Vivek Agnihotri to make film on Kashmiri Pandits

Feeling strongly about the exodus of the Kashmiri Pandit community from Kashmir Valley due to militancy, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri will be making a movie on this theme.

It will be an investigation, recording first hand testimonials of the victims and also the perpetrators, he said in a statement.

The movie based on Kashmiri Pandits, who were forced to move out of Kashmir Valley in 1990 due to militancy, follows Agnihotri's film on "The Tashkent Files", which revolved around the mysterious death of then Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in 1966.

"Kashmiri Pandits are homeless in their own country. This is the seventh exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir - their home. Since the WW II, there hasn't been such a violent and barbaric ethnic cleansing anywhere in the world," Agnihotri said in a statement.

"This is India's holocaust where at midnight the minorities of Kashmir valley were asked to leave the valley and they were specifically asked to leave behind all their property and women.

"Children were killed with AK-47, women were raped, men were cut with wood cutting saw, houses were burnt. India's most secular region was converted into an Islamic region controlled with Sharia law. My film is about the sinister politics behind it. Everyone is responsible for such tragedy. My film is about that," he added.

His team had been researching for the last one year on the topic.

"Now we are planning to form a 'Project KP Commission' where we will record first hand testimonials of the victims and also the perpetrators. This will be first of its kind effort in this issue anywhere in the world. I want a fair and unbiased investigation so that we can correct the prejudiced narrative," he said.

Last week, Agnihotri had tweeted: "More I read on Kashmiri Pandit exodus, I feel ashamed of myself. What was I doing in 1991? What had happened to me that I kept watching the direct attack on Hindu civilisation, shrinking of Hindu territory, culture in its own land? What made me so indifferent to my own identity?"

--IANS

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