In India, cinema is also campaigning for Narendra Modi’s BJP

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 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.

Photo by Samir Jana/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

In the midst of such a copious production, there is no shortage of even more overtly political and current films such as Article 370 (2024) which celebrates the decision of the government in power to revoke the autonomy of Kashmir, the only state in the Union (now former, given that it 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.

Director Vivek Agnihotri and Indian actress Pallavi Joshi at the press conference of the film “The Kashmir Files” (Photo by Sonu Mehta/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

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 that splatter of Bastar – A Naxal Storyor 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.