BOYCOTT AND SUPPORT HASHTAGS ATTACH THEMSELVES TO 'HAIDER', A MOVIE ON HUMAN RIGHTS IN KASHMIR

NEW DELHI: The first stirrings of controversy have started hitting Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” set in Kashmir on the social media. The film turns the Prince of Denmark into a philosophy student from Kashmir, who returns home from university when he hears that his father has disappeared.

It turns out that Haider’s father is killed by paramilitaries recruited by the Indian authorities, with the film making a bold comment on human rights abuse in Jammu and Kashmir --the border state that has fuelled insurgency and wars between India and Pakistan.

The international media reviewing the movie even before its released predicted the controversy. A report in the Guardian, UK for instance stated, “It is likely to be controversial however. Set during the 1990s, the most intense years of the ongoing insurgency which has pitted Kashmiri militants and separatists against security forces and their local auxiliaries for more than two decades, Haider includes graphic scenes of torture in Indian army camps and other human rights abuses by Indian officials. The father of Hamlet, or Haider, turns out to have been killed by paramilitaries recruited by the Indian authorities and run by his uncle. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are local men who are paid informants for police intelligence.

Violence in Kashmir, disputed by India and Pakistan since the two countries won their independence from Britain in 1947, has ebbed in recent years, but extreme sensitivities remain in India about the conflict and its history.

"What happened in Kashmir is a very human tragedy, but no one is talking about it. But once you talk of it, you are released from it. What I am saying is the truth. It should be like a balm on a wound," said Bhardwaj.”

The movie has just been released in the cinema theatres in India, having passed the scrutiny of the censor board.

Predictably the bold theme has angered some very vocal members of the Twitterati. Tweets with the hashtag #BoycottHaider have accused the film for pushing a “separatist agenda” and have called for the film’s boycott for its portrayal of the Indian army.

Others hit out at Vishal Bhardwaj directly:

Still others took offence to the film demonstrating the plight of Kashmiri Muslims:

However, the democratic platform that the internet provides ensured that, despite the hate tags, the majority of voices supported the film and ridiculed the call for boycott: