Lie Jihad

“Do you know sir. . . There are some villages in Kasaragod where the Shariah holds sway. There is, you know, a Kerala connection whenever there is a bomb explosion across the globe, whether it is in Sri Lanka, Singapore or Afghanistan. Why is this happening sir”, Nimah Mathew (played by Yogita Bihani), one of the three ‘jihadi’ girls in the controversial movie ‘The Kerala Story’ asks the police chief. Nimah, originally from a devout Christian family, is indoctrinated, converts to Islam and is a potential recruit for the IS but her above questions to the police chief comes towards the end of the film when she realises what she has got into and is desperate to backtrack.

To anyone raised in Kerala, or who has been resident here long enough, Nimah’s words smack of melodrama at best and plain untruth at worst. The entire movie itself veers between these two registers. In what is tagged as “a true story”, the moviemakers, obviously anticipating the audience’s profound incredulity, have introduced a ‘documentary’ aspect at the very end just before the credits roll out. Here, the reported real-life girl depicted by Nimah appears in a hazy silhouette and utters ominously, “I have been repeatedly raped and cruelly abused… this movie only captures part of it. I welcome this movie because its message should reach everyone. It is my desire that no other girl goes through what I underwent”, she says.

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