'The Kerala Story': A controversial film accused of fueling Hindu nationalist propaganda (2024)

The Kerala Story joins the ever-growing list of films instrumentalized by Hindu nationalists. Deliberately blurring the lines between fiction and reality, this movie directed by Sudipto Sen tells the story of innocent Hindu and Christian women recruited by the Islamic State group (IS) in the southern Indian state of Kerala. The film features two Hindu and Christian women seduced by Muslim men with malicious intentions. Once under their control, they become "brainwashed." One of them who converted to Islam will eventually be drawn into the ranks of IS by her husband.

The director said the story of these three student nurses was based on real events. The film's "mission" "goes beyond the creative boundaries of cinema," it is "a movement that should reach out to the masses across the world to raise awareness," said Sen, presenting his work of fiction as a documentary and raising questions about increasingly blurred lines between cinema and propaganda.

The film's theme reinforces a myth dear to Hindu nationalists, that of the "love jihad." The theory, fomented by extremists, is that Muslim men court Hindu women solely aiming to convert them. No reliable data support the alleged phenomenon, but several Indian states, governed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have passed draconian laws criminalizing conversions through marriage.

Controversy

The Kerala Story, released in theaters on May 5, was marked by controversy as soon as its trailer was released in November 2022. The lead character, played by actress Adah Sharma, claims, veiled and on camera, that 32,000 women in Kerala have disappeared after being recruited by IS. An unsubstantiated and exaggerated estimate, which has provoked outrage.

The serious fact-checking site Alt News found "no evidence" to support that figure and the director could never specify his sources. According to a United States State Department report on terrorism, there were "66 known fighters of Indian origin affiliated" with the IS in November 2020.

Several complaints were filed in court to have the film banned because it is akin to hate speech against the country's Muslim minority. None of them succeeded. The director was nevertheless forced to withdraw the trailer containing the unverified numbers. The description of the promotional video on YouTube now refers to "the compilation of true stories of three young girls," as opposed to the previous 32,000. West Bengal, ruled by an opposition party, banned the film to avoid any violence on the motive it was based on "manipulated facts" and contained "hate speech." The Tamil Nadu Multiplex Association (South) also announced it would no longer screen the film.

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