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Director Arfat Sheikh’s US-produced movie ‘Saffron Kingdom’ counters ‘The Kashmir Recordsdata’, and focuses on the trauma of Kashmiri Muslims however faces launch hurdles in India
‘Saffron Kingdom’ highlights the harrowing experiences of Kashmiri Muslims, dealing with alleged abuse by the Indian state and safety forces. (Picture: @SaffronKingdom1/X)
Movies are essentially about telling a narrative or delivering a message in type, however typically fall brief by way of substance. Many movies might be quickly charming, but when seen contextually, they hardly ever lend themselves to deeper engagement or academic discourse.
That is the impression one will get after watching Arfat Sheikh’s US-produced film, Saffron Kingdom, which seems to be a response to the 2022 movie, The Kashmir Recordsdata, directed by Vivek Agnihotri and produced by Pallavi Joshi and Abhishek Agarwal.
Whereas The Kashmir Recordsdata focuses on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits attributable to a violent pogrom perpetrated by Kashmiri Muslims, Saffron Kingdom highlights the harrowing experiences of Kashmiri Muslims dealing with alleged abuse by the Indian state and safety forces. The movie attracts inspiration from the disappearance of Arfat Sheikh’s father, famous Kashmiri singer Ghulam Nabi Sheikh, in 2003 whereas he was travelling together with his daughter on a practice from Jammu to Delhi.
The Sheikh household alleges enforced disappearance, however Punjab Police maintains that Ghulam Nabi Sheikh might have fallen from the practice and died. Arfat has revisited this private tragedy, increasing it right into a broader narrative of loss and trauma.
Numerous themes emerge from the storyline, together with exile, seek for id, resilience, and reflections on incidents starting from the Gawkadal Bridge bloodbath of January 21, 1990, to the revocation of Article 370 on August 5, 2019. Cinematic analysts and observers recommend that diaspora-based Kashmiri actors might have prevented roles within the movie attributable to fears of potential repercussions for his or her households again house in Kashmir. This explains the usage of non-Kashmiri actors and selecting areas in Atlanta and Georgia to depict Kashmir as a substitute of capturing in India.
Though Saffron Kingdom has been screened at worldwide movie festivals and a number of other cities in america, it hasn’t had a theatrical launch in India. Its launch in India is unsure attributable to its provocative counternarrative on the Kashmir challenge, which may probably result in regulation and order issues.
The Narendra Modi-led authorities and the UT administration are unlikely to allow its screening at a time when Kashmir is experiencing normalcy, with individuals having fun with the advantages of socioeconomic improvement, peace, and stability after a long time of crossborder-sponsored terrorism, stone pelting, and civilian strife.
Some would possibly argue that if The Kashmir Recordsdata might be launched, why ought to Saffron Kingdom be disallowed. This seemingly easy query has advanced dimensions, the primary one being that it advances Pakistan’s agenda of inciting communal disharmony in India.
Portraying the movie solely by means of the lens of the Kashmiri Muslim expertise and trying to reclaim the historical past of Kashmir from that perspective is more likely to create communal animosity, not solely in Kashmir however different components of India as properly and is, therefore, not applicable right now.
It has taken the individuals of Kashmir over three a long time to beat a violent ecosystem created and nurtured by Pakistan and its proxies that threatened to disrupt a comparatively peaceable setting. At present, a majority of Kashmiris are fortunately a part of the nationwide mainstream, and something that would jeopardise peace must be saved at bay.
It’s evident that Saffron Kingdom has an agenda disguised as creativity. Whereas saffron is the premium spice of Kashmir, the phrase can also be generally related to the Hindu neighborhood and India’s ruling right-wing BJP. Thus, the symbolic use of “saffron” appears misplaced because it makes an attempt guilty the BJP for the misplaced heritage of Kashmiris.
Saffron Kingdom subtly promotes the narrative that the BJP is utilizing its “Hindutva” ideology to alter the demographics of Kashmir. That is removed from the reality.
At present, each Kashmiri Hindus and Muslims appear decided to steer harmonious, peaceable lives pushing the irrelevant demand for any proper to self-determination into the background. The truth that free and truthful elections have been held in a as soon as restive state after greater than a decade attests to this welcome change.
A day by day in Kashmir rightly factors out that whereas Saffron Kingdom could also be an “artistically and cinematically top-class” movie, a few of its “dialogues with phrases of Kashmiri thrown in make it tough to narrate to the undertaking” as being solely Kashmiri. The solid speaks English with an American accent and struggles with the Kashmiri speech and dialect, it provides.
Whereas pseudo-activists might criticise New Delhi’s possible refusal to permit the discharge of Saffron Kingdom in India as an assault on freedom of expression, the truth is that any such protest will doubtless fizzle out as a result of the individuals of Kashmir, who’ve been used as pawns in Pakistan’s proxy warfare and suffered immensely, know higher.
(The writer is editor of Brighter Kashmir, writer, TV commentator, political analyst and columnist. Views expressed within the above piece are private and solely these of the writer. They don’t essentially replicate News18’s views)
January 08, 2026, 23:24 IST
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