‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’

(Mark 12:17)

  The Idukki Diocese in Kerala under the Syro Malabar Catholic Church recently screened the controversial movie ‘The Kerala Story’ for students studying in classes 10 to12. The students were then asked to discuss the film and to review it.  Screening of the film by the church followed its screening by the government-controlled national channel- Doordharshan.

According to Father Jinns Karakat, the diocese’s media in-charge, the Church conducts intensive training programmes for children on vacations. This year the programme which was held on April had chosen the theme ‘love relationships’. It was based on this that the film was screened for children to discuss in whatsapp groups and to collate reviews, according to Jinns.

The Idukki Diocese’s screening of the movie goaded Youth movements of other Dioceses to do the same, adding to the inevitable mayhem that has been associated with the controversial movie.  

The Church chose to screen the film at a wrong time. When the entire country was warming up to a bitter general elections, scheduled over April and May 2024 to elect the 18th Lok Sabha.

It is during Elections, especially keenly contested general elections that politicians, irrespective of hue and color are most virulent in their calling.  Screening of the politically-charged film by a Church in Kerala served as ‘the perfect bone of contention for the yelping canines to fight over’. Across the country, which has damagingly adopted as her culture, marginalization and estrangement of minorities. Especially through blatant and unbridled Islamophobia. Thanks to the present central ruling disposition’s politics of audacious muscular majoritarianism.

What armed the film with the fusillade to add to the war cry during electioneering, especially in Kerala?

 ‘The Kerala Story’ is a drama film made in 2023 in Hindi language. It was directed by Sudipto Sen. The plot follows a group of women from Kerala who are coerced into converting to Islam, through ‘love jihad’ to ultimately join the modules of terror outfit Islamic state in distant Afghanistan, Syria and other nations.  

This wasn’t the first instant the Church expressed its concerns over ‘love Jihad’- the practice among Muslims to feign romance with Christian girls to ultimately convert them to Islam before marrying them. To use them as operatives in terror modules such as IS.

Mar Joseph Kallarangatt, Bishop of Palai in Kerala had not too long ago fed-flagged ‘love Jihad’ by fraudsters to entrap and mislead young Christian girls.

It is against this background that screening of ‘The Kerala Story’ which addresses ‘Love Jihad’ caused significant upheaval in Kerala’s society at election time.

By doing so, the Church played the very fiddle that the increasingly totalitarian central governing disposition actively indulges in- anti-minoritarianism. It thoughtlessly walked into the trap well camouflaged by the BJP-led NDA to come down on minorities. One of these ‘traps’ certainly was ‘The Kerala Story’. The other being ‘Kashmir files’, which addressed the plight of minority Pandits in Kashmir in the hands of Islamic terrorists and militant Muslims who has considerable presence in Kashmir.

This is not to deny the existence of ‘love jihad’, and odds Kashmiri pundits had to put up with.

If indeed these practices, which certainly deserve to be nipped in the bud do exist in society, aren’t there governments in the centre and the state to come down on them? Certainly the central ruling disposition, armed with an array of central agencies has the wherewithal to clamp down on such avoidable practices, and put an end to them.

It is not through a mass media like cinema scripted by bigots with ulterior motives that these serious issues that undermine national integrity and unity ought to be addressed.  

Why does the Church have to be a whistle-blower using a tool the BJP has manufactured to further anti-minoritarianism, which ‘The Kerala Story’ certainly is? Why give the impression of Christians being brothers-in-arms with the BJP to take on minorities?

The Church better leave such matters, which certainly needs to be condemned, and, stemmed in right earnest to the Home Department. Whose responsibility it is to do so.

The Church must learn to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God, what belongs to God!