'The Kerala Story' and the Promotion of Islamophobia Outside India

Shalini Onikrishnaan, a young Indian from the Hindu community, sits in front of a group of security officers who question her about the details of her joining the Islamic State (IS).

The interrogators start by asking about the timing of the joining, and Shalini picks up the thread from them and corrects the wording of the question, saying: More important than asking me about the timing of my joining is that you know why and how I joined the organization? The Indian girl, who lives in the Indian province of Kerala, begins to tell her story.

ISIS leaders are seen in the story urging young men to deceive non-Muslim Indian girls in the name of love, isolate them from their families in order to convert to Islam, then recruit and persuade them to travel to ISIS-controlled areas in the 2023 Indian film The Kerala Story by Indian directors Sudipta Sinpipul and Amrutlal Shah.

The film intersects with the narrative of India's racist Hindu discourse, espoused by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as the film not only shows the stories of some of the girls, but indicates that the number is 32,<> girls in one Indian province.

That is why the film has won the admiration of the party's leaders, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi even praised it in a public rally, a narrative that Indian Muslims see demonizing the country's Muslims as terrorists, and then justifying the opposition-led racist and retaliatory measures, which threaten civil peace and social harmony in the subcontinent full of different languages, religions and ethnicities.

The controversy over the film has moved outside the cinemas, not only in India but also in Britain, which is inhabited by a large number of members of the Indian community and whose government is led by a Prime Minister of Indian origin and a member of the Hindu community, which indicates that we are facing a phenomenon and an event that is bigger than just a film that causes a stir, which is the phenomenon of trying to export Indian racist discourse beyond the borders of India on horseback cinema.

Bollywood cinema has always been an ambassador for India's culture of coexistence, and the rise of renowned Indian Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan known as Shah Rukh Khan on the ladder of stardom was a model for a story of struggle allowed by the Indian environment.

Following the launch of the film in May 2023, communal clashes erupted in the western state of Maharashtra, one person died and 8 others were injured, police arrested more than 100 people, and authorities even blocked internet service and imposed curfews.

In the state of Kerala itself, a political and judicial debate over the film has begun, the end of which is not yet known, and the Indian state of West Bengal has banned the film from being shown in cinemas, in an effort to prevent sectarian tensions, considering the film's story distorted.

In Britain, protesters stormed a cinema in the city of Birmingham that is showing the film and demanded to stop showing it, and broadcast the newspaper "Daily Mail" British right-wing videos showing protesters storming the cinema, and another shows one of the protesters standing in the middle of the screening hall during the screening of the film shouting that this film is pure lie and slander, and demanded protesters to speak with the director of the house.

Exporting Islamophobia

The producers clearly indicate in the film and even in its advertisement that it is not only fiction or that it contains some facts, but they claim that it reflects many true stories.

This is in contrast to several films that deal with sensitive issues and tend towards imagination and disavow portraying reality to avoid any crises or quarrels, as several Arab and Western films and series dealt with the phenomenon of ISIS recruitment of women and youth and provided treatments that some disagreed with and others agreed, but in the end they did not reach the sectarian chord within any of the Western, Arab or Muslim societies to promote a racist point of view, and therefore this film is a unique case in this field.

Indian cinema has been charging its films with anecdotal exaggerations, overexpressiveness, and even mental impossibilities within the framework of an important film school that has emerged from this ancient culture.

Despite the ethnic, sectarian and religious tensions that ripple the country from time to time, cinema was part of the cultural fabric of society that embodies what this multi-ethnic and multilingual society should be, and it was far from this racist charge, in addition to the heritage of coexistence, peaceful struggle and the experience of Mahatma Gandhi, which characterizes the modern history of the country and inspires many peoples.

Bollywood cinema has always been an ambassador for the Indian culture of coexistence, and the rise of the famous Indian Muslim actor Shah Rukh Khan, known as "Shah Rukh Khan", on the ladder of stardom was a model for a story of struggle allowed by the Indian environment, and this is one of the secrets of India's soft power, from which the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party did not benefit anything, but on the contrary promotes everything that is the opposite, and the danger of this is that the sparks of sectarian tensions began to fly beyond the borders of India, which is dangerous, especially in Europe, which suffers from Racial problems and does not lack pour more oil on the fire.

Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan (social media)

The question of blocking and screening is the simplest question posed by this film, because the problem raised by more than just an offensive or sensational film that has spread to a country other than the country of production, while acknowledging that the film has benefited from the reduced censorship enjoyed by films in British theaters, which is different from the censorship of television production content, because television is seen as a family medium open to different age groups that needs to scrutinize the content offered to it with a balance between freedom Creativity, protection of civil peace and rejection of racist and sectarian discourse.

The main question the film asks is: to what extent can dehumanization advance through the arts? Dehumanization here is a more precise expression than demonization, because dehumanization involves dealing with violators, even those who are wrong, not as human beings, but as objects that can be attacked without any humanitarian considerations, because banning films, as the Indian state of West Bengal did, can contain the problem geographically, but it does not contain it socially and politically.