardwaj film. This is a film set in Kashmir, with Haider’s father being one of the thousands “disappeared persons” in Kashmir, making Haider’s mother a “half widow”, a phenomenon mainstream cinema has never acknowledged as openly as in this film. This is a film written by Basharat Peer, whose “Curfewed Night” shined a light on the brutality of growing up in the Kashmir of the 90’s for an entire generation of readers. So as much as one might claim this film is not political, it doesn’t get more political than this. And a political film must have a political critique.

This is not a film about Kashmir though. But one senses it wants to be. Especially in the first half, it almost seems like the film is pulling at the reins, yearning to run free and tell us all about Papa 2(which is called Mama 2 here) and Kunan Poshpora and the Sopore Massacre and Indian Occupation and Mass Graves and Half Widows. But the film never really goes there. This is fundamentally Hamlet set in Kashmir. But often the issue with taking something like the Kashmir Conflict as a mere backdrop is you play fast and loose with history and with ideology. The armed resistance movement is reduced to “Inteqaam” (Vengeance) and the only time our protagonist shouts “Azaadi” is when he is presumably going mad. Haider’s politics, it seems only come up when he is going insane. What does that tell you about the film’s politics? Perhaps I am taking it too literally but one cannot help but feel discomfort with the way one of the most important anti-colonial resistance movements in South Asia is portrayed in this “path-breaking” film.

The fact is, you cannot just take the Kashmiri conflict as a “backdrop”, when Haider’s father is a “dissapeared person”, his mother is a “half-widow” and his uncle is a pro-India politician and a collaborator. Also if I didn’t know better, I’d think there’s something to naming a collaborator disguised as a human rights lawyer “Khurram” when there is a prominent human rights activist in Kashmir called Khurram Parvez. But I will not entertain that thought. Basharat Peer happens to know Khurram Parvez and I really doubt they would have done something as devious as that. Regardless, Kashmir is not just a “conflict”. The “This is just a Hamlet adaptation” line rings false. This is a narrative that is too deep rooted in Kashmir for that defense to work.

Let us go back to that first half. The film has been praised (and rightly so) for introducing indian audiences to the dark world of  mass disappearances, of half widows and torture camps. It also does a half decent job of communicating the PTSD many Kashmiris live with day after day. The scene where a Kashmiri man who was interned in a camp briefly struggles to enter his own home is bound to bring a tear to your eye. But there is something strange beneath this checklist of things to make any liberal from JNU pleased as punch.

There is a strange balancing act right through the film. For every time the sins of India are brought up, the sins of Pakistan have to be brought up. Shahid Kapoor almost comically chants for freedom from Pakistan, as well as India in front of the iconic clock tower in Lal Chowk. Now here’s the thing. Indian Occupied Kashmir’s freedom is not in threat from Pakistan. They are not occupied by Pakistan. The name says it all. India is the occupying force. So why would Haider say that? Why would every character create a false equivalence between India and Pakistan on this?

It would still make sense for someone in POK (or “Azaad Kashmir”) to demand freedom from Pakistan. And it would be as silly for them to demand freedom from India. Why? Because it’s Pakistan Occupied Kashmir there. When you see it through that lens, you see how silly this balancing act is. This is something you see in Indian Academic “Liberals” too. They must balance every anti-India statement with an anti-Pakistan one. They balance every condemnation of VHP with a condemnation of Owaisi. Be careful of these “Liberals”. They are lizards, closet bigots hiding in progressive clothes.

This is not to say people don’t speak out against Pakistan in Kashmir. But the manner in which the film carries out this balancing act is not only contrived, but also seems very deliberate. However, these issues are not a shade on my issue with the film after the interval. After the interval, Haider becomes a completely different film. It is a magical transformation. It might be years before Kashmir is demilitarised, but Haider gets demilitarised in a matter of minutes right after the interval.

There is no trace of the army in the second half. The role of antagonist is conveniently shifted to the local police and the Ikhwan, the pro-India militia that Haider’s uncle has delivered to the state. So very conveniently, the villian is no longer the occupying army. It is the local collaborators. The sheer politics of this shift is inescapable. Ironically the film’s narrative closely shadows the indian state’s own narrative in real life. In recent years the army has outsourced a lot of it’s oppression to local police forces. That way, it’s Kashmiris killing Kashmiris, a narrative that is much more convenient. Even in Chhattisgarh, there is a similar narrative of let adivasis kill adivasis rather than sacrifice CRPF jawans. So we have the anti-naxal militia Salwa Judum (now disbanded but it seems only on paper) which ofcourse spent more time on murdering and raping common folk than fighting any naxals. Haider(the film) in that sense, is a perfect metaphor for the Indian state.

The politics of the film shifts gears quicker than you can say MJ Akbar in the second half. It’s almost as if the film-maker and the writer had a deal. “First half you can do all your Kashmir stuff but second half we will bring it back to Bollywood territory”. It’s almost as if the film is atoning for the sins of telling the truth in the first half with the heavy-handed Bollywood flavour in the second half. And with the army out of the picture, this is now a one-dimensional tale about revenge. And as the film never fails to remind us, “Inteqaam se sirf inteqaam paida hota hai. Jab tak hum apne inteqaam se azaad nahin honge, koi azaadi humey azaad nahin kar sakti”. (Revenge only begets revenge. Till we are free from our vengeance, no freedom can free us). From a “path-breaking” film about the realities of the Indian Occupation Of Kashmir, this is now a cautionary tale about revenge.

Let’s talk about Inteqaam for a bit. Through the Hamlet narrative, there is an unabashed shaming of militancy as revenge here. There is a subliminal message that Kashmiris should forget about vengeance and the whole hold-hands-and-sing-we-are-the-world message that some “liberals” push. Fair enough. That is a legitimate point of view, I guess. But here is where it gets really problematic. There is more than one kind of “Inteqaam” in Kashmir. There is also the “Inteqaam” of indian forces who react to militant attacks on their facilities by attacking Kashmiris who often had nothing to do with the attack. Like the Sopore massacre of ’93 where a BSF van was attacked and in return, Sopore was set ablaze by the indian forces. Much like the US invasion of Iraq, these were acts of vengeance against people who had nothing to do with the cause of the vengeance in the first place. This film has nothing to say about that “Inteqaam”.

One has to be very wary of these vague “pro-peace” messages. Especially when they seem to put the onus of the violence on the oppressed and not the oppressor. When it is purported that  it is the resistance movement and not the occupying forces whose “inteqaam” is the cause of all the misery. See, the indian intelligentisia has moved on. No longer can the convenient rhetoric of Roja as mastered by Mani Ratnam work with them. So now, you must placate them with some token mentions of human rights violations but ultimately bring it back to “Violence is not the way”. Whenever people say violence is not the way, what they often mean is “Violence is not the way (unless you are the state)”.

The new indian “liberal” has been shamed into admitting that the indian army has committed war crimes in Kashmir. He has been shamed into admitting that India is guilty of some of the worst human rights violations in human history in Kashmir. But that is where his discourse stops. At human rights. At AFSPA. Not Azaadi. Not the right to self determination. That is where their progressiveness stops. And that is Haider’s greatest flaw. At the end of the day, Haider represents the perspective of the indian academic “liberals” who are great at standing against AFSPA but who will never stop telling you how Azaadi is not “viable”. The irony of an indian intellectual telling a Kashmiri that their freedom is not “viable” somehow eludes these rocket scientists.

The famous dialogue about “Inteqaam” is first uttered by Haider’s grandfather to a militant, then by Haider’s mother to him and finally by his own conscience in the terrible climax. Now to be fair, Hamlet is a cautionary tale about revenge. This is an adaptation of Hamlet. So on paper, it is only fair that the overarching message of the film is one about the futility of vengeance. But the manner in which that message manifests itself in the Kashmiri context does make me really wonder about the politics of “Haider”. This may not be a political film per se but it definitely has it’s politics.

Yes, Haider is great at showing a side of Indian Army and Kashmir that no Bollywood film before has ever done. For once, mainstream audiences have been given a window, albeit a tiny one, into India’s war crimes in Kashmir. Full credit for that. But once you get past the JNU checklist of things to mention, the politics of this film does make one wonder.

Also, the “Indian Army has saved thousands of lives in floods and we salute them” did not help. Why not also mention that separatist leaders had also saved lives? Was this some last moment attempt to win over the nationalist audience? Whatever it was, it certainly did not help my impression of this film’s politics. At the end of it all, Haider is both beautiful and heartbreaking. Beautiful for what it could have been, and heartbreaking for what it failed to do. I wish one day indian cinema will have the guts to make a truly honest film on Kashmir. Meanwhile, try and watch Bilaal Jaan’s “Ocean Of Tears”.