The Congress, CPI(M) youth wing DYFI and the Youth League of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) had also demanded a ban on the screening of the movie in Kerala.
Over a hundred students attended a screening of the movie ‘The Kerala Story’ at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus on Tuesday.
Organised by the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the screening was followed by an interaction with the director Sudipto Sen, producer Vipul Shah and protagonist Ada Sharma.
The movie claims to portray the tale of some women from the state who converted to Islam and were recruited to the terror outfit ISIS.
Soon after the screening started, members of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), held a protest at Sabarmati Dhaba on the campus. “‘The Kerala Story’ is another attempt of the Sangh Parivar’s ‘lie factory’ to polarise society by propagating Islamophobia and outright lies such as the figure of ‘32,000’ women, who the film claims have joined the terror outfit ISIS through ‘love jihad’ in Kerala,” said Sagnik, SFI Secretary, JNU.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court Tuesday told petitioners who approached it against the film that they should have moved the appropriate forum given that the film has already been cleared by the censor board. The court told the counsel that it cannot be tagged with the hate speech matter and that they should have moved the High Court first.
On being asked how the team landed at the figure of 32,000 women, director Sudipto Sen, told The Indian Express, “The figure 32,000 is arbitrary, but also based on some facts.” Explaining how they zeroed in on the number, Sen said that they added data from 2014 with that of 2016 and matched numbers given by Oommen Chandy (former state chief minister) where he mentioned that around 2,800-3,200 conversions were taking place per year, adding that they had filed an RTI but did not get any data from the government.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on April 30 criticised the filmmakers stating that the film appears to peddle lies to create communal polarisation and hate propaganda against the state.
The Congress, CPI(M) youth wing DYFI and the Youth League of the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) had also demanded a ban on the screening of the movie in Kerala.
