The Idukki diocese of the Syro-Malabar Church appears to have stepped into a political minefield by screening the allegedly Islamophobic movie, The Kerala Story, for catechism students on Sunday.
Fr. Jins Karakkat, chairman of the Idukki Diocese Media Commission, told The Hindu that the diocese also distributed a booklet on ‘love’ to the students.
He claimed the Church had screened the movie to create awareness of the issue among students hailing from the Syro-Malabar community. He said the booklet spelt out the perils of ‘love jihad’, arguably a conspiracy theory of Islamists allegedly using intimacy as a cover to recruit impressionable Christian and Hindu youth to the jihadist cause.
DD screens movie
The Church’s controversial move comes after a political row broke out in Kerala last week after the national broadcaster Doordarshan telecast the movie, despite strident opposition from the Left Democratic Front (LDF) and the Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF).
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan had accused the Union government of sanctioning the movie’s broadcast to allegedly stoke sectarian divisions and cause communal polarisation in Kerala with an eye on the Hindu votes in the Lok Sabha elections.
Both appealed to the DD to desist from screening the deeply schismatic movie, to no avail. The UDF and the LDF also moved the Election Commission of India (ECI) against the film’s broadcast.
The LDF and the UDF worry that the spat over the broadcasting of the allegedly divisive film might take on a new level of vitriol and perhaps focus the Lok Sabha campaign on communally divisive issues.
Moreover, the opposing alliance were acutely aware that the BJP had used the production as a contentious campaign tool in the 2023 Assembly elections in Karnataka, which the Congress won.
BJP stance
However, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) struck a contrarian note. Union Minister of State for External Affairs V. Muraleedharan said those opposed to the film seemed scared of dissenting points of view. Moreover, he added that the Censor Board had cleared the film for screening and that there was nothing illegal in DD telecasting the production.
The ‘love jihad’ controversy surfaced in Kerala in 2021 after Mar Joseph Kallarangatt, Bishop of Palai, flagged the existence of such an alleged conspiracy.
