Kerala has been “gravely insulted” by the film The Kerala Story winning two National Film Awards, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday.
Sudipto Sen was named best director and Prasantanu Mohapatra the best cinematographer for the Hindutva propaganda film.
The award winners for 2023 were announced by the Union information and broadcasting on Friday.
The film, which revolves around the theme of “love jihad,” is widely seen as part of a growing trend in Indian cinema that promotes conspiracy theories endorsed by the Hindutva ecosystem.
The film, which released in May 2023, claims to depict how women from Kerala were converted to Islam and recruited by the Islamic State group. The filmmakers initially claimed that 32,000 women from Kerala had joined the Islamic State, but when asked for evidence, they altered the trailer to state that the movie was a “compilation of the true stories of three young girls”.
Love jihad, an unproven conspiracy theory propagated by Hindu nationalists and far-right groups to accuse Muslim men of coercing Hindu women into conversion through marriage, has been increasingly used to fuel communal tensions and incite violence against Muslims in India.
Vijayan said that by honouring a film that “spreads blatant misinformation with the clear intent of tarnishing Kerala’s image and sowing seeds of communal hatred”, the jury had “lent legitimacy to a narrative rooted in the divisive ideology of the Sangh Parivar.”
“Kerala, a land that has always stood as a beacon of harmony and resistance against communal forces, has been gravely insulted by this decision,” Vijayan said on social media.
This story was originally published in maktoobmedia.com. Read the full story here.
