Though loosely based on real cases, it’s baffling how Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s highly inflammatory film secured a U/A 16+ certificate. It’s more UP than Kerala, but organizing a ‘beef festival’ is no way to counter such a narrative.
By Mayur Lookhar
Three years ago, filmmaker-producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s The Kerala Story (2023) courted massive controversy and polarized views over its bold subject- claims of over 32,000 cases of forced religious conversions in Kerala, including women being used as ISIS brides. To date, neither Shah nor director Sudipto Sen has revealed the source of this alarming data. (Mind you, how many questioned Nandita Das’s Firaaq (2008), which claimed to be based on “a thousand true stories”). Despite poor production values, The Kerala Story amassed over Rs200 crore nett at the box office – whether organic or not, the devil must be given its due.
Forward to 2026, with Kerala Assembly elections just over a month away, Vipul Amrutlal Shah has launched The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond. This time, the release has been far from smooth. Cases filed in Kerala led a single bench of the Kerala High Court to issue a stay, questioning the CBFC’s U/A certificate and directing re-examination within two weeks. Just as it seemed the film might not release, a division bench vacated the stay – despite the initial order not even being formalised, and allowed release on late February 27. Leaving legal intricacies to experts, Shah and director Kamakhya Narayan Singh could breathe easier. The film has reportedly earned Rs20 crore so far – not blockbuster numbers, but a relief given the pre-release hurdles.
With no press show, I wasn’t keen on paying to watch, but at Rs92 for a Wednesday 5:25 pm show, it was too tempting to pass up. 131 minutes later, this writer gathers his thoughts, wondering where to even begin. Note: this isn’t a film critique, but a reflection on the stories swirling around and within it.
My mind flashed back to 2023, when Shah and Sudipto Sen often seemed agitated and unconvincing in media interactions – gathering veiled victims that some critics dismissed as staged drama. This time, they pivoted to Delhi, recycling some tactics from before but facing tough questions in the capital. A low-key press conference was held in Mumbai on February 27, with whispers that invites for the 5:15 pm event went out just 15 minutes prior. Reviewing the footage, it was clear Shah faced no real grilling in this handpicked gathering – barring a few tricky queries. What piqued our interest was his revelation that the late former Kerala CM Oommen Chandy had addressed religious conversions in the State Legislature.
Digging into history, we found that to be true. It was in 2012, where Chandy addressed the concerns, highlighting how 2667 young women converted to Islam since 2006. He further revealed that between 2006-2012, 7,713 people converted to Islam, compared to just 2,803 to Hinduism. Curiously, he noted no data existed on conversions to Christianity during that time. Among 2,667 young women converting to Islam from 2009-12, 2,195 were Hindu and 492 Christian, while only 79 switched to Christianity and 2 to Hinduism.
While these numbers are undisputed, Chandy dismissed love jihad concerns – long flagged by Hindu nationalist parties. Recent Kerala Gazette records (per The News Minute article) show 924 conversions in 2024: 365 to Hinduism (likely Dalit reconversions for quota benefits), 343 to Islam (mostly from Hinduism/Christianity), and 255 to Christianity.
We found no specific “love jihad” data in official records. After past backlash, Vipul Amrutlal Shah avoided bold claims, noting his film shows three such cases as part of this dark reality, but he wouldn’t name them, citing victims’ privacy and safety. We respect that concern, but doesn’t legal protections apply in rape cases? While the film clearly aims to expose alleged love jihad, Shah stayed guarded at the Mumbai press conference, likely saving details for private one-on-ones.
Living up to its title, Shah and his director Kamakhya Narayan Singh set their alleged love jihad cases in Kochi, Gwalior, and Jodhpur, prompting the question: if it’s a pan-India issue, why focus the title on Kerala? To be fair, they smartly added “Goes Beyond.” Unlike 2023, Kerala factions were primed to counter the narrative, with young Keralites posting videos slamming the film as propaganda defaming their secular state. They highlighted religious harmony and inclusivity as the real Kerala story – hard to dismiss. Yet organizing beef festivals, with Hindus (even old Brahmins) boasting about Kerala beef curry’s taste, felt in poor taste. Culling animals to prove secularism? Sorry, that plays more like the Devil’s work than God’s own country. Keralites could have countered the Bollywood film’s narrative with facts, not food.
What we have in The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond are three blatant cases of coerced religious conversions, including one involving forced beef-eating. Hey, but these aren’t like the abductions and forced marriages of minority girls in Pakistan. Kochi’s Surekha (Ulka Gupta) knows her Muslim lover Salim (Sumit Gahlawat) – a liberal journalist, is married with a daughter, yet agrees to a live-in relationship after he promises a divorce soon. Then there’s Neha (Aishwarya Ojha), a promising Dalit javelin thrower from Jodhpur, who bizarrely sacrifices her career to marry her boyfriend, only to later realize he’s Muslim. Finally, 16-year-old Divya (Aditi Bhatia) from Gwalior has been in a relationship with Rasheed (Yuktam Khosla) since Class 9. This love blossoms further over reels, and with Divya’s mother objecting to her provocative dance videos, Divya elopes with Rasheed, only to repent later.
Of the three girls, Neha evokes the most sympathy, she’s genuinely deceived. Yet in all cases, parents are helpless as their daughters were in consensual relationships. Indian law sets the marriage age at 18, while Islamic law uses puberty (coming of age) as the criterion.
It’s tempting to dismiss these girls as immature, but predators prey on young women’s vulnerability and gullibility. Take Vipul Amrutlal Shah’s predators: Salim, the left-liberal journalist turned cunning operator in a religious conversion racket harbouring Ghazwa-e-Hind ambitions- perhaps straight out of the banned PFI playbook in Kerala. Rasheed shares a radical mindset too. Most sinister is Faizan and his family, part of a larger conversion racket, who have Neha gang-raped – including by a local maulvi who kidnaps and assaults her in the first 40 day of her marriage.
One empathizes with these women’s plight, but poor production values, WhatsApp University-style writing, an incompetent cast, and insipid direction make it an unconvincing, insufferable watch.
Having raised awareness of the issue in 2023, the key question now is: what’s the solution? A simple one: a blanket ban on religious conversion through marriage. While some states have taken gentle steps, shouldn’t filmmakers like Vipul Amrutlal Shah push the central government for nationwide laws to curb this menace and applicable to all religions? Delhi’s mandarins are in their third term, yet haven’t shown the urgency. Would a Uniform Civil Code resolve love jihad concerns? The UCC, though, remains a distant dream.
What purpose do The Kerala Story, The Bengal Files, etc., serve? The timing of such films only points to a vested political agenda. No, this isn’t really about Kerala or Bengal – it’s perhaps more about creating fear and consolidating majority votes in Hindi heartland.
Sitting through the 131 minutes, it felt like director Kamakhya Narayan Singh, writer Amarnath Jha, and producer Vipul Amrutlal Shah were serving fiction disguised as “inspired by true stories.” Before end credits, they listed real cases, including Barrackpore’s Shekhar Roy (alias for Sk Ali Hossain) and accomplice Mohammed Ibrahim, who allegedly abducted two Hindu girls for religious conversion. It was Agra police from Uttar Pradesh who arrested Hossain and Ibrahim from Barrackpore, West Bengal. Hossain faced charges for cheating and intimidation; no forced conversion was filed. The case exploded during 2024 Lok Sabha polls: BJP called it love jihad; TMC dismissed it as a family dispute, not communal.
The other cases mentioned were those of Umar Gautam, Junaid Qureshi, and Mohammed Ali. Gautam, who had converted to Islam, was accused of running a racket converting over 1,000 girls. Qureshi and Ali were accused of luring two sisters from Agra and forcibly converting them to Islam. Interestingly, quite a few of these accused were nabbed from Bengal under Uttar Pradesh’s Mission Asmita – a police initiative to tackle religious conversions. (With the real and reel cases all pointing to the North and East, perhaps Kerala has reason to feel aggrieved with this second film. This is more a UP or MP Story)
Nevertheless, credit to Vipul Amrutlal Shah for informing the audience about such cases, but how much fiction has he added to his film? Showing a woman being raped multiple times – is that what really transpired in the cases you mentioned? Then that scene of Surekha being forced to eat beef. Well, this might be true in some cases, but we wonder what Vipul Shah, Kamakhya Narayan Singh, and Sudipto Sen think of India’s status as the fourth largest exporter of bovine meat (chiefly carabeef) worldwide.
For all its poor production values, The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond cannot be easily dismissed as propaganda. What baffles us, something Justice Bechu Kurien Thomas also raised – is how the CBFC gave it a U/A certificate. I was stunned to see little children in the theatre. Should children watch a woman being gang-raped?
Then the film’s tagline: “Is baar sahenge nahi… ladenge.” One should raise a voice against gross injustice, but the inflammable climactic scenes, the neo-war cry in Manoj Muntashir Shukla’s voice, public (more so Hindu) anger, and the belt and bulldozer treatment to the villains, all seem more like mobocracy than justice. Is a child supposed to see all this on screen? It’s here that The Kerala Story 2 Goes Beyond loses the plot completely.
Our Constitution grants us freedom of speech and expression, but filmmakers ought to be sensitive while dealing with such controversial subjects. Subtlety and nuance have no place in the The Kerala Story school of filmmaking. Its no-holds-barred narrative will not just make the minority weary, but the majority too wouldn’t like being mocked for its lack of unity and presented as ignorant and meek. Perhaps the film’s makers and its loyal audience will accuse us of being insensitive and ignorant – like the armchair urban critics or the neighborhood aunt – who have no empathy for such victims. It would be naïve to think that love jihad is a pan-India problem. But if you dive into the many news reports, it’s evident that often the victims in such cases are vulnerable, especially Dalit girls. Would you dismiss their cries as propaganda? You can ridicule The Kerala Story, but it would be gross injustice not to lend an ear to the cries of these women.
Villainising an entire community for the crimes of a few is not wise either. We also sincerely appeal to the many moderate, progressive Indian Muslims to look within and condemn these isolated cases. We just need to look around us at how religious fundamentalism has destroyed many nations. And this serves as a lesson to all communities. And finally, to the Vipul Shahs, Kamakhya Narayan Singhs, and Sudipto Sens: while radical Islam is a global challenge, what are their thoughts on high sexual crimes against women and children? With an average of 24,000 rape cases each year, crime records show that the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh top the infamous list. Add to it the privileges to certain influential rapists, and it paints a sorry picture. We would urge Hindu nationalistic filmmakers to also dive into the Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh story.
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