'The Kerala Story': Islamic State film triggers bans in India

Indian Hindi-language film The Kerala Story is continuing to court controversy, with India's West Bengal state banning Sudipto Sen’s film days after its release.

The film follows the story of four women from Kerala who converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Its teaser trailer caused a stir last year, as it made the controversial claim that 32,000 girls were “converted” into Islamic terrorists.

While the film is captioned as being based on a real-life incident and the makers of the film state it is based on years of research, The Kerala Story has been criticized for its lack of statistical evidence.

This has triggered a political controversy in Kerala, as congress party leader VD Satheesan called it a "clear case of misinformation" and claimed that the film was made to "tarnish the image of Kerala". Lawmaker of Kerala's governing Communist Party of India (Marxist) John Brittas even wrote a letter to federal home minister Amit Shah, asking him to take stringent action against the filmmakers.

In response to the allegations, the co-writer / producer, Vipul Amrutlal Shah stated that "nothing we say will be without evidence" and that the co-writer / director Sudipto Sen had conducted four years of research for the film.

Nevertheless, critics have called it out for promoting the Islamophobic Love Jihad (or Romeo Jihad) conspiracy theory, which purports that Muslim men target Hindu women for conversion to Islam by means as seduction and marriage, and said that The Kerala Story has the potential to incite violence.

Now, the Chief Minister of West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee announced a ban on the movie, preventing theatres in the state from screening the film. Banerjee later said that the decision was