To see what is in front of one’s nose is a constant struggle – George Orwell
This is the opening quote of the 2012 American documentary Losing Our Sons. The documentary is about two American families (one black and another white) who lost their sons to radical Islam. The film shows how Carl Bledsoe, born and raised in an African-American Baptist family, becomes Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad after getting indoctrinated at Tennessee State University which leads him to Yemen on a fake Somalian passport and returns to USA to kill as many army personnel as possible with his jihad resulting in the 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting killing Private William Long. The film was made to educate Americans about the threat of radical Islam and how this was being wilfully ignored by the political leadership, authorities and the media in the name of political correctness.
If Losing Our Sons was about America losing its sons to Islam, The Kerala Story is about India losing her daughters to the threat that is right in front of our nose.
Very few works on paper and celluloid have the privilege of exploding into a controversy even before hitting the market. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin’s autobiographical works especially Dwikhandito, Geert Wilders’ documentary Fitna, Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America directed by Steven Emerson, Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files, and now joining the league is Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story. And what’s common in all the above works? They hold a mirror to the radical face of Islam.
The Kerala Story minces no words in calling out the threat looming over the God’s own country. And in doing so, the film does feel like it is forcing the message down one’s throat. The dialogues on the conflict between Islamic and non-Islamic theology feel forced. The characterisation of Asifa Ba lacks nuance. The markers in different scenes are in your face and terms like “global agenda” does dumb the film down. But that doesn’t discount the reality. By being overtly straightforward with no subtlety, Sudipto Sen slaps on the face of the blissfully-ignorant and culturally-delinked Hindu, grabs the person by the collar and shouts aloud “Wake up! Before it is too late!”
Speaking of subtlety and propaganda, it is important to mention Pa. Ranjith’s film Kaala starring Superstar Rajinikanth which was an out and out propaganda against Hindus and Hinduism. The markers like “Manu Realty”, “H. Jara towards the end of the movie”, “the blue, red, black symbolizing Neo-Ambedkarism, Communism, Periyarism respectively”, portraying Ganesh Chathurthi visarjan in bad light, the antagonization of Lord Ram, were celebrated by the same bunch of reviewers calling The Kerala Story a “no-nuance propaganda”.
Scene from KaalaSingara Chennai, no longer a dream – H. JARA reads the hoarding.
Yes, The Kerala Story is a no-nuance propaganda only. Deal with it. If Pa. Ranjith can make a no-nuance propaganda film for his politics, so can Sudipto Sen.
A review by Scroll.in ridicules the film as pandering to “WhatsApp University crowd” and Islamophobic. Well, if the religion itself is kafirophobic, calling out the same will feel like being “Islamophobic”.
“A man who went around with his wife’s body”, “A man who let his own wife be kidnapped and put through misery”, “A womanizer” – these references of Asifa berating Hindu Gods are not figments of imagination. These are actually part of the WhatsApp University conversations of those who consider Hindus as heathens. Go to the comments section of YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Twitter threads and Instagram replies and we will see the exact kind of exchanges that is shown in the film. “Allah is the only God! Only Allah runs this world”, is the thought that reverberates among majority of hardcore believers. The moderate Muslim is a miniscule minority. That’s because the core tenets of Islam doesn’t allow one to be a ‘moderate’ Muslim. In the Islamic worldview, you either believe in Allah and live under Sharia or you don’t. And if you don’t, you deserve to die.
This is what fuels jihad and this is the problem that Kerala faces. Girls are targeted, trapped, groomed, impregnated, converted, married, and made ready to wage war against the Indian state and its kafirs. This is what is called love jihad which the LeLis (Left Liberals) claim to be a “conspiracy theory spread by right-wing extremists”.
If it is a “right-wing extremist conspiracy theory”, why would a Merrin Jacob Pallath become Maryam and go to Afghanistan with her husband? Why would a Nimisha become Fathima and join the IS in Afghanistan?
And no, it is not just two stray incidents of “misguided youths”. The majority of IS recruitments from India came from Kerala, which accounted for “40 of the 180 to 200 cases” according to a report by Observer Research Foundation.
In 2019, then Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy submitted in Parliament that “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”.
According to a US State Department report titled ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2020: India’, “There were 66 known Indian-origin fighters affiliated with ISIS, as of November (2020).”
So, 32,000 or 32 – the fact that hundreds have joined ISIS with a majority of them from Kerala is no propaganda but a reality.
Love Jihad may be a conspiracy to the likes of The News Minute and other LeLis but it is a reality which has been acknowledged by the Kerala High Court, then Kerala Communist Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, Syro-Malabar Church.
In 2009, the Kerala High Court asked the government to frame laws to stop “love Jihad” citing that, 3000-4000 religious conversions had taken place after love affairs in the preceding four years. The same year, Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) stated that more than 2600 young Christian women had converted to Islam since 2006.
In 2010, then Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan said “Their plan is to make Kerala a Muslim state in the next 20 years. For that they are luring youngsters. Offering them money. Insisting them to marry Hindu girls to increase Muslim population. This is how they are growing their majority. And these tricks are working!”
In 2012, the then Congress Chief Minister of Kerala, Oomen Chandy, said in a written reply that, a total of 7713 people converted to Islam during 2006-2012.
The Syro-Malabar Church, issued a statement in January 2020 claiming that Christian girls are being “targeted and killed” in the name of “love jihad”.
The menace of Islamic radicalization is a reality. The menace of love jihad is a reality.
Despite the evidence staring at the face, LeLis like The News Minute’s Dhanya Rajendran, Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair have a problem with the number of cases being mentioned in the film.
Teaser will be removed. What about movie? Asking this question only because they told the court they will remove from teaser. Otherwise it is supposed to be 'fictionalised' anyway!
In fact, The News Minute in its coverage of the 21 members from Kerala joining IS whitewashes Salafism (the extremely fundamentalist school of Islam) that inspires people to join IS.
“In the widest sense of the term, Salafis are people who believe that the right way of life was the one led by the early Muslims – those who lived within 400 years of Prophet Mohammed’s death. They believe the lives of people of that time are worth emulating, down to the last detail, hence the focus on religious scriptures.“, that’s how TNM defines the radical Islamist ideology that is at the root of jihad.
When talking about the Salafi commune in Athikka, the article says “They lead a simple, minimalist life, with what they see are necessities.”
There is a reason why outfits like the banned Popular Front of India and its affiliates have a strong presence in north Kerala and coastal Karnataka. There is a reason why most of the Islamic State recruits from India hail from this region. And the reason is the burgeoning influence of radical Islamists professing Salafism. They’ve grown in influence thanks to the patronage of the Communists and Congress in Kerala. Today, these regions are nothing but an Islamic State within India where Sharia is in place in many of the villages. And I can vouch for this with my personal experience.
I was once returning to Mangaluru on a local bus after visiting the Somanatha Temple situated on the banks of Arabian Sea. I was the only Hindu in the bus and I was surrounded by men in white skull caps and women in black burqua. It felt like being in a mini-Pakistan. I felt unsafe and insecure in my own country. That’s when I realized the gravity of the demographic situation in Kerala.
I felt the same sense of eerieness when I managed to watch the movie on 5 May 2023 in Tamil Nadu where the theatre screening the film had heavy police presence. Goers for The Kerala Story were separated filed, frisked and escorted by the police upto the screens. Did we see this kind of security situation for say PK, Haider, Kaala or any other film which ridiculed Hindus? This shows the level of tolerance of Islamists and how much the State fears them despite them being the “minority”.
Losing Our Sons documentary shows how the Barack Obama administration and a section of the US media denied the radical Islamist problem for want of ‘political correctness’ and in order to not offend/incite Muslims. We have seen the same being done by secular governments and the LeLi media in India.
So, yes, sometimes there is a need for loud propaganda like The Kerala Story to drill the reality into people’s head.
The closing line of Losing Our Sons film ends with the warning – “It happened to my son today, tomorrow, your son.”
It holds good for us as well.
Kaushik is a political writer.
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The Kerala Story: A Propaganda Film That Unapolegetically Shows The Reality
This is the opening quote of the 2012 American documentary Losing Our Sons. The documentary is about two American families (one black and another white) who lost their sons to radical Islam. The film shows how Carl Bledsoe, born and raised in an African-American Baptist family, becomes Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad after getting indoctrinated at Tennessee State University which leads him to Yemen on a fake Somalian passport and returns to USA to kill as many army personnel as possible with his jihad resulting in the 2009 Little Rock recruiting office shooting killing Private William Long. The film was made to educate Americans about the threat of radical Islam and how this was being wilfully ignored by the political leadership, authorities and the media in the name of political correctness.
If Losing Our Sons was about America losing its sons to Islam, The Kerala Story is about India losing her daughters to the threat that is right in front of our nose.
Very few works on paper and celluloid have the privilege of exploding into a controversy even before hitting the market. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, Taslima Nasrin’s autobiographical works especially Dwikhandito, Geert Wilders’ documentary Fitna, Terrorists Among Us: Jihad in America directed by Steven Emerson, Vivek Agnihotri’s The Kashmir Files, and now joining the league is Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story. And what’s common in all the above works? They hold a mirror to the radical face of Islam.
The Kerala Story minces no words in calling out the threat looming over the God’s own country. And in doing so, the film does feel like it is forcing the message down one’s throat. The dialogues on the conflict between Islamic and non-Islamic theology feel forced. The characterisation of Asifa Ba lacks nuance. The markers in different scenes are in your face and terms like “global agenda” does dumb the film down. But that doesn’t discount the reality. By being overtly straightforward with no subtlety, Sudipto Sen slaps on the face of the blissfully-ignorant and culturally-delinked Hindu, grabs the person by the collar and shouts aloud “Wake up! Before it is too late!”
Speaking of subtlety and propaganda, it is important to mention Pa. Ranjith’s film Kaala starring Superstar Rajinikanth which was an out and out propaganda against Hindus and Hinduism. The markers like “Manu Realty”, “H. Jara towards the end of the movie”, “the blue, red, black symbolizing Neo-Ambedkarism, Communism, Periyarism respectively”, portraying Ganesh Chathurthi visarjan in bad light, the antagonization of Lord Ram, were celebrated by the same bunch of reviewers calling The Kerala Story a “no-nuance propaganda”.
Yes, The Kerala Story is a no-nuance propaganda only. Deal with it. If Pa. Ranjith can make a no-nuance propaganda film for his politics, so can Sudipto Sen.
A review by Scroll.in ridicules the film as pandering to “WhatsApp University crowd” and Islamophobic. Well, if the religion itself is kafirophobic, calling out the same will feel like being “Islamophobic”.
“A man who went around with his wife’s body”, “A man who let his own wife be kidnapped and put through misery”, “A womanizer” – these references of Asifa berating Hindu Gods are not figments of imagination. These are actually part of the WhatsApp University conversations of those who consider Hindus as heathens. Go to the comments section of YouTube videos, Facebook posts, Twitter threads and Instagram replies and we will see the exact kind of exchanges that is shown in the film. “Allah is the only God! Only Allah runs this world”, is the thought that reverberates among majority of hardcore believers. The moderate Muslim is a miniscule minority. That’s because the core tenets of Islam doesn’t allow one to be a ‘moderate’ Muslim. In the Islamic worldview, you either believe in Allah and live under Sharia or you don’t. And if you don’t, you deserve to die.
This is what fuels jihad and this is the problem that Kerala faces. Girls are targeted, trapped, groomed, impregnated, converted, married, and made ready to wage war against the Indian state and its kafirs. This is what is called love jihad which the LeLis (Left Liberals) claim to be a “conspiracy theory spread by right-wing extremists”.
If it is a “right-wing extremist conspiracy theory”, why would a Merrin Jacob Pallath become Maryam and go to Afghanistan with her husband? Why would a Nimisha become Fathima and join the IS in Afghanistan?
And no, it is not just two stray incidents of “misguided youths”. The majority of IS recruitments from India came from Kerala, which accounted for “40 of the 180 to 200 cases” according to a report by Observer Research Foundation.
In 2019, then Minister of State for Home Affairs G Kishan Reddy submitted in Parliament that “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”.
According to a US State Department report titled ‘Country Reports on Terrorism 2020: India’, “There were 66 known Indian-origin fighters affiliated with ISIS, as of November (2020).”
So, 32,000 or 32 – the fact that hundreds have joined ISIS with a majority of them from Kerala is no propaganda but a reality.
Love Jihad may be a conspiracy to the likes of The News Minute and other LeLis but it is a reality which has been acknowledged by the Kerala High Court, then Kerala Communist Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan, Kerala Catholic Bishops Council, Syro-Malabar Church.
In 2009, the Kerala High Court asked the government to frame laws to stop “love Jihad” citing that, 3000-4000 religious conversions had taken place after love affairs in the preceding four years. The same year, Kerala Catholic Bishops Council (KCBC) stated that more than 2600 young Christian women had converted to Islam since 2006.
In 2010, then Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan said “Their plan is to make Kerala a Muslim state in the next 20 years. For that they are luring youngsters. Offering them money. Insisting them to marry Hindu girls to increase Muslim population. This is how they are growing their majority. And these tricks are working!”
In 2012, the then Congress Chief Minister of Kerala, Oomen Chandy, said in a written reply that, a total of 7713 people converted to Islam during 2006-2012.
The Syro-Malabar Church, issued a statement in January 2020 claiming that Christian girls are being “targeted and killed” in the name of “love jihad”.
The menace of Islamic radicalization is a reality. The menace of love jihad is a reality.
Despite the evidence staring at the face, LeLis like The News Minute’s Dhanya Rajendran, Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair have a problem with the number of cases being mentioned in the film.
In fact, The News Minute in its coverage of the 21 members from Kerala joining IS whitewashes Salafism (the extremely fundamentalist school of Islam) that inspires people to join IS.
“In the widest sense of the term, Salafis are people who believe that the right way of life was the one led by the early Muslims – those who lived within 400 years of Prophet Mohammed’s death. They believe the lives of people of that time are worth emulating, down to the last detail, hence the focus on religious scriptures.“, that’s how TNM defines the radical Islamist ideology that is at the root of jihad.
When talking about the Salafi commune in Athikka, the article says “They lead a simple, minimalist life, with what they see are necessities.”
There is a reason why outfits like the banned Popular Front of India and its affiliates have a strong presence in north Kerala and coastal Karnataka. There is a reason why most of the Islamic State recruits from India hail from this region. And the reason is the burgeoning influence of radical Islamists professing Salafism. They’ve grown in influence thanks to the patronage of the Communists and Congress in Kerala. Today, these regions are nothing but an Islamic State within India where Sharia is in place in many of the villages. And I can vouch for this with my personal experience.
I was once returning to Mangaluru on a local bus after visiting the Somanatha Temple situated on the banks of Arabian Sea. I was the only Hindu in the bus and I was surrounded by men in white skull caps and women in black burqua. It felt like being in a mini-Pakistan. I felt unsafe and insecure in my own country. That’s when I realized the gravity of the demographic situation in Kerala.
I felt the same sense of eerieness when I managed to watch the movie on 5 May 2023 in Tamil Nadu where the theatre screening the film had heavy police presence. Goers for The Kerala Story were separated filed, frisked and escorted by the police upto the screens. Did we see this kind of security situation for say PK, Haider, Kaala or any other film which ridiculed Hindus? This shows the level of tolerance of Islamists and how much the State fears them despite them being the “minority”.
Losing Our Sons documentary shows how the Barack Obama administration and a section of the US media denied the radical Islamist problem for want of ‘political correctness’ and in order to not offend/incite Muslims. We have seen the same being done by secular governments and the LeLi media in India.
So, yes, sometimes there is a need for loud propaganda like The Kerala Story to drill the reality into people’s head.
The closing line of Losing Our Sons film ends with the warning – “It happened to my son today, tomorrow, your son.”
It holds good for us as well.
Kaushik is a political writer.
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