The Kerala Story – Shalini Unnikrishnan is a college student in Kerala. She leads an ordinary life until her identity, relationships, dreams, and faith scatter in the abyss of religious terrorism.
The Kerala Story, directed by Sudipto Sen, is a 2023 Indian Hindi-language drama film. Vipul Amrutlal Shah remains the film producer. It stars Adah Sharma, Yogita Bihani, Sonia Balani, and Siddhi Idnani.
Table of Contents
Who are the actual characters in The Kerala Story?
The events portrayed in the film remain slightly based on the accounts of three women from Kerala, namely Nimisha Nair, Sonia Sebastian, and Merin Jacob. They converted to Islam and traveled to Afghanistan with their respective husbands to join the Islamic State in 2016 and 2018, the claimed figures in the film.
What is the summary of Kerala?
A converted Muslim woman, Fatima Ba, describes her ordeal of how she once wished to become a nurse but remained kidnapped from her home and manipulated by religious pioneers, turned into an ISIS terrorist, and landed in Afghanistan jail.
Fatima Ba (earlier Shalini Unnikrishnan), an ex-Hindu woman from Kerala, describes her story of being converted and made to become a suicide bomber working for ISIS. The narrative chronicles the story of Kerala’s two more Non-Muslim nursing students who remain used as the culprits of communal “jihad.”
The film discovers the toolkit of luring innocent youth (mainly women) into committing acts of terrorism by brainwashing, sexual exploitation, substance abuse, and unlawful trafficking across borders and also the inherent problem with related religious activists of Islam.
Fatima remains accused of being a terrorist and caught on the Afghan-Iran border; during the interrogation, she reveals that her name is Shalini Unnikrishanan, and she is from Kerala and remains brainwashed into becoming a terrorist. Shalini lived with her grandmother and mother in Kerala, who went to learn nursing in the city and met three friends: Gitanjali, Nimah Matthew, and Asifa.
A good bond develops between the three girls, and Asifa, who was from an Islamic Jihadi group, would always tell them that there is only one religion and one god in the world and people who won’t believe him will not achieve salvation. Asifa, along with Rameez and Abdul, creates such a situation among the girls that out of fear, Shalini and Gitanjali start to wear the Hijab and begin to believe that no other god exists.
In comparison, Nimah, who feels fishy, spends less time with the group and parts away. Shalini becomes pregnant with Abdul and remains forced to accept Islam, but Abdul escapes as per the plan, and she remains forced to marry Ishaq, believing a safe future for her and her kid. But what Shalini does not know is that she will be unlawfully deported across various borders and then taken to Syria to become a suicide bomber.
Conclusion
The Kerala Story is a controversial Indian film that has polarized opinions and has remained criticized for spreading hate propaganda. The film is about the stories of three women from Kerala who joined the Islamic State in Afghanistan between 2016 and 2018. However, the film’s claims are inaccurate and have remained criticized for being based on misrepresentations and mistranslations.