Is ‘The Kerala Story’ about ‘three young girls’ from Kerala or ‘32,000’? Is the film based on a true story?

It’s the most talked-about film in India right now. The Kerala Story, whose trailer was released last week and is scheduled to hit theatres on 5 May, has stirred a political storm. The film tells the story of a group of women from Kerala who were forcefully converted to Islam and then joined the terror group Islamic State. The film has been dubbed ‘propaganda’ with Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan slamming the makers of the film and the locals calling for a ban. But is The Kerala Story fact or fiction? We take a look. What is the film about? _The Kerala Story_ , directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutul Shah, created a furore from the time the teaser dropped in November last year. In the one-minute-19-second long teaser, a burkha-clad woman, played by Bollywood actor Adah Sharma, says her name was Shalini Unnikrishnan and she wanted to serve humanity by becoming a nurse. “Now I am Fatima Ba, an ISIS terrorist in Afghanistan jail,” she was seen saying in the November teaser, adding that there are “32,000 girls like me who have been converted and buried in the deserts of Syria and Yemen”. The recently released trailer also revolves around Shalini Unnikrishnan. It shows how she was brainwashed and lured by Muslim friends. It depicts her conversion, wedding and then how she was trafficked to Pakistan. “I am not alone, there are thousands of girls from Kerala who ran away from home,” Shalini says as the trailer ends. The film, which claims to be based on real events, revolves around “girls” from Hindu and Muslim communities who went missing from Kerala and were recruited into the Islamic State after they were converted. These women were then later sent to Afghanistan, Yemen and Syria to “fight for the cause of Islam”.

. #TheKeralaStory isn't about, elections , agenda, religion vs religion.. it is about something much bigger. LIFE and DEATH ! It is about Terrorism vs Humanity. Calling it propaganda is covering up the story of each girl whose life was destroyed 💔 pic.twitter.com/T4fkBRGB9D

— Adah Sharma (@adah_sharma) April 29, 2023

Did thousands of women flee Kerala? It’s the figure 32,000, which raised an eyebrow first. However, since the uproar, the questionable number which also was mentioned in the YouTube description of its trailer has been changed to three. Addressing the press conference on Tuesday, director Sudipto Sen said the 32,000 figure used in the movie was an “arbitrary number but backed with some facts”. “The 32,000 figure doesn’t matter. Even if one girl faced conversion, the story needs to be told. You have watched the film, does the number actually matters,” he asked during the interaction with the media. “Former Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy spoke about conversions. They said that 900 girls were converted in 2014. Then in 2016, there was no figure for 2015. We have back-calculated and also added the number of years after that and arrived at the figure. But people in Kerala say that number is more than 50,000,” he claimed. Also read: The Kerala Story: Brutal reality of love jihad, weaknesses of Hindu society hit hard enough to trigger a rude awakening In an interview with CNNNews18, producer Vipul Shah said, “This (The movie) is based on true stories, because every scene tells something that has happened to somebody.”

#TheKeralaStory: Love Jihad conspiracy & radicalization, actor Adah Sharma (@adah_sharma) & Producer Vipul Shah clear the air

'This is based on true stories, because every scene tells something that has happened to somebody,' he says. Listen in#ABillionIdeas | @maryashakil pic.twitter.com/rmRrOd3V3J

— News18 (@CNNnews18) April 29, 2023

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Is the story of the four women real? The Kerala Story is said to be based on four women who converted to Islam and travelled with their husbands to Afghanistan to join the terror group between 2016 and 2018. They are currently languishing in a prison in the country. Actor Adah Sharma claims that she has spoken to some of these women. “There will be testimony from those who will be brave enough to come in front of cameras,” she told India Today. In December 2019, the website StratNewsGlobal published interviews of four women from Kerala, Nimisha alias Fathima Isa, Merin alias Mirriam, Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha and Rafael, were published under the title “Khorasan Files: The Journey of Indian Islamic State Widows”, The Indian Express reports. Using this story, the film throws light on the alleged recruitment by the Islamic State in Kerala. Did the Islamic State recruit people from the state? In 2013, reports from Syria suggested that some Indians were fighting for the Islamic State. Several Indians have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join the terror group. In a written reply to Parliament in 2019, then Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy said, “…the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and the state police forces have registered cases against ISIS operatives and sympathisers, and have arrested 155 accused from across the country so far”, reports The Indian Express. In July last year, the NIA court sentenced to imprisonment three men who were convicted in a case about recruitment to the Islamic State terrorist group. In October, another man from the state was convicted in the IS recruitment case and given five years in jail. [caption id=“attachment_12540722” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] The trailer of The Kerala Story earlier claimed that 32,000 women from the state had joined the terror group[/caption] Why Kerala politicians are slamming the film? The Bharatiya Janata Party has claimed that recruitment into IS from the southern state cannot be denied and Chief Minister Vijayan was aware of the exact figures. “IS has a very strong presence in Kerala… You cannot deny the IS recruitment from the state,” BJP state president K Surendran claimed on Monday, adding that if the figures cited in the film were the bone of contention, then that could be discussed. The CM said on Sunday that the makers of The Kerala Story were taking up the Sangh Parivar propaganda of projecting the state as a centre of religious extremism by raising the issue of “love jihad”, a concept rejected by the courts, probe agencies and even the Union home ministry. According to him, the trailer of the Hindi film, at first glance, appears to be “deliberately produced” with the alleged aim of creating communal polarisation and spreading hate propaganda against Kerala. “In the trailer of the movie, we see a hoax that 32,000 women in Kerala were converted and became members of the Islamic State. This bogus story is a product of the Sangh Parivar’s lie factory,” the CM contended in his statement. Kerala MP Shashi Tharoor had also challenged the 32,000 figure earlier and criticised the film’s makers for “gross exaggeration and distortion of the Kerala reality”. He pointed out that Western intelligence sources suggested that the number of Indians joining ISIS was less than 100. Tharoor responded to the change in the film’s trailer on Twitter, saying, “The plot thickens. The filmmakers have updated the movie’s description on YouTube and changed ‘32,000 women’ to ‘3 women’… I rest my case.”

. The plot thickens. The filmmakers have updated the movie's description on YouTube and changed '32,000 women' to '3 women'. Earlier, they said the movie is about the "heartbreaking and gut-wrenching stories of 32,000 females in Kerala". Now it says: "The Kerala Story is a…

— Shashi Tharoor (@ShashiTharoor) May 2, 2023

While Tharoor has not called for a ban on the film, he said, “…Keralites have every right to say loud and clear that this is a misrepresentation of our reality.” So is the film releasing? So far yes. The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to entertain a plea seeking a stay on the release of the movie on grounds that it’s a “worst kind of hate speech” and an “audio-visual propaganda”. A bench of Justices KM Joseph and BV Nagarathna said, “There are varieties of hate speeches. This film has got certification and has been cleared by the board. It’s not like a person getting on the podium and starts giving uncontrolled speech. If you want to challenge the release of the movie, you should challenge the certification and through appropriate forum.” The censor board has given the move an “A” certificate and reportedly deleted 10 scenes from the move, one of them an interview with a former Kerala chief minister and another which made “inappropriate references to all Hindu gods”. The film stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani. With inputs from agencies Read all the Latest News , Trending News ,  Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.