Having worked and lived in Kerala for 37 years, there are some things about the state that I like and some I dislike. I love being ensconced in nature throughout the year, but I hate the humidity. I love the peace and harmony that prevails in the state, I dislike politics and the obduracy of trade unions. I like the entrepreneurial spirit of young Malayalis, but I dislike the fact that they are compelled to go out of the state for advanced learning and to make a living. A state of strange and exasperating contradictions.
Into this paradoxical state comes the film, The Kerala Story. Mind you, not a story based in Kerala or about Kerala, but billed as “the” story, a supposed definitive description of the ethos and culture of this state. A vast uproar naturally followed. I was told by a former chief secretary of the state that the film itself is quite innocuous, reasonably well made, based on a true story that none can deny. Yet Saibal Chatterjee, writing a scathing review in NDTV News gives it half a star out of five and says, “The Kerala Story is so bad that its incompetence would have provided some entertainment had it not played so loose and fast with facts and twisted them to suit its explicit, egregious ends.”
What is disturbing is the communal twist that has been given to it by politicians across the country. The Prime Minister himself said at Ballari on 5 May: “In these changing times, the nature of terrorism is also changing …Bombs, rifles and pistols… (have been replaced by) a new type which undermines society from within, makes no sound. The Kerala Story is a film based on one such conspiracy in Kerala”.
JP Nadda, the president of the BJP, after watching the film, said that it exposes “poisonous terrorism”. “After watching this film, people will be able to understand the conspiracy being hatched to make our society hollow, ” he said. Madhya Pradesh and, later, Uttar Pradesh, exempted the film from entertainment tax.
Obviously, the endeavour is to pitch Kerala as a state in which terrorism flourishes and where women, especially Hindu women, fall prey to the blandishments of Muslim jihadists and associate Islam with terrorism. To further exaggerate the magnitude of the problem, the trailer of the film projected a startling figure of 32,000 women who have been converted into Muslim terrorists.
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Imaginary figures
This figure of 32,000 is obviously purely imaginary and lends credence to the view that, while the ostensible purpose is the telling of a true story, the concealed purpose was to create a political controversy. Alt News, the fact-checking platform, pointed out multiple mistakes in this extraordinary figure. It was attributed by the filmmakers to statements made by former Chief Ministers of Kerala, Oommen Chandy and Achutanandan. The former had stated clearly in the Legislative Assembly that 2,667 young women converted to Islam in the state since 2006 (that is, from 2006 to 2012), which is nowhere near the 32,000 used to promote the film. Achutanandan mentioned in the Legislature that he was not referring to Muslim conversions but the attempt of the obnoxious Popular Front of India to create communal disharmony. The Observer Research Foundation, a think tank in Delhi, in a report, stated that “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″, a far cry from 32,000. The director of the film, Sudipto Sen, said that he has no BJP or RSS leanings and that he is a communist at heart. But his actions are speaking louder than his words.
Obviously, once the case assumed political dimensions, there were reactions from the other side. West Bengal banned the exhibition of the film. Multiplex theatres in Tamil Nadu decided not to exhibit the film as a political formation opposed it with vigour. The Kerala Chief Minister accused the Sangh Parivar of sowing the seeds of communalism across the state. Priyanka Gandhi considered it a last-ditch effort to divert the attention of the people of election-bound Karnataka from the real bread-and-butter issues facing them. Sharad Pawar’s NCP pointed to the 40,000 women missing in Gujarat during five years as mentioned in official records and the 70 women lost each day in Maharashtra. Mamata Banerjee called it a distorted film, much like the earlier Kashmir Files, used as propaganda material.
Also Read: The Kerala Story—It’s time Muslims give up their medieval ideal of conquest, conversion
Divisive move
From a Kerala perspective, projecting the state as the terror heartland of India is definitely a divisive move. A quarter of Kerala’s population is Muslim, and another quarter is Christian. The state has had an enviable record of communal harmony. A large proportion of Kerala’s Muslims live in the district of Malappuram where peace and mutual support and understanding between communities have prevailed at all times. When floods struck Kerala in 2018, all people, rich or poor, Muslim or Hindu, Nair or Ezhava worked shoulder to shoulder to help the afflicted and to rebuild the state. There is another film, 2018, released on the same day as The Kerala Story, which shows how the entire state rose as one to work together to mitigate the effects of the floods.
Throughout history, there has rarely been communal conflict. 26/11 did not happen in Kerala. The wave of terrorist attacks that wracked northern and western India in the 90s and the first decade of the 21st century left Kerala untouched. There is politics in Kerala, there is trade unionism in Kerala, but incidents of violence have been few and far between.
Kerala manages its problems on its own. Our people work all over the world and send back money which supports the economic growth of all of India. By ourselves, we built a flourishing tourism industry. Again, with our own efforts, we promoted a start-up culture and developed MSMEs. Only less than one per cent of our population is multidimensionally poor, our social indicators compare with the best in the world and are far ahead of most Indian states. There has been much talk of “double engines” in BJP-ruled states, a pernicious doctrine that states openly and shamelessly that a state’s development is contingent on its voting for the BJP and, by implication, that people in states that think differently, will be discriminated against. The attempt to win Kerala by giving it a bad image will ultimately prove self-destructive.
Whatever may be the prevalent philosophy in the Centre, whatever their priorities are for states, it is best to leave Kerala alone as a haven of peace and communal harmony. There are many other states in which to play communal games.
K.M. Chandrasekhar is former Cabinet Secretary. Views are personal.
(Edited by Theres Sudeep)