“Welcome to the most dangerous place in the world.”

“And the most beautiful.”

This exchange between two army officers in the 2010 film Lamhaa encapsulates Bollywood’s myth-making about Kashmir – beauty and turmoil.

This schematization presents Kashmir either as an exoticised pastoral escape or a symbol to articulate the idea of Indian nationhood. The representation invisiblizes the true political, social, and ideological state of Kashmiri natives.

It’s this spectre of Kashmir that continues to haunt all depictions of the region in Hindi cinema even today. When Dibakar Banerjee’s film, Tees, was shelved by Netflix for being “anti-establishment,” it sparked discussion on the censorship of films about Kashmir. But when it was finally screened at the Dharamsala Film Festival last month, it’s clear that even seemingly progressive films about Kashmir aren’t immune to presenting a narrow view on the region and its complexities.

Tees tells the story of three generations of a Kashmiri family, spanning three different timelines: 90's Kashmir, present-day Mumbai, and dystopian Delhi in the future.

In 2042, Delhi, a young writer, Anhad Draboo (Shashank Arora), is grappling with his identity as a plebeian and a Kashmiri in dystopian India – an extreme surveillance state where all movements, expressions, and lives are monitored and controlled by the state. Zia Draboo (Huma Qureshi), Anhad’s mother, is a second-generation Kashmiri woman who spent her childhood in Kashmir during the 90s and now lives with her partner Meera in present-day Mumbai. Zia and Anhad are the filmmaker’s representation of modern Kashmiris: Zia, an atheist who is only reminded of her Kashmiri identity through the reluctance of the Mumbai landlords selling their apartment because of her Kashmiri last name. And Anhad, a sex worker, only recalls his Kashmiri roots when he decides to write a cookbook about Kashmiri cuisine.

The only time the film grapples with the Kashmiri identity crisis is when it’s dealing with a Kashmiri living in an Indian metropolitan city: one who has left their homeland, shunned their Kashmiri identity, and secularised themselves. The ‘pashmina’ shawl, and the ethnic cuisine, a token of Kashmir’s ‘exotic’ culture remain their only connection with the homeland – and also, the only gaze through which Kashmiris are acceptable to Indian imagination.

In the part of the film set in 90’s Kashmir, against the backdrop of the Kashmiri Pandit exodus, Ayesha Draboo (Manisha Koirala), a Kashmiri Muslim and Anhad’s grandmother, and Zia’s mother is introduced as a ‘good’ Kashmiri: she likes to watch Ramayana on TV, wants to embrace modernity, and fits within the secular imagination of the Indian State. She is friends with Usha (Divya Dutta), a Kashmiri Pandit, and both share a passion for cooking Kashmiri cuisine. Ayesha harbors latent jealousy for her friend’s skills, seeking Usha’s approval each time they cook together. Initially, she is seen to be sympathetic to her Kashmiri Hindu friend’s situation. But as the film progresses, Ayesha fails to make it as a ‘modern’, ‘secularised,’ Kashmiri, dropping the facade of an empathetic secular person, and revealing her true Kashmiriness: in the final scene, when she catches her son and househelp with a tape which has the recordings of the speeches and slogans of militant organisations. She eventually accepts his actions and directs him to get Usha’s cookbook after he ransacks her house. Thus, a Kashmiri who is not able to escape their ethnic and cultural identity, becomes a signifier of modernity’s other, who robs her Hindu friend’s cookbook, hence her culture and identity. Like Ayesha, Kashmiri Muslims who were ‘left’ in Kashmir, are, in Bollywood’s imagination, complicit in the turmoil and violence during the exodus of Pandits, disregarding the complexity and the context of the Kashmir conflict. While we are made to feel sympathetic towards Zia and Anhad, who are symbols of the modern metropolitan Indian identity, Ayesha’s character is not afforded such sympathy. This depiction presents Kashmiris as manifestations of the fantasies and anxieties of mainland India; either as a perpetrator of violence, always a threat to the imagination of a secular India, or a Kashmiri who has departed from their Kashmiriness, which is shown through a hackneyed rendering of culture, dress, and religious identity. It suggests that the “ethnic,” Muslim Kashmiriness needs to be shunned for one to be accepted and empathised within the mainland Indian imagination.

The portrayal of Kashmir in Bollywood began shortly after India’s independence, with what many consider as the first Bollywood film to be shot in Kashmir: Raj Kapoor’s Barsaat (1949). The film follows a rich young man from mainland India who goes holidaying in Kashmir’s serene landscapes hoping to discover himself. The self discovery is enabled when the protagonist falls in love with a local girl, and he comes out transformed. These serene landscapes, meadows, lakes, and shikaras became the signifiers of romance, a pastoral escape for the new non-Kashmiri metropolitan Indian, as seen in films like Kashmir Ki Kali (1964), Junglee (1961), and Arzoo (1965). In all these films, Kashmiris were either completely absent from the plot or they only existed in the sphere of serving the Indian tourist. Shashi Kapoor in Jab Jab Phool Khile (1965), plays a Kashmiri boatman, Rishi Kapoor in Rahi Badal Gaye (1985), a tourist guide, and Sharmila Tagore in Kashmir Ki Kali plays a woman selling flowers to tourists. These representations of Kashmiris, portrayed through the outsider gaze, invisiblized the subjectivities of Kashmiris, and reduced them to a cultural artefact only to be distinguished through the cultural markers of dress, accent, and folk ethnicity.

But with the rise of militantism in the Valley in the 80s, the portrayal of Kashmir in Bollywood shifted from representing Kashmir as the paradise on earth to a “paradise in peril.” The landscape of Kashmir turned into the fighting ground against the nation’s ‘enemies’, who threatened not only paradise, but also the idea of a united Indian nation-state. This trend began with the film Roja (1992), directed by Mani Ratnam, where the categories of Muslim, terrorist, and Kashmiri seem to collapse into each other. Roja initiated significant debates around the portrayal of Muslims and in particular Kashmiri Muslims. Suddenly, namaz turned into a signifier of violence – militants in these films were shown to perform the prayer right before an act of aggression. Adherence to Islam was shown to be in direct contestation with the accepting, pacifist, peace-loving Hindu counterpart, whose religious identity as Hindu is never in conflict with the secularism of Indian nation-state. For instance, Rishi and Roja from Roja are shown to be practising Hindus, but their Hinduness completely harmonises with the idea of Indian nation-state.

When Kashmiri Muslims are portrayed as “safe,” it’s with caveats. Take the frantic Wasim Khan in Roja (1992), or a Shakeel Ahmed in Yahaan (2005). These orthodox ‘bad’ Muslims are consistently contrasted with secularised Muslims who aren't motivated by religious extremism but the idea of Sufi Islam – a softened pacifist version which within the context of Bollywood, represents a shift from orthodox to a secular understanding of Islam. Inspector Khan (Sanjay Dutt) of Mission Kashmir is a Muslim police officer from mainland India, is married to a Hindu woman, and is working with the state to neutralise the ‘bad’, ‘radical’, Kashmiri Muslims, making him an example of an acceptable ‘good’ Muslim. Ada from the film Yahaan, is a Kashmiri Muslim girl who falls in love with an Indian Hindu army officer. She likes to wear jeans, and dons the dupatta on her shoulders, which is shown in contrast to her friends who wear fully veiled scarves. Fanaa (2006), tells the story of Rehan (Aamir Khan), a Kashmiri separatist militant conspiring against the Indian state, versus the woman he loves, Zooni (Kajol), a “good” pro-India Kashmiri Muslim.

These narrative strategies in films featuring Kashmiri people evolved over the years, shaping themselves according to the political discourse of the country – but they nevertheless share the same DNA. As opposed to love stories of the past, recent Bollywood action movies like Siddharth Anand’s Fighter (2024) featured the ‘good’ Muslim – a Muslim Army personnel who dies in the service of the nation – against a ‘bad,’ brainwashed Kashmiri Muslim, who plots an attack on the Indian Army. In Pathaan (2023), the abrogation of Article 370 is the fulcrum of this binary: India’s enemy (Pakistan) doesn’t approve of the abrogation, and plans to attack India, but the religiously ambiguous hero (Shah Rukh Khan) valiantly saves the day. Kashmir only serves as the initiator of the action, invoking patriotism in the heart of the hero, the Saviour, while Kashmiris or their sentiments are nowhere to be seen.

Though many such Kashmiri films have been overtly aligned with the political dispensations of their time, critiquing a film like Tees, which presents itself as a critical take, also becomes imperative. While the film adopts an anti-establishment stance by building its narrative around hyper-surveillance, censorship, and the restriction of citizens, it still falls into the same trope when representing Kashmiris. Banerjee, too, portrays the ‘Kashmiri’ and ‘Muslim’ through the lens of the Indian imagination, categorizing them in predefined roles as ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ ‘orthodox’ or ‘secularized’ Kashmiri Muslims.

Which is to say, the story of Kashmir can never be told authentically as long as the storytellers are from the mainland. Which is why Kashmiri films like Maagh - The Winter Within, and Harud (Autumn) directed by Aamir Bashir remain the few Kashmir films to grapple with the reality of the valley – and also the least platformed. Maagh, which was screened at the same film festival last year, faced significant challenges such as shadow banning at nearly all film festivals in India, and receiving minimal media coverage. As a Kashmiri filmmaker, Bashir brings an insider’s perspective to his work. These films humanized Kashmiris, portraying them as individuals with lives and identities beyond the reductive schematization often seen in Bollywood. Similarly, films like Abir Bazaz and Meenu Gaur’s Paradise on a River of Hell (2001), have attempted to avert the outsider gaze and imbibe Kashmiri subjectivities into their films.

As films created by Kashmiri filmmakers, these stories remain crucial in challenging dominant narratives, and deserve greater recognition and discourse. It becomes important that the Kashmiris are given agency and space to tell their own stories — and break-out Kashmir from its portrayal as a mere plot point — be it Kashmiri Muslims or Kashmiri Pandits. This support is crucial and perhaps may provide an answer to the question asked in the 2014 film, Haider: “Hum hai ki hum nahi?” (“Do we exist or do we not?”)