What’s the fate of Hamare Baarah, Kerala Story? Poll speeches, WhatsApp forwards, divided India

Imputing logic or subtlety to a movie like Hamare Baarah is a little like knitting fog. Every Muslim stereotype you can dream of is offered up within the first 20 minutes of the film.

A still 'Hamare Baarah' poster (image source: instagram)

Seven uniformed policemen guarded an audience of six people, who showed up to watch Hamare Baarah at an East Delhi cinema hall. While the sparse crowd showed an apparent lack of interest in the Islamophobic screed, the policemen, present there to presumably ensure a non-violent screening, seemed much more engaged, going by their whoops, laughter, and enthusiastic applause. The controversy that plagued the film was all but forgotten in the nearly empty theatre.

More than one petition against the movie argued that it “insults Islamic beliefs”, misinterprets the Quran, and portrays Muslim women as the property of Muslim men. The film, written by Rajan Agarwal and directed by Kamal Chandra, was allowed a release after a three-member Central Board of Film Certification panel asked the Bombay High Court for more time to deliberate, and the filmmakers agreed to delete two contentious dialogues — not because the CBFC deemed the movie unobjectionable. I really wonder how much incremental damage the deleted and muted dialogues could have inflicted, when the movie’s intent to target the Muslim community was clear long before its release.

Still, if you are planning to watch Hamare Baarah, here are the bare bones [spoilers ahead]. Alfiya, a brave young woman from a large, impoverished Muslim family, takes her father to court because the high-risk pregnancy her stepmother is coerced into carrying to term could result in her death. What unfolds is less a court case and more a circus, with arguments oscillating between women’s rights and religious dogma. Predictably, the court bows to the wishes of the mother who didn’t want to abort, resulting in her tragic martyrdom. Cue the repentant father, in a finale as contrived as it is convenient.

I know that elevator pitch doesn’t sound too bad, but I can assure you it is worse.

Hindu anxiety, Muslim stereotype

Every Muslim stereotype you can dream of is offered up within the first 20 minutes of the film. Mansoor Ali Khan Sanjri, played by Annu Kapoor, is a famous qawwal in the streets and a draconian tyrant in the sheets. He has a chokehold over the burqa-clad women of his household – daughters, granddaughter, and young wife alike – who are all depicted without any agency. He is a Luddite who won’t be dragged into modernity. Roohafza is as commonplace as phrases like “ama miyaan” and “lahaul vila kuvat”. And the kajal budget for the film was probably out of control.

Imputing logic or subtlety to a movie like Hamare Baarah is a little like knitting fog. We could have expected a scintilla of nuance in this sea of hamminess if there was even a single Muslim in the top-billed cast and crew. There isn’t.

Meanwhile, Kapoor’s character is a walking, talking site of every Hindu anxiety you have encountered while trawling the depths of WhatsApp and Telegram. He symbolises a community that, in the Hindu imagination, is a study in contrasts. The Indian Muslim man is simultaneously dirt poor, but somehow also has the time and means to “entrap” innocent Hindu women. He is extremely conservative, but just modern enough to engage in premarital sex while walking the path of “love jihad”. He is also extremely virile and attractive to Hindu women, while supposedly receiving education in a madrasa, which does not prepare him for the world.

The most crucial part of a Muslim man’s mental make-up is his – supposedly exclusive – dictatorial attitude toward Muslim women. It is as if one community alone denies women their right to bodily autonomy, the liberty to pursue a modern education and passions, financial independence and love lives devoid of external pressures. According to the film, the abuse of women is perpetrated solely by the Muslim community… as if every Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Dalit, or Adivasi woman does not live in mortal fear of their own safety and health.

I could keep going, but instead of getting knotted up in the details, it’s far more interesting to see where Hamare Baarah fits in the hierarchy of propaganda films produced in India.

Made for WhatsApp

There is the slick propaganda film, like Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) and Article 370 (2023), which at least cloak their narratives in the valour of the armed forces and a sheen of production finesse. These are aimed at erecting an image of an aggressive India, unafraid of taking tough decisions. Then there are uplifting films about government schemes and initiatives, like Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) and Mission Mangal (2019). These often star Akshay Kumar in the leading role. There is the hagiography, for instance, Main Atal Hoon (2024), or the alt-biopic, like Swatantrya Veer Savarkar (2024), both of which intend to cast their protagonists in a soft glow that reflects well on the ruling BJP.

At the bottom of the hierarchy is the openly communal propaganda film, like Hamare Baarah, which operates with none of the pretence of others in the genre. Last year’s The Kerala Story walked so Hamare Baraah or JNU: Jahangir National University could run. These are films based on WhatsApp headlines and meant for piecemeal WhatsApp circulation. They unabashedly trade in fear-mongering and divisiveness, making them prime candidates for a WhatsApp forwarding frenzy.

I have seen several scenes from Gadar 2, particularly one where chants of “Hindustan Zindabad” resound, doing the rounds. A long scene from Article 370, a fictionalised sequence of Home Minister Amit Shah’s arguments in Parliament, has been converted into an Instagram reel. From The Kerala Story, the lead protagonist’s plea to rescue 32,000 ‘converted’ women like her – based on an outright fabrication – has been repeated so often that it is now used in arguments as irrefutable fact.

This theory came into sharp focus as I watched the policemen watch the movie, whipping out their phones at every blustery monologue (a high-octane monologue is a must for WhatsApp circulation, even when it’s devoid of any logic). Around the halfway mark, a policeman who was recording the scene where Alfiya files the petition for her stepmother’s abortion, exclaimed at the screen, “Yeh [abortion] bhi Modiji ki dein hai!” It isn’t. India has had the Medical Termination of Pregnancy (MTP) Act since 1971, even though Indian women cannot access elective abortions. But, with due apologies to The Bible, truth has a short life, but a lie lives on forever.

And Hamare Baarah is replete with half-truths and propaganda talking points that are primed for WhatsAppification – chief among this is the hard launch of the Population Control Bill. All of the film’s efforts and interests dovetail toward the Bill, which has been on the BJP’s agenda for years.

Facts don’t matter

Social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp have helped solidify calls in favour of regulating India’s population. An Al Jazeera report tracked the online ecosystems that whip up support for a Bill like this because it is rooted in Islamophobia. This ecosystem drip-feeds anti-Muslim propaganda to a mostly Hindu audience; it is aided by another canard that refuses to die—that Muslims are producing more children in a coordinated effort to alter the demography of India. There are thousands of variations of the fact-free message that only Muslims get subsidies and freebies, while hardworking Hindus pay the taxes that fund them.

It doesn’t matter how many critiques there are of such a Bill, or the fact that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) among all religions has declined. It doesn’t matter that the decadal growth rate among Muslims declined at a much sharper rate than any other community, according to the government’s own data. And it also doesn’t matter that many religious and political leaders have asked Hindu women to produce more children, because what we will see on WhatsApp is a clip from Hamare Baarah where an imam exhorts Muslim women to keep reproducing and treat that as the gospel truth.

But the facts should matter. When calls for the Population Control Bill are inevitably renewed, we should remember that one community alone is not responsible for India’s population. I hope we will recall that India’s Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is one of six siblings; Home Minister Amit Shah has six sisters. UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, who unveiled the Uttar Pradesh Population Policy in 2021 aimed at removing “hurdles” to development, is one among six brothers and sisters. Actor Ravi Kishan, who wanted to table the PCB as a private member’s Bill, is one of five siblings and has four children with his wife, and possibly, a fifth one with another woman. Say what you will about the BJP, leading by example is not its strongest suit – because 50 per cent of BJP MLAs in Uttar Pradesh have three or more children.

As Hamare Baarah concludes its cinematic assault, it leaves behind a landscape where boundaries no longer mean anything. Each share and replay from the film is a slow injection of venom in the bloodstream of our collective consciousness, where fiction is recited as fact. As clips from films like these embed themselves into everyday conversations, they transform into unquestioned reality. From here, the pipeline goes directly to campaign speeches – remember how PM Modi referenced The Kerala Story at a rally in Karnataka? – and makes its way back into the discourse.

And what remains in the aftermath of such an incendiary film? A nation irreparably divided.

Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.

(Edited by Prashant)