Clarion India
NEW DELHI – ‘The Kashmir Files’, a controversial movie on the exodus of Pandits from the Kashmir Valley, will be banned in multi-racial Singapore for ‘its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the on-going conflict in Kashmir’, a media report said on Monday.
The authorities have assessed the Hindi-language film to be ‘beyond’ Singapore’s film classification guidelines, said the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in a joint statement with the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA).
‘The film will be refused classification for its provocative and one-sided portrayal of Muslims and the depictions of Hindus being persecuted in the on-going conflict in Kashmir,’ the authorities told Channel News Asia.
‘These representations have the potential to cause enmity between different communities, and disrupt social cohesion and religious harmony in our multiracial and multi-religious society,’ they said.
Under the film classification guidelines, ‘any material that is denigrating to racial or religious communities in Singapore’ will be refused classification, they added.
The Vivek Agnihotri-directed movie, being screened in India since March , is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from the Kashmir Valley in the 1990s due to militancy.
The film, written and directed by Agnihotri, stars Anupam Kher, Mithun Chakraborty and Pallavi Joshi in lead roles.
