The Kashmir Files: Congress leader Digvijaya Singh hits back at Vivek Agnihotri’s comments about ‘Bhopalis’

The Kashmir Files have dominated both the box office and headlines for a while now. Director Vivek Agnihotri, who has courted his fair share of controversies, recently entered murky waters yet again with his comments.

In a recent interview with OpIndia, Agnihotri is heard talking about how, even though he had grown up in Bhopal, he did not refer to himself as a ‘Bhopali’. The director claimed that the term had certain ‘wrong’ connotations. When people heard the word ‘Bhopali’ they would assume that the person in question was homosexual, or had ‘nawabi urges’.

The filmmaker’s comments were not well received. Congress leader Digvijaya Singh clapped back at Agnihotri’s comments in a Twitter post. The politician said that the filmmaker’s comments must have reflected the latter’s personal experiences, but that was not the case for ‘ordinary’ citizens of Bhopal. Saying that he himself was a Bhopali and had lived there for 77 years, Singh took a dig at Agnihotri again, saying that the company one keeps will have its effects no matter where one stays.

The Kashmir Files is based on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits that took place in the 1990s. Agnihotri had earlier talked about how much research he had undertaken for the film, taking testimonials from almost 700 Kashmiri Pandits. Pallavi Joshi, Agnihotri’s wife who produced and starred in the film, had said that although the film was four years in the making, actual shooting had been done within a month. The research and other aspects involved had taken up most of their time and effort.

Agnihotri had also talked of the other ‘challenges’ he faced in bringing the film to screens, mentioning that he had received threats which forced him to deactivate his Twitter account at one point.