 "Why has the upcoming movie 'The Kerala Story' courted controversy?")
The upcoming movie 'The Kerala Story' has stirred up a political storm in the nation just a few days after the release of its first trailer, with the Congress calling for a ban on the movie and urging against its release on May 5, 2023.
After the trailer of the movie was released on April 26, the grand old party said that the Centre should forbid screenings of the movie as the trailer was “full of lies and painted the Muslim community in a bad light.”
“The film is a bundle of lies. It says 32,000 women were converted and sent to Islamic State-held areas. Its trailer gave enough hints of its content. It is intended to defame the state and community and Sangh Parivar outfits are behind this," said Congress leader and Leader of Opposition in Kerala VD Satheesan.
The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the ruling CPI(M), also came down heavily on the movie, saying that “Sangh Parivar was using an even more popular medium to humiliate the state and whole community.”
The trailer of the movie, which showed a burqa-clad woman with the tagline 'Uncovering the truth that was kept hidden' was released, sparking protests in many parts of the state, with the film being dubbed "a medium to insult the state."
It has also been labelled a propaganda film and the backlash has been similar to that received by The Kashmir Files directed by Vivek Agnihotri.
The film, directed by Sudipto Sen, aims to tell the tale of how women from Kerala were tricked and trafficked to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the conflict zone of Syria.
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The Kerala Story controversy
The Kerala Story is being marketed as “based on true events” and revolves around four Kerala women who were converted to Islam and travelled to Afghanistan with their husbands to join ISIS between 2016 and 2018.
The movie also features dialogues against Hindu deities spoken by Muslim characters and touches on the issue of ‘love jihad’ and the hijab debate in the country.
The Congress as well as other political parties believe that the movie misrepresents facts and defames Kerala as a state. The party also said that the representation of the Muslim community in the movie is likely to incite hatred.
Not our Kerala story
Senior Congress leader and Thiruvananthapuram MP Shashi Tharoor on Sunday weighed in on the controversy surrounding the movie and said, "It may be your Kerala story. It is not our Kerala story."
Hate propaganda against Kerala
Earlier, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said the movie appears to have been deliberately made with the aim of communal polarisation and to spread hate propaganda against the state.
"They are trying to spread the politics of division through fake stories and movies. The Sangh Parivar is spreading such myths without any facts and evidence. The big lie that 32,000 women in Kerala converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State was what we saw in the trailer of the film. This fake story is the product of the Sangh Parivar's lie factory," Vijayan said in a statement.
The Kerala Story is about life and death
The movie's lead actor Adah Sharma has said that the film is about life and death.
"Our film is about girls getting drugged, brainwashed, raped, human trafficking, forcefully impregnated and then raped again by multiple people sometimes, the child they deliver been taken away and them being made suicide bombers," Adah was quoted as saying by news agency IANS.
“It’s about life and death! for the few who are saying its propaganda, I guess once they watch the film with all the facts they will say otherwise," she added.
(With agency input)