‘The Kerala Story’ an attempt to spread hate propaganda, says Pinarayi Vijayan

A still from the movie The Kerala Story.

Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday said the upcoming movie The Kerala Story was a product of the Sangh Parivar’s “factory of lies”.

He said legal action would be taken against those involving themselves in antisocial activities.

“A glance at the trailer gives the impression that the movie was deliberately produced with the aim of communal polarisation and spreading hate propaganda against Kerala. By placing Kerala, the land of secularism, as the centre of religious extremism, it is repeating the Sangh Parivar’s propaganda. Propaganda films and the othering of Muslims should be viewed in the context of various efforts made by the Sangh Parivar to gain an advantage in electoral politics in Kerala,” Mr. Vijayan said in a Facebook post.

The statement comes at a time when the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF), the Opposition United Democratic Front (UDF) and their youth organisations have all opposed the movie in a united voice.

Mr. Vijayan said the allegations of ‘love jihad’ were dismissed by Central investigating agencies, courts and even the Union Home Ministry.

G. Kishan Reddy, then Union Minister of State for Home Affairs, had said in Parliament that there was no such thing as ‘love jihad’.

“Yet in the film, this false allegation is made the main story premise only because of the eagerness to humiliate Kerala in front of the world. The Sangh Parivar is trying to destroy the atmosphere of religious harmony in Kerala and sow poisonous seeds of communalism,” the Chief Minister said.

Mr. Vijayan said the Sangh Parivar was attempting to take forward its divisive politics using fake stories through such films as its methods, which were successful in other places, did not work in Kerala. It was spreading such myths without the support of any fact or evidence, he said.

“In the trailer of the movie, we could see the hoax that 32,000 women in Kerala had converted and became members of the Islamic State. This bogus story is a product of the Sangh Parivar’s factory of lies. Justifying those who use cinema only to create division using the argument of freedom of expression is not right. Freedom of expression is not a licence to communalise this country, spread lies and divide people,” he said.

‘A tool of fascism’

Minister for Local Self-Governments M.B. Rajesh, in a separate statement, said the movie was part of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)‘s crooked project to capture Kerala, for which thousands of crores of rupees was being spent. The movie was an example of how cinema becomes a tool of fascism, he said.

“The story that this movie is seeking to portray is not the real story of Kerala. It is a State known for its social indicators matching that of developed nations, human development indices which are a model for the entire country and for its atmosphere of peaceful co-existence,” he said.

A.A. Rahim, MP, national president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) said that the Sangh Parivar’s attempt to humiliate Kerala with poison smeared lies through the movie is reprehensible. 

Social media in Kerala is abuzz with criticism against the movie trailer, released last week, which claimed that the Islamic State (IS) found Kerala a fertile ground for recruiting impressionable youth for its terrorist cause during the 2016-18 period. Many commentators pointed out that the wildly exaggerated numbers and other claims, without any evidence, were being spread using the movie with an intention to provide a distorted picture of Kerala to those from other States and create hatred against Keralites.