‘The Kashmir files’ bans in Singapore

Singapore city, May 10 Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri’s film ‘The Kashmir Files’ was banned in Singapore on Tuesday, triggering strong reactions from the filmmaker.
The authorities in Singapore said they have assessed the Hindi-language film The Kashmir Files to be “beyond” Singapore’s film classification guidelines. This was announced in a statement issued by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) in a joint statement with Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Singapore’s news channel CNA reported on Monday.
“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 CNA.
“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.”
“Under the film classification guidelines, any material that is denigrating to racial or religious communities in Singapore will be refused classification,” they added.
Congress leader Shashi Tharoor shared the news on his twitter saying, “Film promoted by India’s ruling party, #KashmirFiles, banned in Singapore.”
Tharoor’s take on film ban attracted many reactions.
The film’s writer and director Agnihotri said that Singapore is most regressive censor in the world and urged him to stop making fun of it.
“…Singapore is most regressive censor in the world,” Agnihotri said in a tweet.

“It even banned The Last Temptations of Jesus Christ (ask your madam) Even a romantic film called TheLeelaHotelFiles will be banned. Pl stop making fun of Kashmiri Hindu Genocide,” Agnihotri tweeted.
Actor Anupam Kher, who performed as one of the main lead in the movie, also reacted to Tharror’s tweets and shared an old screenshot of a tweet by Tharoor’s late wife Sunanda Pushkar.
“Sunanda Pushkar wanted to talk about the genocide of 1990. But she was asked to shut up. She had to make the decision of being a wife and shutting up so that Shashi Tharoor’s political ambitions were’nt hampered. But she wanted to talk. That’s exactly what #The Kashmir Files does,” Kher tweeted.
Based on the Kashmiri Pandit genocide of the 1990s, ‘The Kashmir Files’ had hit the sliver screen on March 11 this year.
The film starred Anupam Kher, Pallavi Joshi, Darshan Kumar, Mithun Chakraborty, Krishna Pandit and Chinmay Mandlekar, among others.