Ahead of India's elections, a Bollywood movie about young Indian women who are recruited by the Islamic State has sparked fresh controversy. The opposition claims that the film's national TV premiere on Friday night might "sow seeds of religious animosity" according to Reuters.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, is largely predicted to win the multi-phase national elections that start on April 19. This is partially because of Modi's persistent courtship of the majority population and the country's robust economic development and welfare state.
Votes from the polls, in which the BJP has entered a large number of actors, will be counted on June 4.
However, Bollywood's role in the election takes a complicated turn on Friday night when the government-owned national network Doordarshan airs "The Kerala Story," which is set in the opposition-run southern coastal state of the same name.
Since its debut last summer, the low-budget film has been an unexpected blockbuster. It centres on three women who are transferred to Islamic State camps in Afghanistan after being brainwashed and switching from Hinduism to Islam.
Critics claim that the movie stirs up hostility against the Muslim minority in India.
Since Doordarshan is free for users, a large number of houses are connected to the channel nationwide.
In a statement on the movie's premiere, Kerala's chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan, stated, "Doordarshan is not an agency to undertake communal campaigns for BJP candidates."
"Secular Kerala will stand united in resisting such subversive attempts aimed at fostering communal discord."
The major opposition Congress party has also expressed disapproval of the planned airing.
A request for comment was not immediately answered by the Federal Ministry of Information and Broadcasting who runs Doordarshan. According to a BJP minister, politics had no impact on the screening.
V Muraleedharan, a junior foreign minister from Kerala, told reporters, "A movie is a piece of art and the expression of art is guaranteed in the constitution."
To get more than 400 seats overall for its alliance out of the 543 members in the lower house of parliament, the BJP is eager to gain additional seats in Kerala and other southern Indian states where it is currently underrepresented.
The film is one of several Hindi-language productions that have been produced since last year and have won over the Hindu nationalist base of the BJP. Modi has publicly praised the film.
Several patriotic movies, including a biography on Hindu philosopher Vinayak Savarkar, have been released in theatres this year in the run-up to the election.
Randeep Hooda, who produced, directed, and performed in the biography, told Reuters that "things are changing."
"It's a different country; these are different times and therefore different movies are being made," he stated, adding: "Nationalistic films have done well in the past."
One of the biggest religious riots in India since independence was started in 2002 when a suspected Muslim mob in the western state of Gujarat set fire to a train carrying Hindu pilgrims. This occurrence is the subject of another movie, "The Sabarmati Report."
It is scheduled to be released in the middle of the countrywide voting session in May.
