The Parliament on Monday held a special screening of The Sabarmati Report, which was attended by Prime Minister Modi along with his colleagues. The screening was also attended by the filmmakers. Soon after, the opposition leaders attacked the film and called it a propaganda movie. In fact, even before the screening the film was dismissed as a propaganda film by the usual suspects.
The film is about the 27 February 2002 Godhra carnage where 59 karsevaks returning from Ayodhya in Sabarmati Express were burnt alive at the Godhra railway station by a Muslim mob. The carnage was a preplanned conspiracy where fuel and other things were already collected the previous night. The pilgrims were returning after attending a yagna in Ayodhya organised by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad.
Over the years, the setting of the train on fire was dismissed as an accidental fire or justified by claiming that the karsevaks were trying to abduct a Muslim girl. In reality, as per the Mehta-Nanavati Commission Report that investigated the carnage was a preplanned conspiracy. Those who have not read the Commission report, I strongly urge you to read it here [pdf].
But why is this fact, when depicted on the big screen, dismissed as propaganda? Is it not true that 59 people were burnt alive while returning from Ayodhya? That the train was targeted because it had Karsevaks? And they were Hindus? And was it not a Muslim mob that set the train on fire? Why is it then people cry spreading hate? Since when did showing facts become hate speech? This is not to justify the communal violence that followed. That should be equally condemned as violence has no place in a civilised society. But why should the fact that a Muslim mob set the train on fire be not mentioned whenever the riots are brought up? If you only condemn the riots and dismiss the carnage as propaganda or accidental fire, you are being dishonest and are actually the one doing propaganda.
But this is what has been happening in India. Over the years, the noise about crimes perpetrated by people belonging to one community is silenced as propaganda.
Remember how The Kashmir Files, which documented the persecution of Kashmiri Hindus by hands of the Islamists who gave genocidal calls such as ‘leave, convert or die’ from the mosques was also declared a propaganda? The lived experience of Kashmiri Hindus where their Muslim neighbours turned on them and threw them to the hands of Islamist terrorists backed by Pakistan was called propaganda. Politicians such as Arvind Kejriwal laughed and mocked the film in the state assembly and suggested how the film should be uploaded on YouTube. An elected public representative watered down the plight of lakhs of Kashmiri Hindus who were made to leave their homes by radical Islamists. This when the film was a slight fictionalised version of actual events that took place to real victims of the genocide and exodus.
Similarly, very recently, the Kerala Stories, a film starring Adah Sharma made by Vipul Amrutlal Shah was dismissed as a propaganda film. This when there have been news over the years of how the forced religious conversion of girls take place by brainwashing them and how they ended up in ISIS territories. Like the story of Nimisha Fathima, who was brainwashed by a doctor in a coaching centre in Thiruvananthapuram. Her real name was Nimisha Sampath before she converted to Islam and married the ISIS terrorists in Kerala. Soon, the two of them fled to ISIS controlled territory in Afghanistan. Fathima was one of the women who surrendered to the US forces following the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And Nimisha is not alone.
A 2016 India Today report cited government data saying that between 2011 and 2015, 5,975 people had converted to Islam in Kerala of which 1,510 converted in 2015 alone. Of these about 76% of the converts were women under the age of 35, like Nimisha Fathima. In fact, ISIS had established its roots in Kerala back in 2014 as per some investigations.
When a film is made on this, why is it then termed propaganda?
Interestingly, what is common between all these three movies which are dubbed as propaganda by the so-called secular liberals of the country? Who are the perpetrators and who are the victims? Why is our history of Hindu persecution being dismissed as propaganda? Do I still need to tell you how biased our so-called secular liberals are?
