Composer A.R. Rahman on Wednesday shared a popular social media post about a Hindu wedding held at a mosque, highlighting the communal harmony in Kerala amid a controversy over the film The Kerala Story whose trailer has fuelled suspicions of a plot to distort facts and renew unsubstantiated claims about “love jihad”.
“Bravo, love for humanity has to be unconditional and healing,” the Academy award-winning composer tweeted while sharing the video clip. The video clip, which is doing the rounds on social media, shows Anju and Sharath Sasi getting married on January 19, 2020, at the Cheruvally Muslim Jamaat Mosque at Kayamkulam in south Kerala.
The clip has become a popular retort to The Kerala Story directed by Sudipto Sen and produced by Vipul Shah. Scheduled for release on Friday, the film’s original teaser claimed that it narrates the story of 32,000 girls who had been recruited by the Islamic State and converted and trained as agents of terror. Subsequently, there have been claims and counter-claims that the number has been reduced.
The Congress in Kerala has urged the state government to ensure that the film doesn’t hit the screens anywhere in India.
The video clip shows how the mosque organised the wedding and bore all expenses when the bride’s mother, Bindu, approached it and narrated her financial difficulties in getting her daughter married. Life has been a struggle for Bindu since the death of her husband, Ashokan, in 2018. The couple have three children.
The mosque committee presented the matter at a Friday prayer attended by about 10,000 people and found immediate acceptance among the devotees. The committee then went ahead with the wedding, organising a traditional vegetarian sadya (a feast) for 1,000 people and gifting 10 gold sovereigns and Rs 20 lakh to the bride. A mandapam was set up and a priest recited prayers.
The mosque wedding of Anju and Sharath is being described as “the real Kerala story”, signifying the communal amity in the state known for its syncretic culture.
The Supreme Court has refused to entertain pleas seeking a stay on the release of the film. Two petitions were filed before Kerala High Court on May 2 while another petition was already pending before the court.
The Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), the youth wing of the CPM, on Thursday lodged a complaint with the Kerala director-general of police alleging that the teaser-trailer of the movie itself insulted Kerala and spread hatred in society. The Left Democratic Front government in Kerala has taken a stand against the film but stopped short of calling for an outright ban.
In neighbouring Tamil Nadu, the government on Wednesday instructed all district collectors and police superintendents to stay alert in view of the release of the film on Friday. Shashi Tharoor, who represents the Kerala capital Thiruvananthapuram in the Lok Sabha, tweeted recently: “It may be ‘your’ Kerala story. It is not ‘our’ Kerala story.” He followed that with another tweet saying he was not for banning the film. “Let me stress, I am not calling for a ban on the film. Freedom of expression does not cease to be valuable just because it can be misused. But Keralites have every right to say loud & clear that this is a misrepresentation of our reality.”