Bollywood star Ajay Devgn’s recently announced film Chauhaan is not merely courting controversy; it has reopened a wound for victims and families who have lived with the consequences of state violence in Kashmir. In its two-and-a-half-minute teaser, the film does not simply fictionalise conflict. It appears to minimise the scale of human rights violations in a region marked by decades of strife, recasting weapons that blinded, maimed and killed civilians as instruments of tactical restraint.
Dedicated to Devgn’s late father, an action choreographer, the film attempts to draw public sympathy through personal sentiment even as its teaser dehumanises countless families affected by what were officially described as “non-lethal” weapons. The result is not just insensitive cinema, but a familiar Bollywood spectacle in which Kashmiri suffering is flattened, denied and repurposed for applause.
Right off, the teaser shows a protester, donning a gas mask to fight off the effects of tear gas, while Devgn’s character tells us that “gas masks are easily available online”. The irony of purchasing a gas mask “online” in a region which is notorious for some of the most prolonged internet and communication blackouts, is lost in the absurdity of the premise. Law enforcement agencies have relied on constant video surveillance and facial-recognition technology to arrest protesters, something that would have been irksome and ineffective for them were state of the art gas-masks, as shown in the teaser, in such a trend.