On Wednesday, the CPI MP Binoy Viswam wrote a letter to the Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur seeking an inquiry into the trailer of the upcoming movie directed by Sudipto Sen named ‘The Kerala Story’. The leader alleged that the movie ‘is nothing but a politically motivated hatred campaign against Kerala and the Muslim community’. He also said that the movie is based on the false facts.
“The film claims to unearth the story of 32000 women who went missing from the state of Kerala. This claim is based on lies and extrapolations,” the official letter written by the CPI MP Binoy Viswam read. It adds that the film deliberately misquotes and misinterprets the statements made by the then CMs of the state namely AS Achudananthan and Oommen Chandy. “The statements have been misinterpreted and translated incorrectly to malign the Muslim community,” Viswam claimed.
#TheKeralaStory | CPI MP Binoy Viswam writes to I&B Minister Anurag Thakur, stating that "the official trailer of the film is nothing but a politically motivated hatred campaign against Kerala and the Muslim community."
— ANI (@ANI) May 3, 2023
The MP urges him to "initiate an enquiry into the… pic.twitter.com/UdypLrT1tz
The leader also said that he does not believe in the love-jihad conspiracy. “The so-called Love Jihad is a baseless Islamophobic conspiracy theory aimed at polarization. The Union Ministry informed in 2020 to the parliament that no cases of love jihad have been reported. The narrative being propelled by The Kerala Story is thus, clearly based on lies and twisting facts and aims at fueling hatred,” the letter read.
It also added that the movie might prove to be dangerously harmful for the communal harmony of the country and especially the state.
This comes a day after the film was issued an ‘A’ certificate by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC), aka the censor board. CBFC has reportedly ordered the makers to delete and/or tweak ten scenes from the film that included an interview with a former Kerala Chief Minister who is supposed to be the Communist leader VS Achuthanandan.
Reportedly, in the interview, the former CM of Kerala stated that the state would become a Muslim-majority state in the next two decades. He had said that the youngsters in the state were being influenced to convert to Islam. The censor board has ordered to remove the interview of the former CM that was at the end of the film and ran for 26 seconds.
The teaser of the film ‘The Kerala Story’ was released in November 2022. Since then, the movie has sparked controversy over the claim that 32,000 women from Kerala have been recruited by the Islamic State (IS) terror group. The Kerala government and opposition leaders have demanded a ban on the film. Furthermore, The Muslim Youth League has announced an award of Rs 1 crore for anyone who proves that the IS radicalised 32,000 Malayali women.
The film is based on the true stories of thousands of girls from Kerala who were converted to Islam and sent to Syria to become ISIS terrorists and sex slaves. It is set for a theatrical release on May 5.
