New Delhi: Filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri had, on May 26, 2022, put out a tweet regarding the itinerary of his Humanity Tour, which featured an event at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. The Wire reached out to the museum to confirm this event, and received a statement from the press office of the Jewish Museum (Stiftung Jüdisches Museum Berlin), rebutting this, saying, “There is no event planned with Mr. Agnihotri from our side, nor are we aware of any official visit to the museum,”
Off to a month long #HumanityTour of Europe to spread awareness about the problems of Genocide & Terrorism and how Indic Principles of Humanity can solve this biggest threat of the modern world. pic.twitter.com/dluKQbi99f
— Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) May 26, 2022
The Wire published this information in a news item, ‘Jewish Museum in Berlin Rebuts Vivek Agnihotri’s Claim of Organizing “ Humanity Tour” Event’, noting that this contradicted the public statement issued by Agnihotri.
On June 24, The Wire received an email from Agnihotri’s team alleging bad faith on the subject of his ‘Humanity Tour’.
The Agnihotri team letter and The Wire‘s response are appended below.
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Letter from Ajay Chowdhry, EU-Coordinator-Humanity Tour
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Naomi Barton and Alishan Jafri respond:
1. Mr Chowdhry has alleged that The Wire has “distorted a well considered change in itinerary by the tour organisers. Your story, therefore, reeks of malice and goes against all media ethics. You could have simply connected with the organisers of the tour before jumping to pre-determined conclusions.”
In fact, The Wire’s Naomi Barton reached out to Vivek Agnihotri on WhatsApp and on SMS the day before the article in question went to print.
Barton’s question said, “Hi Mr Agnihotri, my name is Naomi Barton and I’m getting in touch about a story. I contacted the Jewish Museum in Berlin with regards to the event your promotional materials have said will be taking place there, and they have said that they are not aware of any event or official visit by you. Would you care to comment?” and was sent at 5.33 pm, on 18/06/2022 on WhatsApp, and received no response.
The Wire waited until 1.30 pm of 19/06/2022, the next day, to go live with the article, giving Agnihotri ample time to respond.
The Wire has, to that end, fulfilled its obligation to connect with the subject of the story in question to get their side of the story before publishing. This despite the fact that the claim about an event at the Jewish Museum had been made directly by Agnihotri on Twitter.
The story also avoided any conclusions, and stated the facts, which were that a piece of information put into the public domain by Agnihotri was inaccurate.
The article went on to provide relevant context regarding the other overseas institutions that have either (a) explicitly distanced themselves from being associated with Agnihotri’s promotion in the way in which he has positioned it (see, Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge University), (c) Implicitly denied Agnihotri affiliation and amplification after having made a commitment (see, Oxford Union, Oxford University, Foreign Correspondents’ Club (FCC), and (c)Explicitly established that Agnihotri’s film is antithetical to the furtherance of religious amity (See, Singapore.)
All of these are facts, not conclusions.
2. In his letter to The Wire, Chowdhry says:
“We had planned a meet-up of Jewish community and local Kashmiri Hindus at the Jewish Museum, Berlin. However, when during their recent visit to Scotland, Mr. Agnihotri and Ms. Joshi were invited by Mr. Harvey Chaplin, the Director of the oldest Jewish Synagogue and Holocaust Museum in Glasgow for an official visit on the 3rd June 2022 (videos and photos are in the public domain), we chose to avoid repetition and went ahead with another already scheduled event at Tegelerseeterassen, Alt Tegel, Berlin, instead of the Museum. It was addressed by Mr. Nico Bauch-German Jurist , a holocaust surviver and intellectual , and Dr. Amjad Ayub Mirza, a victim of Mirpur Genocide. This event, held on the 20th of June, was attended by people from various ethnic communities and local populace.”
However, Agnihotri’s change in public engagements, notwithstanding the motivations behind them, were not communicated to the public.
Even if Agnihotri had made a public statement regarding his change in commitments, this statement implies that a choice was made to avoid repetition by holding an event at the Jewish Museum, Berlin, as stated in the itinerary. However, no such event had been planned with the Jewish Museum itself – so the claim of a “change in plans” still does not address the fact that the event did not exist in any real form, and as such, its presence on a tour itinerary was misleading at best.
3. Chowdhry says:
“The news item in The Wire is misleading. Instead of trying to paint Kashmiri Hindus, organisers of #HumanityTour, who are also the victims of Genocide, as liars, you could have reached out to ascertain facts. If you are unable to have empathy for us, the least you can do is to not violate our safe spaces to share our pain with those who have empathy and compassion for our mass PTSD afflicted community. We perceive your malicious, non-factual hit job as soft targeting of a victimised community and soft Genocide denial.”
At no point in the article has The Wire painted Kashmiri Hindus as liars. What was said was that certain information put into the public domain by Vivek Agnihotri about his tour was false. The Wire also rejects the idea that it could have violated a safe space given that its report was specifically regarding an event which had not even been organised, rendering the ‘safe space’ in question non-existent.
It is also on record that both reporters affiliated with this story, Naomi Barton and Alishan Jafri, have previously spoken on the truth of the violence that the film the Kashmir Files has portrayed.
To quote from a review by Naomi Barton published 20th March:
“There is also much that is based on facts – the main characters are a mashup of militant leaders Bitta Karate and Yasin Malik. The brutal bisection of a Kashmiri Pandit woman after her disrobing can be seen as a reference to Sarla Bhat’s gang rape and bodily mutilation.
Slogans calling for the creation of an Azad Kashmir “without Hindu men, with Hindu women”, have also been reported by some of those who were there in their narratives, albeit a few years after the exodus. As Sanjay Kak notes in his review of Ankur Dutta’s On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits and the Jammu Camps (2017):
…The proximity to truth that this film has is best left to those Kashmiri Pandits who are in possession of this haunting legacy of memories. To elide the truth of the brutalities that informed the Kashmiri Pandit exodus is unambiguously wrong; for the criticism of this film, it is also unnecessary.”
To quote from a review by Alishan Jafri published 29th March:
“A film based on an extreme human tragedy ideally should lead to reconciliation and reflection.”
“Filling powerless minority groups with vicarious guilt and shame for the tragic exodus of Kashmiri Pandits while simultaneously erasing and often celebrating the immense violence (like Gujarat 2002) the minorities have historically faced…”
“The gut-wrenching story of Kashmiri Pandits should not be weaponised for stoking anti-Muslim violence.”
Apart from refuting Chowdhry’s assertion that our story amounted to ‘soft targeting of a victimised community and soft genocide denial’, we would like to say that the idea that the marketing team of Kashmir Files, as well as Vivek Agnihotri himself, are the sole spokespersons of the entire Kashmiri Pandit community is misguided – and contributes to the harmful idea that there can be a monopoly on a narrative as complex as this one.
A prominent Kashmiri Pandit activist has alleged harassment by workers of the BJP due to his remarks against the film, and many Kashmiri Pandits have gone on record to speak out against the explicitly anti-Muslim stance the film takes.