Indian police investigate film depicting Kerala as a hub of Islamic terrorism

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.