STORY
Shalini takes admission in a college and befriends three other girls in her hostel. One of her roommates Asifa successfully manipulates and misguides Shalini and another girl Geethanjali towards Islam and destroys their lives in deception by love jihad. Consequently, hell breaks on them while seeking heaven.
BACKLASH
‘The Kerala Story‘ sparked nationwide criticism and ignited deadly religious tension in India. Several petitions were filed at the Kerala High Court, the Madras High Court, and the Supreme Court of India to ban the film. Eventually, the West Bengal government banned the film for hate speech.
The Kerala High Court did order to remove the teaser of the film that claimed 32000 girls to have converted to Islam to get recruited to ISIS. 32000? The film begins with a disclaimer stating that there is no authenticity to back the claimed figures. But in one scene, a character does press to be more than thirty and even quotes that the unofficial number is 50,000. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, approximately 30,000 fighters from at least 85 countries had joined the ISIS until December 2015.
BJPWOOD
Although, countless films have been produced in India for decades about Islamic terrorism and the militants waging a holy war or a crusade against India funded by Pakistan. The speciality of ‘The Kerala Story’ is that the film worked on the audience as a reminder to distance themselves from the Muslim community because there is every deliberate chance of pushing you towards Jihad. And especially, if you are a non-Muslim female, then be prepared to spread your legs for “Muslim Mujahideen” as one of the babas suggests in the film to the young recruits to impregnate the girls.
I do not deny about the forced conversions of non-Muslims towards Islam worldwide. This is happening in many countries. And let me inform you that forced conversion is not only a Muslim thing now, this physical and spiritual abuse is happening in all major faiths around the world. Also, keep this in mind that spreading extremism or religious terrorism is completely different than preaching.
Whatever cruelty by the militant fighters is dramatized in the film, without a doubt, half of the madness is accurate. There is no denying about that. But another factor that cannot be denied is that “The Kerala Story” was heavily promoted by the ruling party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party. Prime Minister Narendra Modi quoted the film during the Karnataka Assembly Election of 2023. Recently, BJP welcomed the film’s screening by the Idukki diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church for catechism students. And this is not the first time that BJP have raised their voice in favor of such films with similar contents. Remember ‘The Kashmir Files’?
CINEMATIC DISASTER
Another failure is the joke of an execution. Director Sudipto Sen and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah were neither smart about story-telling nor gave a sensible continuity. Engrossed with ordinary dialogues, irritating background score, and ridiculous sense of brainwashing, the film looked completely amateur and first-day first-show debacle.
‘The Kerala Story’ is a propaganda film due to the fact that it was more about the Islamic extremism and the supreme invasion of Islamic terrorism blended with the hows and whys of the religion’s punishments and tortures than growing the unfortunate stories of those girls. The only thing that was good about the film was the performance of Adah Sharma who played the leading character Shalini. The changing of mood, facial expressions, shocks, beliefs, surprises, suffering, tension, the whole body language was there.
CLOSING REMARKS
‘The Kerala Story’ is for those who have fire in their hearts for Muslims and Islam. The film is for those who want to read a conspiracy theory against the religion and beliefs. The film is for the violent protesters who are interested in damaging properties of the Muslims and make them suffer for a few notes of money. The film is for those whose favorite life moment is watching a man on the street burning the Holy Book or looking at the cartoons of some French newspaper.
RATING 1/10
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Sami Naik | Film Critic 