Sudipto Sen’s Hindi film, The Kerala Story, now showing across the country, is political propaganda disguised as a feature film, in the tradition of The Kashmir Files. It is not positive propaganda for a cause or a party, but a viciously negative campaign against a religion and a state. It handles the sensitive themes of religious conversion and indoctrination of Hindu and Christian women in Kerala, described as ‘’love jihad,’’ and extends it to more dangerous areas. The film claims that women are converted and later sent to countries like Afghanistan and Syria to ‘’fight for Islam’’ and to be abused as sex slaves. It suggests there are thousands of young women who are radicalised and trafficked abroad. The film claims to reveal this ‘’hidden truth’’ but what it reveals clumsily is a hidden agenda of hatred and demonisation of Muslims and Kerala.
Even the Central government has denied the existence of ‘’love jihad’’ and courts have dismissed it. But Hindutva groups and organisations, including the BJP, have insisted that it is a reality. ISI recruitment is another idea exaggerated beyond proportion. A few cases have been reported from the country and these are not just from Kerala but from other states as well. But there is a mention in the film of 32,000 women who were taken away from Kerala. When the numbers were challenged, the claim of ‘’heart-breaking and gut-wrenching stories of 32,000 females in Kerala’’ was changed to ‘’true stories of three young girls.’’ The film abounds in such distortions and exaggerations, and sensational and revolting scenes of rape, gore, and mutilation. The dialogues are poor and badly delivered.
The Kerala Story mixes elements from the Hindutva book of hatred like ‘’love jihad’’, Islamic radicalism, ISI activities and communism with drugs, sex and government inaction to tell a false story and to malign a religion and a state. Films have fiction at their core but when a film tells a wrong and malicious story claiming it to be fact, it becomes deception of a different order. It is for the first time in the country that a religion is identified with a state and the state is maligned and targeted for that. The film has got clearance from the censor board and the courts, but it raises disturbing issues about the promotion of hatred and communal polarisation and the support and patronage such attempts get from parties and governments. The Madhya Pradesh government has declared the film tax-free and other BJP-ruled states may follow. Prime Minister Modi praised the film during his campaign in Karnataka. That shows a growing India story of malice and hatred, not as fiction but as reality.