NOT A BLACK & WHITE STORY

Kerala yields its best stories to those who have lived intimately with its complexities

WHAT IS THE real Kerala story? Perhaps it’s a film which offers a slice of life from Malappuram, where a local Muslim family ends up nursing — and eventually caring for — a Nigerian football player with a broken leg who had been recruited for the wildlypopular sport of “sevens football”. Or maybe it’s the one about an impetuous young man and his “team” in a Christian community in Angamaly, which offers a glimpse into their life of petty crime and violence, with unforgettable depictions of the area’s main obsession, pork fry. It could also be the film set in gorgeous Kumbalangi, which uses the story of four brothers from a fishing community to ask what it means to be a man in the world today and in which a young Hindu woman, speaking to her mother about her Catholic boyfriend, says “Isn’t Jesus someone we all know?”

One such story of the state, some in Kerala believe, has been told by the 2023 Hindi film, The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. Controversial from the very start — even before its release, the film’s teaser and trailer had raised hackles in the state — The Kerala Story is allegedly based on the “true” stories of Malayali girls who were systematically brainwashed and entrapped by a section of Muslims, converted to Islam and turned into “terrorists” for use by the Islamic State in West Asia.

The film, which did poor business in Kerala and neighbouring Tamil Nadu, even as it raked in money at the box office in other parts of the country, is at the centre of a controversy again, less than a month before the state votes in the Lok Sabha elections. On April 4, the Idukki diocese of the Kerala Catholic Church screened the film for students of Class X and XII as part of its summer catechism programme. According to Father Prince Karakkatt, the public relations officer of the diocese, this was done to “enlighten” young people about the dangers of “love jihad”.

Following an outcry against the screening by the ruling CPM and the Opposition Congress — who had also protested against the film being telecast on Doordarshan last week — the Kerala Catholic Youth Movement (KCYM) decided to organise screenings in other parts of Kerala, too.

The Kerala Story confirms and feeds the demographic anxieties of certain sections of Kerala society, that one community is growing and prospering at the expense of others. Never mind that “love jihad” has, time and again, been proved to be a mere bogey, drummed up by conservative forces as they scrabble to find their footing in a society that is rapidly changing — for such forces, controlling the lives and bodies of young people, especially women, is the first response to what seems like an existential threat.

Never mind also that the makers of The Kerala Story had to backtrack on the inflated claims they had made, about their film telling the truth about what had happened to “32,000 girls” in the state after they were taken to court. The number was revised to three, and a disclaimer that the story is a “fictionalised” account was also issued.

Few Malayalis would disagree that even God’s Own Country has its problems: Growing poverty and unemployment, environmental degradation, a looming fiscal crisis and deep-rooted misogyny. “Love jihad” is one of these problems only in the sense that it serves as a weapon for those with a specific political agenda, of undermining the communal harmony that has characterised Kerala society for so long and which has helped it be largely immune to the clarion call of majoritarianism.

The films mentioned earlier in this article — Sudani From Nigeria (2018), Angamaly Diaries (2017) and Kumbalangi Nights (2019) — all depict a Kerala that is comfortable enough with its diversity that it can, quite naturally, tell stories of and from all its communities, without feeling the need to moralise about it or resorting to tokenism. They show that Kerala yields its best stories to those who have lived intimately with and experienced its complexities; the many, everyday moments of love and beauty, yes, but also the cracks — formed by religion, caste and gender — that run through it.

How truthfully can a story from this diverse and complicated land, with a millennia-long history that connects it to the wider world beyond the Arabian Sea — and which is home to both India’s oldest mosque and its oldest church — be told by those who understand it mainly through cherry-picked news reports and sensationalist headlines?

pooja.pillai@expressindia.com

‘The Kerala Story’ confirms and feeds the demographic anxieties of certain sections of Kerala society, that one community is growing and prospering at the expense of others. Never mind that ‘love jihad’ has, time and again, been proved to be a mere bogey, drummed up by conservative forces as they scrabble to find their footing in a society that is rapidly changing — for such forces, controlling the lives and bodies of young people, especially women, is the first response to what seems like an existential threat.