The Miss­ing Files that We Need to An­nex to the Movie Rec­om­mended by PM Modi — Kash­mir to Khatkar Kalan tak In­quilab Zind­abad bhee to karna hai

INDIA IS WATCH­ING The Kash­mir Files, cin­ema halls are re­ver­ber­at­ing with pa­tri­otic slo­gans mas­querad­ing as abuse for Mus­lims, and the coun­try is eras­ing cer­tain his­to­ries of Kash­mir and in­vent­ing new ones.

And Madeleine Al­bright, who was once a child in war-torn Eu­rope and was forced to flee her home, died on March 23. She was Amer­i­ca’s first fe­male Sec­re­tary of State, part of the Clin­ton ca­bal that bus­ied it­self fash­ion­ing a new world or­der, and was a mute wit­ness to the Rawanda mas­sacre.

The Sikh com­mu­nity in Pun­jab, and Sikhs world­wide, should be very in­ter­ested in both these news cy­cles: the hype, hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing na­tion­al­ism and hate-spew­ing ma­chine called The Kash­mir Files row, and the per­sona of Madeleine Al­bright.

It is be­cause Madeleine Al­bright wrote a part of The Kash­mir Files that the Sikh com­mu­nity needs to en­gage with, In­di­ans need to re­visit, and the world needs to ex­plore in all its dirty de­tails.

Be­tween Sikhs, Kash­mir and Madeleine Al­bright, you will see many Kash­mir Files, dis­carded into the re­cesses of our mem­ory and lost in the bloody process of fash­ion­ing out a new Hin­dutva or­der.

 Read also: ਗਵਾਚੀਆਂ ਕਸ਼ਮੀਰ ਫ਼ਾਈਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਚੱਲ ਰਹੀ ਫਿਲਮ, ਸਿੱਖਾਂ ਬਾਰੇ ਕਲਿੰਟਨ-ਬੋਲ ਅਤੇ ਖਟਕੜ ਕਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਬਸੰਤ

Since The Kash­mir Files comes highly rec­om­mended by In­di­a’s top film critic Naren­dra Modi—who is Roger Ebert, Pauline Kael, Fran­cois Truf­faut, Leonard Maltin, and a dozen more, all rolled into one—chances are that you have ei­ther al­ready watched the movie, are plan­ning to watch it, or have been lis­ten­ing to the high deci­bel de­bate and won­der­ing if you should sub­ject your­self to this cul­tural prod­uct drip­ping with na­tion­al­is­tic fer­vour and hate pro­ject at the same time, here is a hum­ble sug­ges­tion: please com­plete your Kash­mir Files with a set of three more piles of files.

The Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files, the Pathribal Files and the Brak­pora Files, all with the time stamp of “Spring of 2000 – Kash­mir.” In­dian his­tory pro­ject wrote these files within the pace of a fort­night dur­ing the sea­son Kash­miris call Sonth and Pun­jabis call Bas­ant.

Madeleine Al­bright, by dy­ing on March 23 and when The Kash­mir Files is still run­ning to packed houses, has drawn our at­ten­tion to these three chap­ters in the his­tory of Sikhs, Kash­mir and In­dia, thus mak­ing out a case for us to com­plete our Kash­mir Files.

Here are the three files, one by one, each blood­ied with gun shots, lies, de­cep­tions, and state thug­gery.

The Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files —

Hours be­fore the United States Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton was to land in New Delhi for his In­dia visit, uniden­ti­fied gun­men in army fa­tigues lined up 36 Sikhs in front of two gur­d­waras in the re­mote South Kash­mir vil­lage of Chit­tis­ingh­pora that did not even have a phone. One es­caped with a gun wound, while 35 were killed.

It was the evening of March 20, 2000.

Clearly, some force was try­ing to send a mes­sage to Wash­ing­ton. Pak­istan said In­dian se­cu­rity forces were be­hind the mas­sacre be­cause In­dia wanted to de­fame Pak­istan, while the Va­j­payee gov­ern­ment claimed it was do­ing of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mu­jahideen, both groups backed by Pak­istan.

Clin­ton was still in In­dia when the break­through came. A man called Yaqub Wa­gay, a Mus­lim res­i­dent of Chit­tis­ingh­pora, had been caught. He had led the killers to the hap­less Sikhs. By all ac­counts, Clin­ton must have been mighty im­pressed.

 Read also: ਗਵਾਚੀਆਂ ਕਸ਼ਮੀਰ ਫ਼ਾਈਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਚੱਲ ਰਹੀ ਫਿਲਮ, ਸਿੱਖਾਂ ਬਾਰੇ ਕਲਿੰਟਨ-ਬੋਲ ਅਤੇ ਖਟਕੜ ਕਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਬਸੰਤ

If he was­n’t, he would have been a cou­ple of days later. Hours be­fore Union Home Min­is­ter L K Ad­vani was to visit the mas­sacre site on March 25, 2000, about 11 miles from Chit­tis­ingh­pora, in the vil­lage of Pan­chalthan, the army and the J&K po­lice gunned down five LeT ter­ror­ists who, it said, were re­spon­si­ble for the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre of 35 Sikhs.

Ad­vani and then CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah were given a spe­cial pre­sen­ta­tion with help of site maps about how the op­er­a­tion was car­ried out.

The Patharibal Files —

Mean­while, some­thing else had hap­pened. Five men had gone miss­ing from two neigh­bour­hood vil­lages, Brar­i­ana­gan and Ha­lan, and Anant­nag town. Their kin claimed they were taken away by army men in the mid­dle of the night.

While the gov­ern­ment had claimed that five LeT ter­ror­ists were killed in a five-hour-long gun bat­tle, vil­lagers were not aware of any such shootout.

Sus­pi­cion arose that the five killed in en­counter and de­clared for­eign mil­i­tants could be the same five men ab­ducted from their houses by the army. A vil­lager from Pathribal, who saw the bod­ies of the men killed in the en­counter, recog­nised one of them as Jumma Khan, one of the ab­ducted men.

Anant­nag saw pro­ces­sions by rel­a­tives of the five miss­ing men. It be­came a ma­jor is­sue and the gov­ern­ment was forced to or­der a ju­di­cial en­quiry. There was no ex­pla­na­tion why the five dead ter­ror­ists were buried in grave­yards miles apart from each other.

The Brak­pora Files —

Pro­tes­tors, un­sat­is­fied and an­gry, marched to­wards the deputy com­mis­sion­er’s of­fice on April 3, 2000, where CRPF and po­lice opened fire, killing nine of them. Some of the dead were close rel­a­tives of the five miss­ing vil­lagers.

As the crescendo of protest rose, the J&K gov­ern­ment sus­pended a cou­ple of po­lice of­fi­cers, in­clud­ing the dis­trict po­lice chief, and or­dered that the bod­ies of the five men killed in the en­counter be ex­humed and DNA sam­ples be ex­am­ined.

The Ex­humed Files —

On April 6-7, 2000, the days of ex­huma­tion, car­ried out in full pub­lic view, rel­a­tives nar­rated lists of what a par­tic­u­lar dead man was wear­ing, the kind of ring a de­ceased had on his fin­ger or the watch on his wrist. Every sin­gle de­tail they told about those still buried six feet un­der turned out to be true.

Among many oth­ers, Muza­mil Jaleel of The In­dian Ex­press, a ster­ling jour­nal­ist known for his coura­geous writ­ings and a stick­ler to the ethics of the pro­fes­sion, was pre­sent at the ex­huma­tion site.

Nov­el­ist, es­say­ist and award win­ning au­thor Pankaj Mishra, who had reached Chit­tis­ingh­pora within a day of the mas­sacre of 35 Sikhs, de­scribes the ex­huma­tion thus: “When the bod­ies were fi­nally ex­humed, al­most two weeks af­ter the mur­ders, they were dis­cov­ered to have been badly de­faced. The chopped-off nose and chin of one man—a lo­cal shep­herd—turned up in an­other grave. The body of a lo­cal sheep and buf­falo trader was head­less—the head could­n’t be found—but was iden­ti­fied by the trousers that were in­tact un­der­neath the army fa­tigues it had been dressed in. An­other charred corpse—that of an af­flu­ent cloth-re­tailer from the city of Anant­nag, pre­sum­ably kid­napped and killed be­cause he was, like the other four men, tall and well-built and could be made to re­sem­ble, once dead, a “for­eign mer­ce­nary”—had no bul­let marks at all. Re­mark­ably, for bod­ies so com­pletely burnt, the army fa­tigues that they were dressed in were al­most brand new.”

The DNA Files — 

The truth about Patharibal was al­ready out, but ef­forts were made to cor­rupt the ev­i­dence. Muza­mil Jaleel re­ported how, on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2001, “the Hy­der­abad lab­o­ra­tory wrote to J&K Po­lice, say­ing that sam­ples sup­posed to be of a fe­male rel­a­tive of one of the vic­tims ac­tu­ally be­longed to a male.” Sim­i­larly, a sam­ple sup­posed to be of a fe­male rel­a­tive ac­tu­ally turned out to be the blood of two dif­fer­ent men. Ini­tially, the gov­ern­ment kept the scan­dal un­der wraps, but by the March of 2002, CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah told the J&K as­sem­bly that of­fi­cials had in­deed tam­pered with the DNA sam­ples.

 Read also: ਗਵਾਚੀਆਂ ਕਸ਼ਮੀਰ ਫ਼ਾਈਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਚੱਲ ਰਹੀ ਫਿਲਮ, ਸਿੱਖਾਂ ਬਾਰੇ ਕਲਿੰਟਨ-ਬੋਲ ਅਤੇ ਖਟਕੜ ਕਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਬਸੰਤ

The Barak­pora Fir­ing Probe Files —

Jus­tice S. R. Pan­dian Com­mis­sion, set up by the J&K Gov­ern­ment to in­quire into the Barak­pora fir­ing in­ci­dent in which nine peo­ple in­clud­ing rel­a­tives of Patharibal fake en­counter vic­tims were killed, in­dicted the se­cu­rity forces for “mur­der of peace­ful pro­tes­tors” and said these were clearly linked to the “faked en­counter killings in Pathribal”.

The Of­fi­cial Con­fes­sion Files —

The gov­ern­ment, through then Deputy Com­mis­sioner of Anant­nag, fi­nally ac­knowl­edged the Pathribal en­counter to be fake, con­ceded that vic­tims were “in­no­cent” and or­dered grant of Rs 1 lakh as ex gra­tia re­lief to next of their kin.

The DNA Tam­per­ing Files —

On March 15, 2002, an in­quiry into tam­per­ing of DNA ev­i­dence was or­dered, and a se­nior doc­tor and oth­ers in­volved were sus­pended. Fresh sam­ples ex­am­ined by CFSL, Kolkatta es­tab­lished the truth be­hind the Pathribal fake en­counter. In­quiry by Kuchai Com­mis­sion found that foren­sic team and po­lice had fudged the DNA sam­ples.

The Milk­man Files —

The en­tire po­lice case was built upon a man called Mo­ham­mad Yousuf Wa­gay, who, the po­lice had told Ad­vani and me­dia, had guided the “killers” to the vil­lage. His ar­rest within five days of the killings of 35 Sikhs was an­nounced in New Delhi in full glare of the world’s cam­eras by none less than the Union Home Sec­re­tary Ka­mal Pan­day. It was on the leads pro­vided by this Wa­gay guy that the po­lice had en­gaged five “for­eign ter­ror­ists” in a 5-hour-long gun bat­tle, killing all of them.

Even­tu­ally, the Anant­nag Po­lice ex­on­er­ated Mo­ham­mad Yousuf Wa­gay af­ter months of in­ves­ti­ga­tion and re­duced the charge from Sec­tion 302 for be­ing an ac­com­plice in the mur­der of 35 Sikhs to try­ing to dis­turb breach the peace (CrPC 107/​151).

It was now clear that Wa­gay was framed, that the five men killed at Pathribal and dubbed as for­eign mil­i­tants were in­no­cent lo­cal vil­lagers ab­ducted from their homes.

The Kash­mir Files had turned very, very murky.

The In­quiry Files —

Seven months af­ter killings of 35 Sikhs, CM Fa­rooq Ab­dul­lah had an­nounced a ju­di­cial com­mis­sion headed by Jus­tice Pan­dian. It was to in­quire into Chitts­ingh­pora mas­sacre as well as Pathribal fake en­counter. The good judge had com­pleted his probe into Brak­pora fir­ing and linked it to Pathribal fake en­counter, but the CM had a change of heart and de­cided there was no need to probe Chit­tis­ingh­pora. Even­tu­ally, the Pathribal case went to the CBI in 2003 which took three years to fi­nally clinch that it was a fake en­counter and a “cold-blooded” plot by In­dian Army of­fi­cers.

Back to Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files —

No one ever probed Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacres. The CBI’s re­mit was lim­ited to Pathribal. The clear con­clu­sion is that no one wants to know the truth about Chit­tis­ingh­pora.

At one stage, se­cu­rity forces claimed to have ar­rested two Lashkar mil­i­tants Mo­ham­mad Suhail Ma­lik and Wasim Ahmed, both Pak­istani na­tion­als, and recorded their dis­clo­sure about in­volve­ment in Chatis­ingh­pora mas­sacre. They were ac­quit­ted by the trial court, but the or­der was chal­lenged in the Delhi High Court which again ac­quit­ted them in May 2012.

Even­tu­ally, and silently, they were repa­tri­ated to Pak­istan. No one among the na­tion­al­ists, in­clud­ing those rec­om­mend­ing The Kash­mir Files movie as the his­tory of mil­i­tancy in the val­ley, made any noise.

* * *

But we be­gan nar­rat­ing the en­tire saga be­cause Madeleine Al­bright died on March 23 when Pun­jab was mark­ing its tryst with Sha­heed Bha­gat Singh and vow­ing to usher in an In­quilab. The rev­o­lu­tion has seem­ingly seeped into the Pun­jabi soul be­cause we have learnt to ask tough ques­tions of the pow­er­ful.

Speak­ing truth to power means ask­ing, “Who killed the 35 Sikhs in Chit­tis­ingh­pora?”

Ever since the mas­sacre, Kash­mir has re­mained agog with con­spir­acy talk. Much was pub­lished and talked about the lan­guage that the killers spoke, the names they used for each other, and how it did not have the hall­marks of acts car­ried out by Kash­miri ter­ror­ists.

In 2006, Madeleine Al­bright, the high­est-rank­ing woman in the his­tory of Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment at the time when she was US Sec­re­tary of State (1997-2001), wrote a book called “The Mighty and the Almighty: Re­flec­tions on Amer­ica, God, and World Af­fairs.” In its fore­ward, Bill Clin­ton wrote:

“Dur­ing my visit to In­dia in 2000, some Hindu mil­i­tants de­cided to vent their out­rage by mur­der­ing thirty-eight Sikhs in cold blood. If I had­n’t made the trip, the vic­tims would prob­a­bly still be alive. If I had­n’t made the trip be­cause I feared what re­li­gious ex­trem­ists might do, I could­n’t have done my job as pres­i­dent of the United States”.

When it be­came a mat­ter of con­tro­versy, the pub­lisher, Harper Collins, said the ref­er­ence to “Hindu mil­i­tants” will be re­moved in sub­se­quent print­ings. Clin­ton’s of­fice never com­mented on it.

Clin­ton’s Deputy Sec­re­tary of State, Strobe Tal­bott, who de­scribed his “four­teen meet­ings at ten lo­ca­tions in seven coun­tries on three con­ti­nents” with the then In­dian For­eign Min­is­ter Jaswant Singh in his book, “En­gag­ing In­dia,” also ex­pressed se­ri­ous Amer­i­can mis­giv­ings about the Chit­tis­ingh­pora mas­sacre.

“From the mo­ment he got off the plane, Clin­ton spoke about “shar­ing the out­rage” of the In­dian peo­ple (but) did not en­dorse the ac­cu­sa­tion that Pak­istan was be­hind the vi­o­lence since the US had no in­de­pen­dent con­fir­ma­tion,” Tal­bott writes in his book.

The In­dian gov­ern­ment never picked up a quar­rel with Clin­ton, or Al­bright, or Tal­bott.

The ap­par­ent er­ror was ag­gran­dized by Clin­ton’s re­fusal to ac­knowl­edge it, and ex­ac­er­bated by Pankaj Mishra’s book, “Temp­ta­tions of the West: How to be Mod­ern in In­dia, Pak­istan, Ti­bet and Be­yond”, where he re­peated the al­le­ga­tions against “Hindu Mil­i­tants” even af­ter the con­fes­sion of the Lashkar-e-Toiba mil­i­tant.

Pankaj Mishra weighs in on the is­sue of who killed the 35 Sikhs hours be­fore Clin­ton’s visit:

“The In­dian fail­ure to iden­tify or ar­rest even a sin­gle per­son con­nected to the killings or the killers, and the hasti­ness and bru­tal­ity of the In­dian at­tempt to stick the blame on “for­eign mer­ce­nar­ies” while Clin­ton was still in In­dia, only lends weight to the new and grow­ing sus­pi­cion among Sikhs that the mas­sacre in Chi­tis­ingh­pura was or­ga­nized by In­dian in­tel­li­gence agen­cies in or­der to in­flu­ence Clin­ton, and the large con­tin­gent of in­flu­en­tial Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists ac­com­pa­ny­ing him, into tak­ing a much more sym­pa­thetic view of In­dia as a help­less vic­tim of Is­lamic ter­ror­ists in Pak­istan and Afghanistan: a view of In­dia that some very hec­tic In­dian diplo­macy in the West had pre­vi­ously failed to achieve.” {Death in Kash­mir, by Pankaj Mishra, The New York Re­view, Sep­tem­ber 21, 2000 is­sue}

We still do not know who killed the 35 Sikhs dur­ing that Bas­ant of 2000, but since there’s much talk of a rev­o­lu­tion hav­ing been ush­ered in Pun­jab and peo­ple hav­ing learnt to ask ques­tions to the pow­er­ful and speak truth to power, may be we can muster courage to ask.

Af­ter all, the coun­try is busy learn­ing the his­tory of mil­i­tancy in Kash­mir and what hap­pened to mi­nori­ties in that Val­ley dom­i­nated by Mus­lims and seem­ingly in­fested by Po­lit­i­cal Is­lam’s ji­hadists, it is time to ask the old ques­tions with a re­newed fer­vour.

 Read also: ਗਵਾਚੀਆਂ ਕਸ਼ਮੀਰ ਫ਼ਾਈਲਾਂ, ਸ਼ਹਿਰ ਵਿੱਚ ਚੱਲ ਰਹੀ ਫਿਲਮ, ਸਿੱਖਾਂ ਬਾਰੇ ਕਲਿੰਟਨ-ਬੋਲ ਅਤੇ ਖਟਕੜ ਕਲਾਂ ਦੀ ਬਸੰਤ

How else will The Kash­mir Files be com­pleted? The Prime Min­is­ter is very keen that we go and watch this movie in a the­atre, and he has re­cently evinced a lot of in­ter­est in Pun­jab and in the wel­fare of the Sikh com­mu­nity. As Pun­jabis, and a peo­ple com­mit­ted to In­quilab which be­comes ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily Zind­abad in the vicin­ity of Khatkar Kalan, we must rec­i­p­ro­cate and de­mand that The Chit­tis­ingh­pora Files, The Pathribal Files and The Brak­pora Files be an­nexed to The Kash­mir Files so that we learn our his­tory in a whole­some way. How else will we live up to our Rang De Bas­anti and our yel­low tur­bans and our In­quilab Zind­abad slo­gans and the framed pho­to­graph of the man hang­ing in every gov­ern­ment of­fice in Pun­jab?

Af­ter all, we are a peo­ple who have al­ways held, across both sides of the Rad­cliffe Line, that Dhiyan Bhainan Sab Diyan Saan­jhiyan Hundiyan Hun. (Daugh­ters and sis­ters, our own and every­one else’s, de­serve the same re­spect and re­gard.) It will be a shame if we cheat our un­der­stand­ing of The Kash­mir Files of the highly im­por­tant and sen­si­tive an­nex­ure about moth­ers and daugh­ters of Ku­nan and Posh­para, the twin vil­lages in Kash­mir’s Kup­wara dis­trict. We must re­visit those files for the sim­ple rea­son that we also care about that jawan stand­ing atop the Kargil hill. His re­pute can­not be al­lowed to be harmed, not even by those wear­ing reg­u­la­tion is­sue fa­tigues. The Ku­nan Posh­pora Files have been gath­er­ing dust since 1991.  They won’t make a film about them; it is time for you to google about them. Oth­er­wise the Manorama Moth­ers in a dif­fer­ent cor­ner of the coun­try will hold us to shame for­ever. Please do also read about The Manorama Moth­ers Files.

You have delved deep into The 1984 Files. You know what it means for some files never to make any progress, while oth­ers make it to the sil­ver screen with a prime min­is­ter mak­ing favourable rec­om­men­da­tions and the state mak­ing it tax-free.

The sea­sonal yel­low head­gear vis­i­tors to Khatkar Kalan might not ut­ter a word about The Kash­mir Files, nei­ther will those who were first un­con­di­tion­ally with the ul­tra-na­tion­al­ists and are now stuck in an ex­is­ten­tial cri­sis of their own, nor will the Con­gress which has stopped ask­ing who killed In­dian cit­i­zens in Gu­jarat in 2002, but what about you? You can­not af­ford to re­main silent about the miss­ing files. Af­ter all, Bha­gat Singh is watch­ing you. He is right up there, be­hind you, hang­ing from the wall. The mar­tyr was an in­ter­na­tion­al­ist; he’s bound to have a con­ver­sa­tion with Madeleine Al­bright. You’ll come up as a sub­ject. They’ll prob­a­bly dis­cuss if you care?

Do you care? Please dust those files in your mem­ory and ask hard ques­tions to power. You did learn to ask ques­tions, did­n’t you? Re­mem­ber your An­dolan days?

(SP Singh is a Chandi­garh-based se­nior jour­nal­ist who has worked with ma­jor news agency/​news­pa­pers, has cov­ered Pun­jab for more than two decades and an­chors the cere­bral po­lit­i­cal weekly de­bate on tele­vi­sion, ‘Daleel with SP Singh’. His in­ter­ests en­com­pass pol­i­tics, arts, so­ci­ety, acad­e­mia, and yes, even trivia. He hardly plays ball with his hack co­hort but has the balls to write stuff like this.)