Congress leader AK Antony's son Anil Antony - whose switch to the Bharatiya Janata Party last month made headlines - hit out at Kerala's ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) on Monday amid controversy over the movie “The Kerala Story”.
Antony claimed double standards by the CPIM; he said they had acted as 'supporters of free speech' in the row between the government and British broadcaster BBC (over a documentary critical of prime minister Narendra Modi) but failed to defend free speech by criticising “The Kerala Story”.
"'The Kerala Story' is highlighting some societal issues by taking the case of a few young girls and the trials and tribulations they faced. Irony dies a thousand deaths when both INC Kerala (the Congress' state unit) and CPIM - so-called supporters of free speech when a BBC documentary was launched (in a blatant attempt to subvert conclusions of the highest court of India and thus weaken our institutional authority)... are now clamoring for a ban of this movie ('The Kerala Story')," he tweeted.
"Opposition’s fight for any freedom is subjective to narrow hypocritical political gains."
{{/usCountry}}"Opposition’s fight for any freedom is subjective to narrow hypocritical political gains."
{{/usCountry}}'The Kerala Story' - a Hindi movie that claims to 'unearth' details of how 'approximately 32,000 women' who were allegedly radicalised, converted to Islam and deployed on terror missions across the country. The movie - decried by the CPIM as a movie “deliberately made with the aim of communal polarisation and to spread hate propaganda” - has been widely criticised.
"... this film is trying to spread the propaganda of Sangh Parivar, which has established itself as the centre of religious extremism in the land of secularism, Kerala," the party said.
The Congress has been equally vehemently opposed to the movie; it called for bans on screening and said it was “full of lies and painted the Muslim community in bad light”.
The movie has been slammed over claims that 32,000 women went 'missing' from a state in which the BJP failed to win a seat in the 2019 Lok Sabha election and the 2021 Assembly election.
A teaser for the film - released in November - was criticised for carrying inaccurate facts about the number of women, who might have been involved in these kinds of situations.
This week a Muslim religious body and a private individual each offered an astronomical reward for concrete and verified data about women allegedly radicalised to Islam.
The Kerala State Committee of the Muslim Youth League announced a reward of ₹1 crore and a Muslim lawyer and actor (who remarried his wife under the Special Marriage Act to ensure the financial security of his daughters) offered ₹11 lakh for similar proof.