SRINAGAR: In J&K State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) may continue sending notices to the state government to help psychologically rehabilitate the shawl-maker Farooq Dar, who was tied to a bonnet of the jeep by an army major, minutes after he cast his vote. But the incident of the human shield is being celebrated as an act of valour and patriotism.
Last week, it was a T-shirt that was in news for the same reason. This time, it is a major action film Baaghi-2 that almost starts with the scene in which the lead role takes a human shield. Tiger Shroff plays the lead role of the army officer Ranveer Pratap Singh in the film.
In the Sajid Nadiadwala film, an army officer is seen using a man in Kashmir, possibly a militant or a stone pelter, as a human shield, tying him to the hood of his jeep to protect himself from an angry crowd.
This is exactly what Major Nitin Leetul Gogoi of the 53-Rashtriya Rifles on April 9, 2017, with Farooq dar, minutes after he had cast his vote in a Lok Sabha election that sent Dr Farooq Abdullah to the Lok Sabha. After Farooq was set free, it created a fierce debate within the civil society and even the armed forces. Despite scathing criticism of the action, the Army honoured Gogoi for his efforts in the counter-insurgency operations. Even the political establishment supported the Major.
It was after many days when Dar was admitted to the hospital for the severe psychological crisis that the SHRC took up the case. It finally directed the state government to pay Dar compensation, which the state government refused saying neither of its agency was involved in the human shield making. Police had registered an FIR but it was not immediately known if the investigations were completed or not.
The film has been adversely commented for the distasteful display of a patriotism.
“After the opening sequence, in which Neha (Disha Patani) is badly beaten and left by the side of the road by carjackers, the action shifts to Kashmir and army officer Ranveer Pratap Singh (Tiger Shroff) thrashing militants—or is it stone-pelters?—in the snow,” Udhai Bhatia reviled in the Mint newspaper. “The next scene shows him using one of these men as a human shield, tied to the hood of his jeep to protect him from an angry crowd. Irrespective of where you stand on the moral implications of such an action (which mirrors an actual incident that took place last year in Kashmir), it takes a certain amped-up, dumbed-down outlook to appropriate it with so much glee.”
“When we meet the film’s hero – the aforementioned indiscreet stalker – he is an Army Commando in Kashmir who ties a man to the front of his jeep and uses him as a human shield,” read Raja Sen’s review of the film on NDTV. “Wow. It is the kind of thing I expected Hindi cinema to tackle at some point, but not in a Tiger Shroff film where his reasoning for this inhumanity is that somebody burned the Indian flag.”
