Released in May, “The Kerala Story” is one of those Indian films that vilify Muslims and spread fake news about them, raising fears that the Bollywood industry will become a tool of propaganda ahead of the elections of the next year.
“Inspired by many true stories” immediately highlights the trailer for the anti-Muslim film about “innocent girls, trapped, victims of trafficking intended to make them terrorists”.
The Hindi fiction, which tells the story of a Hindu woman who converts to Islam and then becomes radicalized, is the second highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023.
Its critics believe that this film, like others recently released, peddles lies to pit communities against each other in the run-up to national elections in 2024.
“I would suggest to all political parties to take advantage of my film (…) that they use it for their political ends,” director Sudipto Sen told AFP when asked about his own political color.
The world’s largest democracy has a long history of film censorship, but many critics are concerned that Bollywood is producing more and more films, tinged with the Hindu nationalist ideology advocated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party.
Indians are crazy about cinema, an unequaled medium for addressing the popular masses, recalls journalist and author Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Under Mr. Modi’s tenure, multiple films have broadcast divisive messages reinforcing prejudices broadcast by political leaders, he said to AFP.
“Like them, these films instill hatred in the population (…) mounted against religious minorities,” he adds.
The release of “The Kerala Story” in May coincided with elections in the southern state of Karnataka.
The results, strongly contested by Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata (BJP) party, sparked clashes in this state where one person was killed.
Mr Modi relied on the film during a rally, while accusing Congress, the main opposition party, of “supporting terrorist tendencies”.
According to its detractors, the low-budget film plays on the so-called “love jihad”, these infox telling that Muslims seduce Hindus to rally them to the Islamist terrorist cause.
The production has since gone back on the false claim that 32,000 Hindu and Christian women from Kerala had been recruited by the jihadist group Islamic State.
BJP members had organized free screenings of the film, which party spokesman Gopal Krishna Agarwal said was part of a “communication plan”.
“How to communicate its ideology? How to communicate about the life and history of its leader and his activity? This is our way of doing things… Party teams do it individually,” Agarwal told AFP.
To promote the film, the governments of two BJP-led states reduced ticket taxes.
According to the director, his film “sounded a chord” in India, home to one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, around 14% of the 1.4 billion people.
“I believe in the power of truth, the truth that we said in the film, and that’s what people want to see,” he told AFP.
His film breaks away from traditional Bollywood musicals, following a recent trend.
Now, Bollywood studios are releasing detective, war and spy films, exalting the nationalism of usually Hindu heroes battling enemies outside or within India itself.
“Movies have always been used as propaganda, doesn’t Hollywood do that?” recalls the director Sudhir Mishra, quoting the “Rambo” with Sylvester Stallone, “I really think that we attack and accuse Bollywood”.
“The Accidental Prime Minister”, a critical biopic of Manmohan Singh, predecessor and rival of Mr. Modi, was launched just months before the 2019 elections. And the release of the hagiography “PM Narendra Modi” saw its release delayed by the Electoral Commission until after the ballot.
Conversely, the next film “Godhra” returns to the real story of the fire of a train in 2002 in which 59 Hindu pilgrims perished. The tragedy sparked interfaith riots that left more than 1,000 people dead, mostly Muslims. The movie’s trailer suggests it was a “conspiracy.”
A recent BBC documentary on Mr Modi’s role in the violence has been blocked in the country as “hostile propaganda and (collected) anti-Indian rubbish”.
16/08/2023 16:51:44 — Bombay (AFP) © 2023 AFP
