For about five years now, however, Muslims have been systematically depicted as terrorists, supporters of Pakistan or practitioners of “love jihad”, a conspiracy theory according to which they would use the weapon of seduction to convert Hindus to Islam (The Kerala Story, 2023). Material apparently more suitable for the psychoanalyst’s couch than for films and rallies, but the political climate is what it is.
In the midst of such a copious production, there is no shortage of even more openly political and current films such as Article 370 (2024) which celebrates the decision of the government in office to revoke the autonomy of Kashmir, the only state of the Union (now former, given which was divided into two territories managed partly by New Delhi) with a Muslim majority.
The era when Kashmir was an integral part of the Indian film industry as a backdrop for romance films is increasingly distant. Today it has become narrative material – and political propaganda – as in the 2022 film, The Kashmir Files, which by virtue of recounting the violence suffered by the Hindu community in the 1990s received a series of tax breaks in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttarakhand and Goa. All states governed by Narendra Modi’s BJP.
The Internet also takes care of multiplying the propaganda effect of this type of film – not all of which are successful, especially on the Arab markets. Not so much with piracy, when through trailers, a narrative format that preys on social media, but which seems to be done specifically to be traded on the platforms. Some of these summaries seem edited to concentrate the political message of the film in two minutes, no matter how redundant, even at the risk of being unintentionally comical. To realize this, just look at the splatter of Bastar – A Naxal Story, or the hyper-patriotic one of Fighter.
Then there is the case of The Sabarmati Report, a film about a massacre of Hindu pilgrims, originally scheduled for Friday 3 May, four days before the vote in Gujarat, the state that was the scene of the events told in the film. Everything postponed until August. It was probably too much even for 2024 India.