‘Article 370’ movie review: Yami Gautam steers this explainer on the government’s Kashmir policy

As audiences warm up to the election season, filmmakers have begun their share of canvassing. The first out of the block is Article 370, a persuasive sarkari explainer on the government’s Kashmir policy that led to the abrogation of the contentious constitutional provision on August 5, 2019.

Like a fancy PowerPoint presentation backed by a thumping background score, director Aditya Suhas Jambhale efficiently joins the dots that often get lost in the din of electronic news channel debates. The timing of the release doesn’t seem like a coincidence. Aditya Dhar’s Uri (2019) efficiently dramatised what went behind the surgical strike against Pakistan after the Uri attack of 2016. That film was also released in an election year. Dhar is a co-producer and co-writer of Article 370 and his better half and competent actor Yami Gautam leads the team here as intelligence officer Zooni Haksar. A Kashmiri Pandit, who has a personal grudge against the corrupt political leadership of the State, Zooni is strategically positioned to peddle the us vs them narrative.

But in its effort to demonise the Kashmiri leadership, the film reveals a lot about their erstwhile friends in Delhi. For those who choose to see, it gives the impression that the present dispensation chose to pick technicality over constitutional morality on the Kashmir issue. And that human rights violations are an option for its officers. In an important scene after the Burhan Wani encounter, when her senior officer asks Zooni what could she have done differently, she says, she would not have returned the body of an alleged terrorist to the family and towards the end shows that she could do it. It leaves us with the thought of whether the land is more important than the people. All the talk of providing reservation to the scheduled castes and tribes sounds hollow for a film that sees Kashmir as an integral part of India invests very little in depicting Kashmiris as people with flesh and blood. They are presented as opportunistic parasites for whom 370 was an article of faith, literally.