What 'The Kerala Story' says about Bollywood’s shifting narratives

India's film industry, by and large, has managed to steer clear of the political divide and communal conflict that has engulfed India over the years. Worth an estimated Rs172 billion in 2022, Bollywood instead has been at the forefront of promoting liberal values, although often to mixed reception. 

But that trend may have begun to change, though not in the form of Bollywood's big budget megastar films, rather with small-budget movies, like the recently released 'The Kerala Story'. Criticised by many as "Islamophobic", the film has become the second-highest grossing Hindi cinema of 2023 after Shahrukh Khan starrer Pathaan.

The controversy began even before the release of the film, which is about a Hindu woman who converts to Islam and is then radicalised. A marketing trailer for the film claimed that 32,000 girls from the southern state of Kerala had been forcibly converted to Islam and then joined jihadist groups in Syria and Yemen. 

The number 32,000 has since been debunked as wildly inaccurate. According to the Kerala Police, the claim is "totally baseless". As per the United States Department of State's Country Reports on Terrorism 2020, there were 66 known Indian-origin fighters affiliated with ISIS as of November 2020. And 2018's Strat News global report also gave a figure close to 60. Out of these 60, approximately 13 were women. And only six women were from Kerala. Out of these six, three women had converted to Islam from other religions.

Directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, the film has triggered a political row in the country, with many calling it a propaganda film. 

Prior to the release of the movie, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan alleged that the filmmakers were pushing the propaganda of Sangh Parivar — an umbrella term used to refer to a family of organisations affiliated with or inspired by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological fountainhead of the Bharatiya Janata Party — of projecting the southern state as a centre of religious extremism. 

The chief minister said in a statement that the movie trailer appears to be "deliberately produced" with the aim of creating communal polarisation and spreading hate propaganda against the state. The chief minister also accused the Sangh Parivar of trying to destroy the religious harmony in the state by "sowing the poisonous seeds of communalism".

"In the movie trailer, we see a hoax that 32,000 women in Kerala were converted and became members of the Islamic State. This bogus story is a product of the Sangh Parivar's lie factory," Vijayan further said in his statement.

He said freedom of expression could not be a justification for using cinema to spread sectarianism in the state and create divisions.

"It is not a licence to spread lies and communalism and divide the people in the state," he added.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee ordered a ban on the movie on 8 May, three days after its release, calling it a "distorted story". But on 12 May, the Supreme Court observed that the movie was running across the country and that West Bengal cannot be an exception to ban it.

The Kerala Story is a film that contains "hate speech" and "manipulated facts" and has the potential to disrupt communal harmony and law and order in West Bengal, the state government told the Indian Supreme Court on 16 May as it defended its move to ban the movie. 

"The movie is based on manipulated facts and contains hate speech," the state government said in its affidavit in response to a petition by the producers of the movie challenging the ban. Several scenes have the potential to "hurt communal sentiments" and cause "disharmony among communities", it added.

The Supreme Court, however, after staying the West Bengal government's ban on the screening of the film orally remarked that "as much as we protect free speech, you cannot vilify a community". It agreed to watch the film and lay down guidelines to "define a doctrine" about what can be "permitted" as petitioners said it could lead to violence, hate and discrimination against a community.

The Kerala Story has drawn comparisons with The Kashmir Files, another polarising movie that became one of last year's biggest hits from Bollywood. That film — on the exodus of Hindus from Kashmir in the 1990s — was again made on a small budget, had no big stars, and received praise from Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other BJP leaders.

Although the film came with a disclaimer: "This film... does not claim accurateness or factuality of historic events," outside theatres, the movie was promoted by Narendra Modi himself, who hailed the film for exposing long-buried truths. BJP-run states had even scrapped local entertainment taxes for the movie.

What, then, does The Kerala Story show? 

Just like Dilip Kumar's roles told the story of India as it unfolded — as the independent country grew, industrialised, and prospered — the new wave of BJP-backed movies also tell the story of present India as it unfolds. The narrative now is of religious polarisation and growing communal disharmony.

As the US State Department's India 2022 International Religious Freedom Report stated, there were reports during the year of violence by government authorities against members of religious minorities, including plainclothes police in Gujarat publicly flogging four Muslim men accused of injuring Hindu worshippers during a festival in October, and the Madhya Pradesh State government bulldozing Muslim-owned homes and shops following communal violence in Khargone in April. 

In October, a report drafted by a citizens committee stated there were "multiple instances of apparent police complicity" in violent actions against protestors, who were mostly Muslim, in the Delhi riots in 2020.

There were also cases of communal violence between religious groups. The National Crimes Record Bureau reported 378 instances of communal violence in 2021 (most recent data) compared to 857 in 2020.  Religious leaders, academics, political figures, and activists made inflammatory public remarks about religious minorities, the report further states.

And that is the reality of today's India, which is slowly but surely being reflected in its films.