Police in Kerala are investigating a controversial Bollywood film that portrays the southern Indian state as a hub of Islamic terrorism and forced conversion.
The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, has been criticized for its fictional portrayal of tens of thousands of Kerala women who are said to have converted to Islam and become terrorists for the Islamic State in Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria.
A teaser trailer shows an actor playing a Hindu woman who falls victim to what appears to be a “dangerous game” of proselytizing. “I wanted to be a nurse and serve humanity,” she says directly to the camera in the niqab. “Now I am Fatima Ba, an Isis terrorist in a prison in Afghanistan. I’m not alone.”
The film trailer goes on to claim, “There are 32,000 girls like me who have been converted and buried in the deserts of Syria and Yemen. A deadly game is being played in Kerala to turn normal girls into fearsome terrorists… will no one stop them?”
The filmmakers say the film is based on real information and events, but have not provided any evidence or official reports to back up their claims.
After the trailer was released, there was anger in India’s southern states. BR Aravindakshan, a journalist based in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu, filed a petition with the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, the Office of the Prime Minister of Kerala and the Kerala Police, accusing the film of spreading “false information” and specified the content to be examined and the release to be stopped.
A criminal case was registered against the caravan after Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan ordered state police to investigate the complaint. Police in Kerala’s Thiruvananthapuram district are investigating allegations of misinformation and spreading community hatred.
VD Satheesan, the leader of the opposition in the State Assembly, said the film was “a clear case of misinformation” and called for it to be banned because of the risk of “spreading hatred”.
The events of the film appear to be inspired by four Kerala women converts to Islam who traveled to Afghanistan with their husbands between 2016 and 2018 to join ISIS in Khorasan province. Their husbands were all killed and forced to surrender in 2019; The four women are all still in Afghan prisons and the Indian government is refusing to take them back.
There is no evidence that there were thousands of such cases in Kerala as the film claims.
Kerala, considered India’s most advanced state with the highest literacy and mortality rates, has long been ruled by a left-leaning, secular government. So far it has rejected the Hindu nationalist policies that dominate India’s central government and northern states under the ruling Bharatiya Janata (BJP) party in the elections. The BJP did not win any seats in Kerala in the last general election.
In response, however, Kerala has been accused by BJP officials of becoming a “hotbed” for Islamic terrorism.
The Kerala Story follows The Kashmir Files, a Bollywood film that claimed to show the “true story” of the expulsion of a Hindu community from the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir. The filmmakers claimed it was based on true events but have been accused of distorting facts and promoting anti-Muslim propaganda. Despite the controversy, it was one of India’s top-grossing films at the box office that year.