“The way to politics is through emotions,” emphasises filmmaker Ashvin Kumar when talking about his new film, No Fathers in Kashmir. Kumar’s belief is firm: it’s only by listening to the truth, do people become more compassionate. This is Kumar’s third film set in Kashmir, the other two being the documentaries – Inshallah, Football and Inshallah, Kashmir.
His new film is about half widows, disappeared people, mass graves and the armed forces in the valley. It was born, out of Kumar’s desire to tell a story that evokes compassion and empathy. After years of research, and 46 drafts of the film script behind him, it wouldn’t have been easy to distil the experiences, I ask. “When you talk about forgiveness are you somehow diluting the horrors that people have lived through? How do you respect what they have been through and at the same time, tell a story?” he responds. Kumar says the difficulty is in trying to tell the story of forgiveness in a place which is filled with dismay, despair and terror.
Against the odds
For Kumar, Kashmir means hope. “Hope that we do better as a civilisation and as a young republic. Kashmir represents the test of all the ideals that we signed ourselves up for when we created what is called the Constitution of India. All those ideals have been put on test without fail. So far, we have been caught wanting in Kashmir.” says the filmmaker. “I’m quarter-Kashmiri perhaps” Kumar says. His mother’s father was from Kashmir. His grandfather migrated from the valley to Amritsar in the 50s and Kumar grew up in Kolkata. But all his summers spent in Amritsar, included a visit to Kashmir. “We didn’t go there after 89 because of the armed insurgency. My next visit was 20 years later, in 2009.”
It was Kumar’s visit, 20 years later that proved to be the turning point. He had written a script and was in Kashmir to fill in the details. He realised quickly enough, how his script was nowhere near the reality of Kashmir. He began travelling around the valley, meeting people and it was during that time that he came across the subject of his National Award winning documentaryInshallah, Football. It was about a young Srinagar footballer, selected for a football club in Spain, unable to get a passport to travel because his father was an ex-militant. He calls both his documentaries very angry films.
Evoking empathy
In No Fathers in Kashmir, Kumar has tried to capture the emotional journey of characters juxtaposed against the darkness of politics. “You see these beautiful, warm, hospitable people and see this conflict going on around them. Their plight becomes amplified because of who they are,” he says. “The film is also an odd cocktail of my teenage years. The first time, I held a girl’s hand was in Kashmir. I was 16 or maybe 14 at that time. I still remember that feeling, the crisp mountain air, this girl and me.” It is also that universal yet unique experience of coming of age that he wants the audience to connect to.
He talks about the many schools of performances present on set. The film’s two teenage protagonists are played by first-time actors Zara Webb and Shivam Raina, along with Soni Razdan, Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Maya Sarao. He says, it was the teenagers who lifted everyone’s performance with their spontaneity. “They had no hang-ups, they were not trying to prove anything nor did they know what they had to prove.” Kumar also makes his debut on screen with this film. I ask him, if it was an indie filmmaking choice that he had to make. “Not at all” he says immediately, sharing how he always wanted to be an actor, his last performance on stage being in 1999. Filmmaking he says happened to him as a by-product. “This time I was like this is my chance!” he says with a hint of self-deprecatory laughter.
Difficult choices
The film was shot between 2016 and 2017, a time Kashmir witnessed the worst unrest since 2010. In 2016, young militant leader Burhan Wani, was killed by the armed forces. Wani’s death was followed by widespread protests, violence and 53 consecutive days of curfew in the state. Making a film amidst such political and emotional chaos wasn’t feasible so Kumar worked in Bhaderwah, which falls in the Chenab valley region, a calmer part of Jammu and Kashmir.
Kumar wants the audience to have two takeaways from the film. One is that they should leave more aware about the Kashmir situation. For the second he says, “I want every youngster to ask their politician what is their Kashmir policy.” he says, adding “And when they tell you that policy, judge the policy. See if it is a policy that enables violence, militarisation or is it to try and build bridges and have compassion for the people over there.”
Kumar feels that people need to get out of their complacency. “I think the killer of civilisation is not power, it’s not armed forces, it’s not usual tropes of politics. The killer of civilisation is apathy.” His film, he hopes, will turn some of that apathy into empathy.
