A Kashmiri filmmaker's quest to reclaim narrative through cinema

The beauty of Kashmir, nestled in outer Himalayas, has long graced Indian cinema screens. It was always a popular spot where Indian filmmakers shot romantic scenes.

Kashmiri Muslims were shown leading serene lives, devoted to farming, rearing cattle, and prayers.

In some of those Bollywood movies, a Muslim Kashmiri also used to act as a sidekick of an Indian hero who comes from the sun-battered and dusty plains to find love in the mountains of Kashmir.

But after 1989 when a popular armed revolt for independence or merger with neighbouring Pakistan erupted, Bollywood's portrayal of Kashmir migrated from docile locals to a more nationalistic and statist view.

Suddenly, the meek nature of Kashmiri people was smeared as a potential threat to India's security. Kashmiris were depicted as trouble-makers or terrorists. Or they were simply brain-washed by Pakistan without having their own agency.

But now, an upcoming move on Kashmir — Saffron Kingdom — seeks to snatch the narrative away from the powerful Bollywood.

"Bollywood has used Kashmir as a beautiful backdrop but never told the story from our perspective. Instead, we have been shown as the villains," Arfat Sheikh, 39, a Kashmiri filmmaker and the brains behind Saffron Kingdom tells TRT World.

Sheikh says he wants to challenge India's — especially Bollywood's — long-standing portrayal of Kashmiris, addressing both the lack of authentic representation and the erasure of Kashmir's history.

Sheikh, who grew up in India-administered Kashmir during the 1990s, says the film, slated for an early 2025 release, was born from his desire to reclaim his people's narrative, who have often been negatively depicted by Indian cinema.

The 90-second trailer of Saffron Kingdom has garnered over 1.5 million views across social media platforms since its premiere a week ago.

The wordplay on saffron is not accidental.

Saffron is both a premium spice and the colour associated with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which, on August 5, 2019, revoked Kashmir's constitutionally granted autonomous status. Many Kashmiris say India's decision to annex Kashmir is aimed to alter its demography, change its Muslim character and finally kill the demands for any right to self-determination.

For the BJP, saffron symbolises its connection to 'Hindutva', or Hindu nationalism.

Party members, from grassroots workers to government officials, view Kashmir through the lens of this ideology, promoting cultural and religious integration across India.

Kashmir, however, has a troubled history.

The region is split between India and Pakistan, both of which claim it in full but control only parts. The two countries have fought three wars over the territory since the partition of British India in 1947. China also holds a silver of Kashmir, making Kashmir world's only nuclear tri-junction.

Sheikh, the director of the new movie, highlights how, since the 1990s, Bollywood films depicted Kashmiris as terrorists, further dehumanising the region's people.

This trend, he argues, has persisted, reinforcing stereotypes that cast suspicion on Kashmiris. He points to recent films, where the premise often centres around combating terrorism, with Kashmiris portrayed as the terrorists.

Preserving Kashmir's collective memory

India's BJP has long maintained that the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35A, which granted Kashmir limited autonomy, were temporary provisions that needed to be revoked. Since August 5, 2019, the Indian government has claimed that Kashmir's security has significantly improved.

But critics say otherwise.

According to a report by The Wire, over 40 journalists in Kashmir faced harassment in the two years following the revocation of Article 370, with many being summoned, raided, or subjected to background checks.

Award-winning journalists and those looking to work abroad were barred from travelling, and many had their passports impounded without explanation.

The government's crackdown on media has led to a print industry heavily reliant on state advertising, resulting in a pro-government bias in news coverage. As a result, self-censorship has become widespread, silencing critical voices and leaving a noticeable gap in the region's media landscape.

Sheikh says that this suppression has made it difficult to preserve Kashmir's collective memory.

His film aims to counter this by providing a humanised portrayal of Kashmiris and documenting historical events from their perspective.

"This film is my way of breaking Bollywood's hegemony over our narrative. It's about debunking the lies they have been peddling for years," he tells TRT World.

However, making the film in Kashmir was not an option. "I would not have even gotten permission to shoot. Art is persecuted in Kashmir," he says.

Faced with these challenges, Sheikh decided to start the project in the United States, where he believed he could find a global audience to narrate Kashmir's story. His journey as a filmmaker began long before, but the rise of the hard-right BJP in India made it clear to him that creating such a film in Kashmir would be impossible.

"Art is personal. You cannot create without having a personal connection to what you are making," he says, reflecting on his upbringing during a time of intense military presence in India-administered Kashmir.

The filmmaker recounts his childhood in the 1990s, when the Indian military conducted regular crackdowns in the region.

"As a child, I did not fully understand it, but there was always fear," he says, describing how soldiers would force men out of their homes and subject them to humiliating treatment.

He recalls traumatic memories of being locked in a room with his family while the military interrogated and brutalised his uncle. "It is not just about physical pain — it is about degrading someone's dignity," he says, emphasising the lasting scars these experiences left.

The conflict deeply affected his family. His father, a renowned Kashmiri musician, was murdered while travelling to Indian state of Punjab. "His death was reported in newspapers, but each paper had its own version of events. We were not even given his body," he says.

The lack of closure, coupled with the media's misrepresentation of his father's death, left a lasting impression on Sheikh. "I felt voiceless," he says.

It was not until he began working in the non-profit sector, travelling to remote areas of Kashmir, that he realised the scale of suffering others had endured. "What happened to my father was nothing compared to what others had gone through. People watched their fathers being killed in front of them," he says.

Driven by a sense of duty to tell these stories, Sheikh turned to documentary filmmaking but found the non-profit sector limiting. "The documentaries would just go on YouTube and reach funders, but they did not have the impact I wanted," he says.

'It is time the world heard it'

This realisation pushed him toward fiction filmmaking, where he felt he could recreate the stories that needed to be told.

In a twist of fate, Sheikh received his US visa on the same day the Indian government abrogated Article 370, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status.

"I remember being in line at the US Embassy in Delhi, wondering what Amit Shah was going to announce," he recalls.

When the news came through, he wept in an Uber on his way out of the embassy. The driver assumed his tears were because his visa had been rejected.

The abrogation of Article 370 became a key plot point for the protagonist in his film, a Kashmiri living in America who begins to explore his family's past and why they left Kashmir in the first place.

The film delves into the events of the 1990s, blending a diasporic narrative with a reflection on the region's history.

"It is a way of balancing the act," he says, noting how the film reflects on the past while engaging with the present-day struggles of Kashmiris.

"We have been kept under their boots for too long," he says, adding that the film is his way of reclaiming his voice and telling the story of Kashmiris who have been silenced for decades.

"This is our story," Sheikh says, "and it is time the world heard it."