Kashmiri Pandits protest Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s remark, seek apology
Jammu, November 29
As the country witnessed a social media storm over the remarks of Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid on The Kashmir Files, Kashmiri Pandits reacted strongly saying a foreigner cannot understand the pain of a community “living as a refugee in their own country”.
Shocked & Surprised
We are surprised to listen to remarks of Nadav Lapid, who is himself a Jew, a community that was persecuted because of its identity. Ranjan Jotshi, leader of KP employees
Attack on community
The movie depicted the truth. Terming it a propaganda is a direct attack on the community that was forced to migrate. Ajay Chrungoo, Chief, Panun Kashmir
They protested his remarks and demanded an apology from Lapid.
International Film Festival of India (IFFI) jury chairperson Lapid, viewed as an anti-establishment filmmaker, had termed the movie “propaganda and vulgar” during the closing ceremony of the film festival in Goa on Monday.
“We, as a community, are surprised to listen this from a person who is himself a Jew, a community that was persecuted because of its identity. What Kashmiri Pandits witnessed in 1990s is unimaginable for a foreigner,” said Ranjan Jotshi, a leader of Kashmiri Pandit employees who fled the Valley after a spate of targeted killings earlier this year.
He further said, “While each and every scene in The Kashmir Files depicts the reality of the 1990s, the movie recounts only a small part of what the community had gone through during that period. The spate of killings, rape and abduction of Pandit women was far worse which the Israeli filmmaker cannot understand.”
Members of the Kashmiri Pandit community and their leaders are raising questions as to how a person of “dubious” credentials was invited for a prestigious film festival in the country.
Kashmiri Pandits started migrating to Jammu and elsewhere in the early 1990s following the outbreak of violence in Kashmir. While the records of the Union Home Ministry released in 2013 claim that 213 Kashmiri Pandits were killed during the insurgency, organisations of the community say the number is much higher.
Ajay Chrungoo, chairperson of the Panun Kashmir, an organisation demanding a separate homeland for Kashmiri Pandits within the Valley, said the remarks by Lapid had reopened the wounds of the community.
Rubon Saproo, a teacher who settled in Jammu after a spate of killings of minorities in the Valley, said what happened in Kashmir recently was just a trailer of what had happened in the 1990s.
