A social media post showing a woman lashing out at the creators of a movie for not presenting the actual suffering of the Kashmiri Pandit community has gone viral with a claim that it shows the reaction of a "Hindu woman" after watching Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri's The Kashmir Files.
The post consists of a video on top and screenshots from two videos at the bottom in the form of a collage.
The Kashmir Files, which is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Hindus in the 1990, has drawn a mixed response from the public and critics. While many have criticised the movie for not depicting the accurate facts, some have endorsed it heavily.
However, we found that the viral video didn't show a woman criticising The Kashmir Files. It could be traced back to the year 2020 and showed a Kashmiri Pandit woman lashing out at Bollywood film director and producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra at a screening of the movie Shikara.
CLAIM
The claim shared with the viral post states, "दा कश्मीर मूवी पूरी फर्जी बनाई गई है इसका सच आया सामने थ्येटर में एक हिंदू महिला भड़की कहा की यह मूवी पूरी फर्जी है इस मूवी में सच्चाई नहीं दिखाई गई इस मूवी का उद्देश्य है हिंदू मुस्लिम को लड़वाना है ।"
(Translation: The Kashmir Files movie is completely fake, the truth of it came out when a Hindu woman in the theatre called the movie totally fake and added that the truth is not shown in this movie. The purpose of this movie is to make Hindus and Muslims fight.)
The video was shared widely on Facebook and Twitter, archives of which can be found here and here.
We also received the video as a query on our WhatsApp tipline.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
When we looked at the video, we noticed a floating text on the video that said, "Reaction to Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Shikara movie which secularised the massacre of Kashmiri Pandits."
Using that, we conducted a keyword search for "woman lashing out at Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Shikara" and found news reports that carried the viral video. News channel Times Now had tweeted the video from the their Twitter handle on 7 February 2020.
The report in India Today stated that the incident occurred in Connaught Place, Delhi.
According to the woman, the movie didn't portray the suffering of the Kashmiri Pandits accurately. "As a Kashmiri Pandit, I disown your film, I disown it," said the woman.
Shikara is a 2020 film made on the life of a Kashmiri Pandit couple who had to leave their home in the state after insurgency peaked in the 1990s.
We then cropped the photos at the bottom of the viral post and conducted a reverse image search on Google with "The Kashmir Files" as keywords and found the videos from which the screenshots were taken.
The first screenshot was taken from a video showing the reaction of a woman while meeting Agnihotri after watching the movie. The video was put out as a tweet by Bombay Times. The second screenshot was taken from a video shared by Agnihotri on his social media handles.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
While this video does not show the woman criticising The Kashmir Files, the movie has received criticism for not depicting accurate facts and trying to widen the prejudice against Muslims.
Meanwhile, several BJP-ruled states announced that the film will be made tax-free and some have also announced other special measures to increase the audience for the film. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, too, endorsed the movie.
Evidently, an old video of a woman lashing out after watching Shikara was incorrectly linked with The Kashmir Files.
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