Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor (1972)

Although regarded as a Kashmiri production, this Hindi film is a biographical of Ghulam Ahmed Mahjoor (1885-1952), the Kashmiri poet often presented as the greatest writer in the language after Habba Khatoon’s 16th-C. romantic lyrics, which strongly marked the writer’s early work. In the 40s, influenced by the radical literary movements of the PWA, he wrote poems addressing contemporary Kashmir and his death triggered state-wide mourning rituals. In 1953 he was declared the official national poet of Kashmir. The film presents Mahjoor’s (Sahni) chequered early life until he switches from writing in Persian and Urdu to Kashmiri, after which his image becomes fused with the official iconography of the Jammu and Kashmir government. However, under Sahni’s influence, the film also offers a nationalist critique of the regime of Sheikh Abdullah, jailed by the Delhi government in 1953 shortly after Kashmir officially joined the Republic.