It is said that 2014 was a landmark year in Indian politics because it ushered in a movement that eventually caused a decisive shift in the ‘Overton window’. Whether that ‘shift’ has been reflected in public policies is a matter of debate. I would argue that it hasn’t.
On the other hand, despite an unfavourable political climate, the rise of social media and the proliferation of newfound voices that are eager to speak and let themselves be heard — that challenge elite capture of institutions and make control of information flow tougher — the left-liberal gatekeepers still dominate public discourse and act as the certifying authority for ideas, speeches and expressions and still attempt to shape our moral judgments.
Take, for instance, the outrage over The Kerala Story. It has been banned in West Bengal, and “pulled out of theatres” in Tamil Nadu. Evidently, where the Mamata Banerjee government wields a mace, the Stalin government uses a scalpel. There were calls for the film to be banned even in Kerala. Apart from censorship, the film has also been at the receiving end of a vicious “liberal” blowback for attempting to bring out into open the issues that we prefer not to discuss — the ensnaring of Hindu and Christian women into joining the Islamic State (ISIS), for instance, and for highlighting troubling phenomena such as the grooming and brainwashing of youth, especially young women by radical Islamists, the propagation of the ideology through influence operations and the use of religious conversion as a tool to achieve demographic change and attain the end goal of Ummah.
From Dawa to Jihad, a paper published in the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), an American global policy think tank, defines Umma (or Ummah) as “a source of inspiration for identification and organisation, and as a fundament for the pursuit of implementing the aims of radical Islam” whose “ultimate objective” is “the establishment of the ‘universal caliphate’ (the universal Islamic state)” — a manifestation of which we saw in the formation of ISIS (or ISIL). There are many steps to be implemented before achieving the end goal, and ‘dawa’, or the propagation of the radical Islamist ideology, is a crucial one.
In ‘The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter It’, published by Hoover Institution, Ayaan Hirsi Ali writes, “If Islamism is the ideology, then dawa encompasses all the methods by which it is spread. Dawa as practiced by Islamists employs a wide range of mechanisms to advance the goal of imposing Islamic law (sharia) on society. This includes proselytization, but extends beyond that…”
Ali adds that “dawa is rooted in the Islamic practice of attempting to convert non-Muslims to accept the message of Islam”. According to her, the “main elements of the strategy” include the reduction of women “to the status of reproductive machines for the purpose of demographic transformation”, taking “advantage of the focus on ‘inclusion’ by progressive political parties in democratic societies, then to force these parties to accept Islamist demands in the name of peaceful coexistence.”
The Kerala Story also tackles the societal consequences of such a disruptive movement and its incompatibility with modern, democratic societies. The incompatibility gives rise to problems with community cohesion. Exploration of the theological doctrine behind such a closed, intolerant ideology is an urgent need. It shouldn’t be buried under an omerta of silence.
Radical Islam — that sees itself as a purifying movement to purge what it perceives as the putrefying aspects of modern societies and their ideas, standards, political and value systems — exploits the openness and the constitutional and legal protections provided by democracies to subvert and eventually undermine every tenet of a democratic society — tolerance for other religions, diverse sexual orientations, openness, multiformity, plurality, personal autonomy, the freedom to choose, act and react, to name a few. Islamism also does not believe in equality between men and women. We only need to look at our neighbourhood in Afghanistan where the Taliban regime, that implements this radical ideology, has banned women’s education.
The end goal of jihadism is to create a parallel society with its own social, legal and power structure that encourages isolationism, closes the community to winds of change in search of a ‘pure’, Islamic way of life, and engages in a never-ending political and even violent struggle with the non-Muslim world.
We need to be able to have frank and wide-ranging conversations on these issues, discuss them threadbare, and make them the subject of mass media even if the attempts appear ham-handed or clumsy. That, however, has proven to be impossible even in modern, democratic societies due to the dictatorship of political correctness and the omerta of silence that allows only one-sided conversations.
In India, any mass media content — it could even be a commercial advertisement — that takes an anti-Hindu or liberal woke position on tenets of Indic faith and belief systems is instantly amplified, glorified and allotted unfettered mind space. Yet any article, column, or film, for example, that seeks to engage in the difficult conversations mentioned above — the necessity for which is dire — faces immediate labelling, censorship and its makers are either de-platformed or cancelled.
While The Kerala Story breaks the conspiracy of silence, it is possible the film fails in certain parameters of artistic brilliance. These metrics are subjective. But to use that pretence to call for censorship so that the discussion around issues that ought to concern us is muzzled is the worst form of liberal dictatorship.
As Italian journalist Giulio Meotti writes for Gatestone Institute, “There is no better ally of Islamic (sic) extremism than this sanctimony of liberal censorship: both, in fact, want to suppress any criticism of Islam…” The conspiracy of silence and the cataclysmic fear of ‘offending sensibilities’ that dominates Western societies have made it so difficult for them to contain the myriad manifestations of this regressive ideology.
Let’s look at what’s happening in Britain where British-Pakistani grooming gangs have been at the centre of controversy for horrific sex crimes against underage white girls in several areas such as Rotherham, Oxford, Rochdale, Derby, Banbury, Telford, Peterborough, Aylesbury, Bristol, Halifax, Keighley, Newcastle and Huddersfield in abuses that went on for almost a decade. The British police knew what was going on, the media knew what was going on, the administration knew what was going on, yet everyone was too scared of the bogey of ‘Islamophobia’ to take any action. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has admitted that “victims of grooming gangs have been ignored because of political correctness.”
In an independent review of the grooming gang cases in Rotherham, published in 2014, professor Alexis Jay put the “conservative estimate” of child victims of sexual exploitation at 1400 in the period between 1997 and 2013. She wrote that the majority of the sexual offenders were Muslim men of Pakistani heritage and were “described as ‘Asian’ by victims, yet throughout the entire period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem, which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.”
In the Huddersfield grooming case, “victims were plied with drink and drugs and then ‘used and abused at will’ in a seven-year ‘campaign of rape and abuse’ between 2004 and 2011.”
British journalist Brendran O’Neill wrote in The Spectator in 2019 wrote that “even now, discussion about Muslim grooming gangs is shushed. Anyone who raises it will be branded an Islamophobe, a racist and maybe even a fascist. Look what happened to the Labour MP for Rotherham, Sarah Champion, when she wrote about the problem of largely Pakistani gangs abusing white girls. She was demonised by Corbynistas. She was forced out of Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet. The message was clear: talk about this issue and you will be punished. This is such a censorious and dim-witted approach to a very serious problem…”
Perhaps not surprisingly, criticism of the film has centred around the figure ‘32000’, which the filmmakers have admitted is an exaggeration of the number of women in Kerala who have been converted to Islam. The figure is not as outlandish as it is being made up to be. In 2010, former Chief Minister of Kerala, Communist leader VS Achutanandan had accused the now-banned PFI outfit of planning to “Islamise Kerala in 20 years using money and marriages.”
In 2021, then Chief Minister of Kerala, Oommen Chandy, in a written statement to the state legislature said a total number of 7713 persons were converted to Islam during 2006-2012, and the Global Council of Indian Christians had called “love jihad in Kerala a part of global Islamisation project.”
We have already seen in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s book that one of the main elements of the ‘dawa’ strategy is “to reduce women to the status of reproductive machines for the purpose of demographic transformation.” In his 2018 paper ‘How Islam Spread Throughout the World’, published in Yaqeen Institute, Hassam Munir writes, “Intermarriage between Muslims and non-Muslims has been historically important for the spread of Islam in many contexts. This is an area of research that only recently has begun to receive attention.” Munir writes that “in British-ruled India, several Dalit women (i.e., those from the downtrodden Hindu caste of “untouchables”) converted to Islam as part of intermarriage with Muslims… It has been noted that although there were active daʿwah (dawa) efforts among the Dalits of UP, in many cases of individual conversion, particularly by lower castes, the reason [for intermarriage] was neither proselytism nor doctrinal conviction, but romance…”
What we see, therefore, is conversion through marriage has played a key role in propagation of Islam throughout history, and it has often been used as tool to effect demographic changes in pursuit of larger goals. In a paper titled ‘Cultural Erasure: The Absorption and Forced Conversion of Armenian Women and Children, 1915-1916’, researcher Ümit Kurt writes, “Religious conversion and forced assimilation of Armenian women and children into Muslim households were two of the most significant structural components of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. In other words, Islamisation of Armenian women and children – as well as imposition of Muslim culture, education, and traditions upon them – was one of the most significant aspects.”
Within this context, let us now see the reality of religious conversions in Kerala. British newspaper The Guardian, in 2016, referred to the well-documented fact that Kerala provides a disproportionate number of youths joining ISIS. In its report, the newspaper put it down to the “influx of Saudi Arabian money in the past decades – partly detailed in Saudi diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks – (that) has produced a harder-edged Islam in the region…”
On the link between ISIS and the state of Kerala, Kabir Taneja and Mohammed Sinan Siyech in a paper for ORF offer an explanation. They point to “the key push and pull factors for Keralites to travel to West Asia for the caliphate, it is possible to isolate social media, the use of Malayalam language propaganda, and the promise of a true Islamic state.”
Researcher Natalie Tecimer of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies writes in The Diplomat that “Kerala is likely a hotspot for ISIS recruitment because some self-radicalized individuals who have joined ISIS and traveled to Iraq, Syria, or Afghanistan have returned to Kerala and recruited others.”
In 2021, The Hindu reported of four Indian women who had left the shores to join Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) languishing in Afghanistan jail. The report states: “The women, all from Kerala, travelled to Nangarhar in Afghanistan in the years 2016-18. Their husbands were killed in different attacks in Afghanistan. The women were among thousands of Islamic State fighters and affiliates who surrendered before the Afghanistan authorities in the months of November and December 2019.”
Sonia Sebastian alias Ayisha, Raffeala, Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam and Nimisha alias Fathima Isa. According to the report, “Merrin Jacob alias Mariyam was married to Bestin Vincent, a resident of Palakkad. The couple converted to Islam after their marriage and Vincent assumed the identity of Yahya. Vincent was later killed in Afghanistan. His brother Bexon and his wife, Nimisha alias Fathima, who also converted to Islam had also escaped to Afghanistan with them.”
ABP News reported the testimony of Shruti, a Hindu woman from Kerala’s Kasargod who has claimed that “she was brainwashed by her Muslim friends to convert to Islam, and asserted that the movie Kerala Story is factual.”. There are many more such horrific tales.
It is evident that The Kerala Story is constructed around a kernel of truth, and no amount of denial or censorship will change the reality. The British grooming gangs, according to a BBC report, had a modus operandi of what “experts call the ‘boyfriend’ or ‘lover-boy’ model.” This has synergy with what is known as ‘love jihad’ in India — a term first used by the Christian church in Kerala. Though the motley crew of Left-liberals and their Islamist allies get triggered by the term, ‘love jihad’ acquired judicial sanction far back in 2009 when the Kerala high court “found indications of ‘forceful’ religious conversions under the garb of ‘love’ in the state, and asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such ‘deceptive’ acts.”
As The Economic Times had reported in 2009, Justice Sankaran concluded that there were indications of ‘forceful religious conversions’, and “quoting statistics, the court said during the last four years (since 2005) 3,000-4,000 religious conversions had taken place after love affairs” backed by a sinister plan “to ‘trap’ brilliant upper caste Hindu and Christian girls from well-to-do families.”
The charges of ‘love jihad’ since then have been levelled more by the Christian organisations and churches. That is an inconvenient truth for members of the ‘liberal-secular’ gang since it can’t be labelled as a straightforward RSS propaganda.
In 2020, the Synod of Syro Malabar church in Kerala claimed that Christian girls are being killed in the name of ‘Love Jihad’, and stated that “over half of the 21 women who joined Islamic State hailed from the Christian community.”
A year later in 2021, the head of a Catholic diocese in Kerala, bishop Joseph Kallarangatt, accused a section of Muslim community of targeting Christians through “love jihad and narcotic jihad.” According to a report in The Hindu, the bishop pointed to a “sharp rise in cases of young Christian women being subjected to abuse or religious conversion after eloping with men from other community” and “warned that these ‘jihadists’ had already cast their nets over places including schools, colleges, training centres and even commercial centres”. He mentioned Nimisha Fathima aka Nimisha and Ayeisha aka Sonia Sebastian, Hindu and Christian women, respectively, who had ended up at the terrorist camps.
The Kerala Catholic Bishops’ Council (KCBC) has in fact called The Kerala Story “a work of art” that “exposes the atrocities committed by the Islamic State. It cannot be so evaluated on the lines of communalism.” Christian community in Kerala are evidently not a BJP votebank.
As The Kerala Story achieves commendable box office success despite being panned by liberal critics, we need to ask some hard questions to the Leftists and perfumed liberals for whom avoiding the risk of being labelled an Islamophobe is more important than criticising any aspect of Islam, even if it is radical and regressive in nature.
The brouhaha against the film also exposes the duplicity of the liberals. How does denouncing of radical Islamism and terrorist organisations equate to an attack on Muslims? To argue this is to either admit that radical Islamism is germane to the faith or to reveal Islamism’s capture of the liberal ideology. Since the liberal gatekeepers still enjoy nomenclature and interpretive power, they still manage to shape, or at the very least, distort the public discourse.
A film or a book is just one of the myriad media that citizens use to converse in a society. If a medium or content is blocked or banned, the conversations do not cease to exist — it merely takes a subterranean form where disinformation or misinformation are likely to shape the narrative. If nothing else, this should be the reason why The Kerala Story should be screened unfettered everywhere.
The author is deputy executive editor, Firstpost. He tweets @sreemoytalukdar. Views expressed are personal.
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