The controversy around the film “The Kerala Story” has been making it to the headlines in the entertainment industry almost daily. It puts the spotlight on forced conversion & radicalization of women in the state, which has sparked a row. The film is amazing and teaches us that women should not trust anyone blindly. It makes us learn many things and it will also get a great response on The Kerala Story OTT platform.
This Hindi drama was released in 2023, produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, and directed by Sudipto Sen in 2023. The popular actresses who appeared in the film are Adah Sharma, Sonia Balani, Yogita Bihani, and Siddhi Idnani. The film shows the story of some women in the film from Kerala state who are forced into converting to Islam and joining the Islamic state. The film is premised on the Hindutva conspiracy theory of “love jihad”, and claims that thousands of Hindu and Christian women from Kerala have been converted to Islam and recruited by the Islamic State.
The Kerala Story was released on 5 May 2023 in theatres. It became the 9th highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023, with a worldwide gross of ₹303.97 crore (US $38 million). The film was highly encouraged by the members of the BJP ( Bharatiya Janta Party), and the film was promoted in the campaigning for the Karnataka assembly election. However, film critics accorded it overwhelmingly negative reviews, characterizing the work as Islamophobic propaganda. The film has also faced protracted litigation and protests, primarily in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal.
The Kerala Story OTT
Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story which made quite a buzz upon its release and gained great numbers on Box Office is all set to begin The Kerala Story OTT release on Zee5. The Kerala story OTT release date is 16 February.
Zee5 tweeted on Twitter, “The wait is officially over! The most anticipated movie is dropping soon on ZEE5!”
#TheKeralaStory premieres on 16th February, only on #ZEE5
Production and Release
The film was produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, the creative director of the film. It was released on 5 May 2023 in theatres. ZEE5 purchased the digital streaming rights of the film. Before its domestic release, the film went through CBFC scrutiny and received an adults-only classification following several requested changes.
The Kerala Story
The Kerala Story follows the story of three girls: Shalini Unnikrishnan (Adah Sharma), Nimah (Yogita Bihani), and Geetanjali (Siddhi Idnani), who are manipulated by their roommate, Asifa (Sonia Balani), into converting to another religion.
The film is divided into two parts: the first half shows how the girls were manipulated into converting to another religion, while the second half portrays Shalini’s journey as Fatima Ba – a converted woman of a terrorist group and her imprisonment in Afghanistan. It also shows how men brainwashed the Hindu and Christian women of Kerala in the name of love, converted them and convinced them to join war zones. The shocking incidents happened between 2018-19 when a rising number of Kerala youths had come under the influence of a terrorist group.
Premise and Factual Accuracy
The teaser released on 3 November 2022, features the character of Fathima Ba, a Hindu Malayali nurse who had converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State, before ending up in an Afghan jail. She claimed to be one of 32,000 girls from the Christian and Hindu communities, who are missing from Kerala and have been recruited into the Islamic State after being converted to Islam.
Sudipto, the director of the film, has made such claims for years. In 2018, he directed a documentary on what he claimed to be the involuntary mass conversion of 32,000 Hindu and Christian girls to Islam as part of an “international conspiracy” to render Kerala an Islamic state.
The events portrayed in the film are loosely based on the accounts of three women from Kerala state, namely: Sonia Sebastian, Nimisha Nair, and Merin Jacob, who converted to Islam and traveled with their respective husbands to Afghanistan to join the Islamic State between 2016 and 2018, the claimed figures in the film are wildly inaccurate, being based on misquotes, mistranslations, and misrepresentations of unrelated statistics. Not more than 150-200 Indians have joined the group from the entire country, with people from Kerala accounting for less than a quarter of them.
The figures posited in the film also exceed the whole strength of the Islamic State.
Later, in response to litigation, the filmmakers cut all promotional materials, including the teaser, that had the erroneous scenes. However, the film claims multiple times and once raised it even higher to 50,000. In response to further litigation, Sen admitted to all figures in the film being inauthentic, and that the film was a “fictionalized” portrayal of real-life events.
The Kerala Story Controversy
‘The Kerala Story’ film has been under the scanner ever since the teaser was released. The film’s teaser had claimed that 32,000 women went missing from Kerala, but many had objected to the estimated figures. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had titled it a ‘distorted story’, and also imposed a ban on the film in the state, which was lifted after the Supreme Court asked the state government to remove the ban on the screening of the film in the state. ‘The Kerala Story’ emerged as one of the most successful films in 2023 at the box office so far.
Box office
On its opening day, the film grossed ₹8.03 crore in India, making it the 5th highest opener in India for 2023. As of 15 June 2023, the film has grossed ₹288.04 crores (US$36 million) in India and ₹15.64 crores (US$2.0 million) overseas for a worldwide gross collection of ₹303.97 crores (US$38 million), becoming the 9th highest grossing Hindi film of 2023. The Kerala Story performed well in northern India but underperformed in the south. The Kerala Story was one of the successful films at the box office in 2023.
