‘Ground Zero’ review: Film on Kashmir only opens its eyes so much

Narendra Dubey (Emraan Hashmi) is getting his daughter ready for school. She’s reluctant to go; the ‘gun waale bhaiyya’ on the bus is scary, she says. Who would you rather have on the bus, her father asks with a smile. Santa Claus, the girl immediately replies. Later, when Narendra, the BSF’s top man in Srinagar, is asked why he risks his life, he says he hopes to fulfil this wish of his daughter’s. 

Tejas Prabha Vijay Deoskar’s Ground Zero opens its eyes—but only a little. It recognises that a child heading out every day with an armed soldier is scarring. Fair enough. But that girl, young though she is, must have some idea that the gun is there for her protection. Similarly, there must be a child in her class who sees the same guns every day. Even if, in her short life, they haven’t been pointed at her, she must instinctively know that they might be one day. This child Ground Zero doesn’t want to contemplate. 

Earlier this week, a group of Indian tourists was attacked by gunmen in Pahalgam, leaving 26 dead. It was one of the deadliest attacks ever on civilians in Kashmir. In the aftermath, there’s been vitriol towards Kashmiris on the news, on social media and, in some cases, in person. Releasing in such a week, it’s a small mercy that Ground Zero isn’t like The Kashmir Files (2022), hateful and inflammatory, or Article 370 (2024), which radiated a cold fury towards the place and its people. Nevertheless, it shows how even somewhat sympathetic attitudes towards Kashmir aren’t free from a fatally blinkered view of life there. 

Narendra is introduced infiltrating a militant hideout in Baramulla. During the skirmish, a little boy is caught between the advancing BSF and the gunmen inside the house. The film is quick to paint the BSF as a moral force (Narendra puts himself in danger to save the child) and the jihadis as uncaring (they train their guns on the child from a distance, confident that Narendra will try and rescue him). This idea of non-combatant Kashmiris as hapless victims caught between Indian forces and terrorists reveals itself as a central motif. Narendra, back in Srinagar, focuses his attention on a ‘pistol gang’ that’s been targeting uniformed soldiers. A nervous local recruit, Husain (Mir Mehrooz), attempts to shoot Narendra, but fails. Instead of putting the boy in jail, Narendra recruits him as an informer, and grows increasingly protective of him.

Narendra Nath Dhar Dubey was an actual BSF officer who helped track the men behind the 2001 Indian parliament attack in Delhi and the 2002 Akshardham temple attack. The film makes a few quick detours to Delhi, but Deoskar and writers Sanchit Gupta and Priyadarshee Srivastava mostly keep Narendra in Srinagar, on the trail of the shadowy Ghazi Baba. Article 370, also built around a manhunt, saw Kashmir as a wilderness to be tamed and a problem to be solved. Ground Zero seems to genuinely believe Indian forces can win hearts and minds there. When one of his subordinates says “Kashmir is, after all, ours,” Narendra asks him, “Just the land or its people too?” Later, he tells him they’ll fight for the land and the people. He even clashes with his commander for painting Hussain as a terrorist.

Yet, what Ground Zero can’t fathom—or what it understands but can’t show —is how Kashmiris would resent the guns that police them on a daily basis more than the ones that are taken up by their own. Husain almost becomes a killer because his family is desperately poor; had he taken up the gun because he believed in jihad and hated India, would Narendra have been as understanding? When he’s asked a few tough questions by local reporters—in 2003, the press hadn’t yet been completely muzzled—his wife (Sai Tamhankar) explodes on his behalf, lecturing them about the dangers of being in uniform in Kashmir. This, ultimately, is what the film is about: the humanity and bravery of the Indian forces there. When Ground Zero became the first film to premiere in Kashmir in 38 years, the first show was for BSF soldiers. 

In a film about Kashmir, Husain is the only fully realised Kashmiri. The rest are either terrorists or victims, but nothing in between. Time and again, Ground Zero is frustratingly on the brink of a breakthrough that never comes. A soldier, unnerved by the quiet as the prime minister’s convoy speeds through Srinagar, wonders “Is it because of fear or sadness?”, but quickly moves onto “Kashmir is, after all, ours.” Narendra likes to say: “This is Kashmir. There is no sure or unsure. There is only opportunity.” How different is this from the sliver of opportunity glimpsed in Article 370 to change the structure of the state? In the last scene, Ground Zero grants the little girl’s wish. But Santa only travels on the BSF bus, and the guns still point outward.