Propaganda, it is said, is best delivered when it doesn’t appear to be so. But that is passé given the brazen display of animosity in films such as Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files. Sudipto Sen, director of The Kerala Story, seems to have taken a leaf out of Mr. Agnihotri’s style book. It could be that the audience these films address demands that the message be served in an unapologetically crass manner.
About a fortnight before its release, The Kerala Story was called out by many for its gross misrepresentation of facts and deceit as the trailer claimed to portray the true story of “32,000 women” from Kerala, who it said were lured through ‘love jihad’ into joining the Islamic State.
The Left, the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League dubbed the film as an attempt to malign Kerala and the Muslim community, which has greatly contributed to the State’s secular cultural milieu, while many organisations and individuals took legal recourse to get the film outlawed on the ground that it aimed to drive a wedge between communities.
