The Kerala Story

The Kerala Story is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language drama film, claiming to be inspired from true events, directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah. It stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani. The plot follows a group of women from Kerala who are coerced into converting to Islam and joining the Islamic State. Marketed as a true story, the film is premised on the Hindutva conspiracy theory of "love jihad", and claims that thousands of Hindu women from Kerala have been converted to Islam and recruited in the Islamic State. However, the filmmakers had to accept the addition of two disclaimers — that the figures in the film were inauthentic, and that the film was a "fictionalised" depiction of their minds.
The Kerala Story released in theatres on 5 May 2023. With a worldwide gross of ₹303.97 crore (US$35 million), it became the ninth-highest-grossing Hindi film of 2023. It was heavily promoted by the incumbent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which leveraged the film in its campaigning for the Karnataka assembly election. However, film critics accorded it overwhelmingly negative reviews, characterising the work as Islamophobic propaganda. The film has also faced protracted litigation and protests, primarily in Kerala, West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.
Fatima is accused of being a terrorist and is caught at the Afghan-Iran border. During her interrogation, she reveals that her real name is Shalini Unnikrishnan, a young woman from Kerala who was brainwashed into becoming a terrorist.
Shalini lives with her mother and grandmother in Kerala and later goes to the city to study nursing. There, she meets three friends—Nimah Matthew, Gitanjali, and Asifa. The four bond well, but Asifa, who is part of an Islamic Jihadi group, begins to influence the group. She frequently insists that there is only one religion and one god in the world, warning that people who don’t believe in this will never attain salvation.
Asifa, along with Abdul and Rameez, creates an atmosphere of fear and manipulation among the group. Over time, Shalini and Gitanjali start wearing the hijab and begin to believe in the ideology that only one god exists. Meanwhile, Nimah, sensing something is wrong, starts to distance herself from the group and eventually parts ways.
Shalini becomes romantically involved with Rameez and soon finds herself pregnant. Under pressure, she is forced to convert to Islam. However, Rameez abandons her, as per the group's plan, leaving her vulnerable and alone. She is then coerced into marrying Ishaq, believing that he will provide a secure future for her and her unborn child.
What Shalini does not know is that her marriage is just another step in the plan. She is illegally trafficked across multiple borders, enduring a harrowing journey that eventually leads her to Syria. There, she is groomed to become a suicide bomber, her life completely taken over by the group’s extremist agenda.
Her story unfolds as a tragic example of how fear, manipulation, and coercion can strip someone of their identity and autonomy.
The film was produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah, who is also the creative director.
It released in theatres on 5 May 2023. The digital streaming rights of the film were purchased by ZEE5. The film premiered on ZEE5 from 16 February 2024.
Prior to its domestic release, the film went through CBFC scrutiny and received an adults only classification following a number of requested changes.
The teaser released on 3 November 2022, featuring 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 Hindu and Christian communities who are missing from Kerala and have been recruited into the Islamic State after being converted to Islam. Sen, 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.
While the events portrayed in the film are loosely based on the accounts of three women from Kerala, namely: Nimisha Nair, Sonia Sebastian, 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 mistranslations, misquotes, and misrepresentations of unrelated statistics. No more than 100-200 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 entire strength of the Islamic State.
Later, in response to litigation, the film-makers removed all promotional materials, including the teaser, that had the erroneous figure. However, the film repeated the 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 "fictionalised" portrayal of real-life events.
The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its associated organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) have supported the film; the party used it for their political messaging in the campaigning for Karnataka assembly elections. Prime Minister Narendra Modi endorsed the film at an election rally in Karnataka, claimed that it had unearthed a "conspiracy", and alleged the Indian National Congress — which opposed the film — to support terrorism. BJP President J. P. Nadda held special screenings of the film and invited "young Hindu girls" to watch it with them. The film was made tax free in Madhya Pradesh as well as Uttar Pradesh; both the states have BJP governments. Organiser, the official mouthpiece of RSS, described the film as a "dangerous truth".
In Kerala, both the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Indian National Congress, the only two parties to have governed the state since Independence, have objected to the film for spreading "communal misinformation" in tune with the agenda of the Sangh Parivar. In Tamil Nadu, protests were held by Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), which is the ruling party of the state, along with Naam Tamilar Katchi (NTK) and multiple Muslim political organisations.
The film has attracted public protests in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. It fared poorly in Tamil Nadu, apparently forcing the Tamil Nadu Multiplex Association to stop further screenings; however, the filmmakers dispute the claims and allege political censorship. The film had a similar fate in Kerala.
On the eve of release, several petitions were filed at the Madras High Court, Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court of India, calling for a ban on grounds of promoting communal disharmony. The petitions were either declined to be heard or dismissed by the courts; however, the film-makers were asked to remove all promotional materials, including the teaser, that claimed thirty two thousand girls to have converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State in real life.
On 8 May, the Government of West Bengal banned the movie, characterising the film as "hate speech", and citing adverse intelligence reports that had reported increased communal tensions in the audience. The filmmakers challenged the decision in the Supreme Court and the ban was stayed. However, the filmmakers had to accept the addition of two disclaimers — that the figures in the film were inauthentic, and that the film was a "fictionalised" portrayal of real-life events.
On its opening day, the film grossed ₹8.03 crore in India, making it the fifth highest opener in India for 2023. As of 15 June 2023, the film had grossed ₹288.04 crore (US$34 million) in India and ₹15.64 crore (US$1.8 million) overseas for a worldwide gross collection of ₹303.97 crore (US$35 million), becoming the seventh-highest grossing Hindi film of 2023. The film performed well in northern India but underperformed in the south.
The Kerala Story received overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 14% of 7 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.5/10.
Saibal Chatterjee of NDTV rated the film 0.5 out of 5 stars, calling it a "lengthy WhatsApp forward", and writing that Sen's work was laughably inept and in pursuance of an insidious agenda. Shubhra Gupta of The Indian Express gave the film 1 out of 5 stars, characterising it as a "poorly-made, poorly-acted rant" that flattened Muslims into absolute evils. She later included the film as one of the worst films of 2023. Nandini Ramnath of Scroll.in found the raison d'être of the film to lie in propagating Islamophobia, with every Muslim character being coded as a fanatic. Anuj Kumar of The Hindu described the work as "burlesque" propaganda that borrowed its understanding of Islam, from "hate-filled Whatsapp groups" and sought to turn the audience into purveyors of hate by peddling "half-truths".
Deepanjana Pal, reviewing for Film Companion, commented that the film was a "Giant Whatsapp forward" that could be hardly called a film, critiquing it for being political propaganda aimed at demonising Keralite Muslims and tapping into contemporary Hindu nationalist anxieties; Sen was "glaringly inept" in tackling the causes of radicalisation with sensitivity and merely preyed upon the grief of real survivors and victims. Sowmya Rajendran, reviewing for The News Minute, rated the film 1 star out of 5 star; she panned the film as "no-nuance propaganda" where women were treated as objects who were to be fought for between religions and ideologies by men.
India Today included the film as one of the five worst Hindi films of 2023.
The music of the film is composed by Viresh Sreevalsa and Bishakh Jyoti.