Supreme Court rejected the plea of a producer who had challenged Film Censor Board asking deletion of some portions of a film he has made on Kashmir. The Supreme Court has come out with scathing criticism of so-called human rights activists who are more prejudiced and want to project their own views instead of the views of the people in general. It is a very realistic judgment and should go a long way in curbing a tendency among Indian film makers who are taking pleasure in promoting the views of militants, separatists and secessionists in Kashmir.
Prior to this, a number of documentary films have been made on Kashmir insurgency by Indian film makers with clear and tacit trend of supporting the insurgents and terrorists and espousing their cause as a human rights issue. The film makers know that they are advertently misrepresenting history but they do it partly for pecuniary benefits and partly to curry favour with a particular section of society. We will not rule out the possibility of some unknown handlers prompting the film makers to produce films that show the Government, the army and the local administration in bad light. We have no dearth of NGOs and media organizations having earned bad name for playing in the hands of anti-national elements inside and outside the country. We are reminded that even NGOs like World Watch and Amnesty International have more often than not adopted hostile attitude towards the Government of India and the State Government by projecting baseless and unfounded stories of violation of human rights in Kashmir. They see violation of human rights in security forces playing their role to maintain law and order in the State. To them disruption of law and order, calls for strikes, pelting of stones, throwing bombs on policemen on duty, kidnapping civilians and torturing them for alleged pro-Indian proclivities or punishing them for casting their vote in the elections, killing of Sarpanchs and Panchs for not opposing the elections etc. all these activities are not considered violation of human rights by them and they would not speak about these. But a stray incident of a stone thrower getting wounded or arrested by police for breaking law and order becomes a big subject for discussion to catch the headlines of newspapers.
There have been several instances, wherein a host of NGOs dabbling with human rights and organizations calling themselves protectors of the rights of people in Kashmir with links to militant organizations outside the country are funded by unknown benefactors. A lot of hawala money goes to these sources to keep up the tempo of anti-India propaganda.
As against this, they never raise the question of human rights of policemen, security personnel and innocent civilians who get killed in unprovoked firing or bomb hurling or stone pelting by the terrorists and their associates. They think that a policeman has no human rights because he is in khaki. But they forget that the policeman sacrifices his life for protecting the rights of others. The same is true of a jawan from the Army or BSF. It has become a culture in our country to emulate the anti-state uprising as people’s movement like the movement of Naxalites and Maoists. The sections of media or film industry look only how to become popular among the people right or wrong since they are not accountable to anybody. On the other hand the defence organization is accountable to the administration, to the Government and to the Parliament. A soldier or a BSF jawan or a policeman cannot fire a single shot without the orders from superior authorities. This is not the case with a militant. He hurls bomb on policemen in public in which the policeman may escape the assault but innocent civilians around get killed and wounded while the assailant runs away and mixes in the crowd to escape arrest. Whose human rights are violated?
We welcome the decision as well as the comments of the Supreme Court disallowing film makers to project only one side of the case and ignore the other side. This will put a halt to many offensive, untrue and biased films that would be produced on Kashmir. The Apex Court has thus saved the civil society from an attempt of misleading it in the case of Kashmir insurgency.
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