In our school books we would’ve read about freedom fighters staging plays in various parts of the country to preach how the Colonial government was robbing them and to plant the idea of independence in them. Forward to 1960’s Tamil Nadu, we had the likes of Periyar, Aringar Anna, Karunanithi who used commercial cinema to spread Dravidian Ideology which gave them wide recognition among people and above said examples made people unite for a strong progressive cause irrespective of their cultural, religious backgrounds.
Coming to present 2023, I recently saw this Movie called ‘The Kerala Story’ – whose one line ist “innocent women trapped by sex traffickers assisted by supposedly respectable people”. Sounds Interesting right? It would be, only if the makers decided to keep it that way. Recently there was a news headline that in Gujarat, around 40,000 women have disappeared over the last few years (most of them claimed to be saved and reunited with families) which could indeed be a perfect moment to spread awareness.
Instead the director decided this: A muslim woman, encouraged by her local maulvi, brainwashes her innocent hindu/christian college roommates to convert to Islam and make make them fall in love with some muslim men(who were also encouraged by that maulvi) and have sex with them (so that the girls lives are over according to director) and marry them off and sell them to ISIS. The movie claims this kind of Love Jihad is done by almost all the maulvis across the country, particularly targeting innocent hindu women. This film is about three out of 32000 girls (in Kerala alone) who fell for this trap as mentioned in the trailer summary earlier.
I can sense some of the readers can picture this story in your head by now. People can argue you cannot deny that these things are happening.. Yes, I’m not refusing it, it is happening and the government data is itself showing around 40 women from India have joined ISIS over the last decade and it is saddening. On the other hand, some people can argue right wingers also have freedom of expression through cinema like lefts. Yes, I agree they have every right as you and me and 120 crores of fellow Indians and rest of the world.
But there is a way to tell things, right? You can tell/convey your points of argument in a way that should positively impact people. But not in a way that could trigger somebody to do something to another person. For example, Directors like Pa. Ranjith, Mari Selvaraj is respected in their line of work since they used the medium of cinema to show the masses how dalit people are no different from you and me, that they also live in the same world as everyone else. They bring to light the opportunities others have denied them, and say ‘let us study together, let us work together and let us create together a better tomorrow where our next generation will not have to bear the same pain we had’. They indeed revolutionized modern day Tamil cinema.
As an opposite, here in this movie” The Kerala Story”. It is evident that the director does not care about the lives of innocent women suffering. He made this movie for one and only reason – To spread hate about a particular religion so that the political party he is associated with could get more votes in next year's election through this hate rage. As a matter of fact, people are getting enraged against muslims after seeing the movie. I saw videos of people chanting “Jai beep beep” inside the theatres (I put beep because I might go to jail if I complete that slogan).
Right wingers of India who are basically Hindu extremists have now taken the weapon of spreading propaganda through cinema. Kashmir files and this Kerala story are a few examples. What do they want from spreading this hate? Don’t they need all people united to get votes and rule for their strong cause? As I mentioned in the first few paragraphs, earlier people used cinema to unite people for a strong cause. In this case, makers of Kerala Story are uniting people from particular religions by separating from others to achieve their strong cause which is Manusmriti influenced government.
If you are someone who is unaware/not updated about the current political situation of the country, you can easily fall trap to what exactly this movie was made for. I went to this movie along with some colleagues and after the movie, when we were discussing, one of them asked “Are these things really happening around us?” For me, if I could discuss the logic in this movie, that would be a separate story. But the matter they are trying to convey here, it is just pure hate spreading through this 138-minute movie. Whether the movie is going to perform well or not, they are not going to stop making a bunch of these until we people wake up and throw them out of power and start asking more questions - which Karnataka people did recently and that’s great since this movie also released at the same time before elections, and it is somewhat relaxing considering the stance of the BJP-Karnataka government towards the Muslim people in last three years.
Concluding, now that the right extremists have found a good tool to spread their false propaganda in the way of cinema and it is somehow working – Just about when I’m writing this, I’m getting this news about Akola, Maharashtra where religious violence is happening now due to a controversial social media post reflecting this movie. One dead and more Injured, 144 curfew has been implemented there now. And on the other hand, directors like Vivek Agnihotri, Sudipto Sen, etc are making sure we will get more movies like Kashmir files and Kerala stories in the future so that more incidents like Akola should happen, and their high command can get to make Akand Bharath. However, people are going to watch it and will have their own opinion - one that we can only hope won’t turn out as these hate mongers were expecting. I said concluding at the start of this paragraph, but I don’t know how to conclude this because the current state of affairs is really worrying and I’m honestly scared how many innocent lives including children are going to be wasted in the process of some lunatics deciding which one of their gods is the supremo.
An important line from the movie Life of Pi:
Don’t let these pretty stories and lights fool you boys, Religion is Darkness.
Ram, May 2023
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