MUMBAI: With free tickets and false claims, ‘The Kerala Story’ is one of a slew of polarising films sparking concern Bollywood is churning out cultural propaganda to bolster support for India’s ruling party ahead of elections.
The trailer for the anti-Muslim box office hit claims to depict “innocent girls trapped, transformed and trafficked for terror”, while declaring it was “inspired by many true stories”.
A fictitious tale of a Hindu woman who converts to Islam and then is radicalised, the movie is the second-highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023 so far.
Critics have accused it and other recent releases of peddling lies and stoking divisions, including by vilifying the Muslim minority, ahead of next year’s national elections.
“I would suggest all political parties to take advantage of my film … use it for your political gain,” director Sudipto Sen was quoted as saying in an AFP report.
The world’s largest democracy has a long history of film censorship, but detractors say the industry is increasingly pushing out films that share the ideology of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist government.
The mass appeal of cinema in India makes the medium an unrivalled means of reaching the public, said journalist and author Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The release of ‘The Kerala Story’ in May coincided with elections in the southern state of Karnataka.
The polls, hotly contested by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), triggered stone-throwing clashes in neighbouring Maharashtra state in which one person died.
Modi endorsed the film during an election rally, while accusing the opposition Congress party of “supporting terrorism tendencies”.
Critics said the low-budget movie taps into so-called “love-jihad” conspiracies, where predatory Muslim men seduce Hindu women.
