The opposition claims that a Bollywood movie portraying young Indian women who are recruited by the Islamic State might “sow seeds of religious animosity” and has reignited controversy before of India’s elections.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is predicted to win the multi-phase national elections that start on April 19. This is partially because of Modi’s persistent courtship of the majority population and the country’s robust economic development and welfare state.
Votes from the BJP’s several candidates in the elections will be tallied on June 4. On Friday night, however, Bollywood’s role in the election takes a convoluted turn when the government-owned national broadcaster Doordarshan airs The Kerala Story, a film that is set in the opposition-run southern coastal state of the same name.
Since its debut last summer, the low-budget film has been an unexpected blockbuster. It centers on three women who are transferred to Islamic State camps in Afghanistan after being brainwashed and switching from Hinduism to Islam. Critics claim that the movie stirs up prejudice against the Muslim minority in India. Since Doordarshan is free for users, a large number of houses are connected to the channel nationwide.
In a statement on the movie’s premiere, Kerala’s chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, stated, “Doordarshan is not an agency to undertake communal campaigns for BJP candidates.” “Secular Kerala will stand united in resisting such subversive attempts aimed at fostering communal discord.” The major opposition Congress party has also expressed disapproval of the intended broadcast.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by Doordarshan’s parent organization, the Federal Ministry for Information and Broadcasting. According to a BJP minister, politics had no bearing on the screening. “A film is an artistic work, and the constitution guarantees the freedom to express one’s creativity,” Kerala-born junior foreign minister V Muraleedharan told reporters.
Although the BJP is not well-known in several southern Indian states, such as Kerala, it is eager to gain more of these seats in order to increase the coalition’s total number of members in the lower house of parliament from 543 to over 400. The film is one of several Hindi-language productions that have been produced since last year and have won over the Hindu nationalist base of the BJP. Modi has publicly lauded the film.
Several patriotic movies, including a biography on Hindu philosopher Vinayak Savarkar, have been released in theaters this year in the run-up to the election. Randeep Hooda, who produced, directed, and performed in the biography, told Reuters that “things are changing.” “It’s a different country; these are different times and therefore there are different movies being made,” he stated, adding: “Nationalistic films have done well in the past.”
One of the biggest religious riots in India since independence was started in 2002 when a suspected Muslim mob in the western state of Gujarat set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. This episode is the subject of another movie, The Sabarmati Report. It is scheduled for publication in the middle of the countrywide voting session in May.
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