‘If there were so many ISIS female members…’: Shashi Tharoor on ‘Kerala Story’
The trailer for the controversial upcoming film The Kerala Story has been altered. While it originally suggested that the film is based on the stories of over 30,000 women from Kerala, it now claims to be based on the stories of three women.
Amid backlash for its factual inaccuracies, the trailer for the controversial upcoming film The Kerala Story has been altered. While the trailer originally suggested that the film is based on the stories of more than 32,000 Kerala women who’d allegedly been radicalised by Islamic fundamentalists, the revised version of the trailer description on YouTube says that the film is based on the “true stories of three young girls from different parts of Kerala.”
This comes after MP Shashi Tharoor and several others had raised questions about the mistruths being touted by the film and its filmmakers — director Sudipto Sen and ‘creative director’ and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah. Tharoor reacted to the change, and wrote on Twitter, “The plot thickens. The filmmakers have updated the movie’s description on YouTube and changed ‘32,000 women’ to ‘3 women’… I rest my case.”
Previously, Tharoor had questioned claims that the film is based on the “heart-breaking and gut-wrenching stories of 32,000 females in Kerala”. The film also created a political controversy, with Kerala Congress leader MM Hassan calling for a ban on the movie, on the grounds that it could create communal disharmony. CM Pinarayi Vijayan accused the filmmakers of spreading propaganda.
After claiming initially that the film is based on thousands of cases of missing women being radicalised, the filmmakers earlier this week asked why the figures even matter. In an interaction with ANI, they asked if the situation would be less grave if it concerned only 100 women. Last evening, Sen attended a screening of the film at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, where he said that it is based on the story of ‘three girls’. The screening was met with protests by a certain section of students.