The Kerala Story review: There are some stories, whose purpose is just not to entertain you, but leave you with a question: Why? Why did this happen? Why does this exist? Why did none attempt to prevent it? If a problem exists, you can either bow down or face it head on. Running away is not the solution, and one movie has just done that.
Now let’s find out in this review why this film “The Kerala Story”, to quote the makers, “would shake up the institutions”. The film is directed by filmmaker cum documentary maker Sudipto Sen, written and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, and stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani among others.
The Kerala Story review
The film begins in a remote location. A woman, suspected to be an ISIS terrorist, is brought for interrogation by presumably the Afghan authorities, and supervised by an American agency. As her attempts to prove her innocence almost go in vain, the woman named Fathima, narrates her journey from her origins in Kerala to the harrowing present.
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Cut to the flashback: Shalini Unnikrishnan is a happy go lucky girl, who lives in Alappuzha, with her widowed mother, and her old maternal grandmother. She aspires to be a nurse, and hence enrolls into the Indian Institute of Nursing in the nearest location. She is acquainted with her dormmates, who are Nimah, a Christian, Geetanjali, an agnostic, and Asifa, a hardcore Islamist. All are friendly and helpful towards her. But there is more to Asifa than what meets the eye.
Asifa soon opens up about her upbringing, and there is no place where she doesn’t praise her deity. She also introduces the three to her family, especially her cousins, Ramiz and Abdul. However, something’s amiss, and before anyone of them realizes, an incident at the mall changes their lives for once and for all. How that incident leads to Shalini becoming Fatima, and how she ends up as an ISIS sex slave interred in an Afghanistan prison forms the crux of “The Kerala Story”.
Let’s be honest, keep everything aside. Let’s forget that we are Hindus, Christians, literally any identity under the sun. Just be honest: if someone respects his / her culture, and under the garb of it, influences your or your kiths and kin, and brings them to a point of no return, converting them by deceit, is that acceptable?
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In a normal scenario, none can even think of accepting such a situation. But this Kerala, where such incidents are an everyday reality, and by the time your parents or you yourself understand the game behind it, it is JUST TOO LATE! You might fight on the authencity of figures, or the modus operandi of the people, but can you deny that the problem doesn’t exist? Saying that only one path to the Almighty is correct, and the rest, or the people revered for following the same are nobodies sounds nothing less than lunacy. But that is shoved down our throats in the name of secularism. How many are even ready to talk on this issue, forget portraying it on the silver screen?
Let me give you an example: following Shalini’s indoctrination, and her subsequent marriage to one of Asifa’s cousins, she converts to Islam. The moment her mother knows it, she rushes to the place, and even in the drizzling rain, attempts to convince her daughter that something’s not right. But she is coldly brushed off by her in laws. The tone of addressing Fatima is enough to make us know the intentions. Such subtlety is rare.
While mentioning every incident in the film would be impractical, a couple of incidents stand out. In one place, when Shalini gives birth to her child, she is denied even the basics. She cannot avail access to the bare minimum a mother would need for her newborn. As she somehow sources some rations from another victim, she allows her a conversation with her relatives. However, moments later, that woman is brutally dragged by her ‘husband’, if that might be the word to address him, and her brains are blown out with a single shot. Her crime: helping a mother to feed her newborn?
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You may fight that the film attempts to show Kerala as a radical hotbed, you may whine that the figure of 32000 women being converted to Islam is not correct, but can you deny that such atrocities DO NOT EXIST AT ALL? Can you just think of it? Forget everything else, is denying food to a newborn infant, even acceptable? Even the most stone hearted would shiver on such a thought. Yet, there are folks who dare to call every single mention of such incidents a figment of imagination.
Another incident that makes your stomach churn is when Nimah attempts to file a complaint, and none of the policemen would have it. One of them even sympathetically says that while he may be morally with her, he cannot technically help her. Why such a compulsion? Why? What on earth would happen if such atrocities are reported? What fabric of which ideology will be destroyed if such things are unearthed? Will the fabric of secularism be torn, or will the horrors of Islamic radicalism, hiding behind the veil of the MINORITY, be ripped off?
Now coming to the point of 32000 girls being converted. This has been subject to a lot of ridicule, and I believe the Censor Board has objected to the same as well to an extent. For an instance, let’s assume that the number is incorrect. But, and I say but, is this also incorrect that a significant chunk of masses in Kerala are attracted to the ISIS, and either by deceit or volition, become a part of it? Can you ignore the fact that there is an entire network dedicated to this very operation of attracting, deceiving and converting non Muslim girls for a sinister purpose?
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I heard somewhere, “We must stand up for what is right, even if it makes others unhappy”. The truth is, we just cannot be oblivious to the fact that such things happen. Denying this altogether only makes the matter worse. As such, even if “The Kerala Story” is not perfect, it is certainly not a movie that one can afford to miss. The rest is up to you, and I hope you don’t want your children to meet the same fate, eh?
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