Perpetually outraged donation fraud accused Rana Ayyub recently grumbled at the success of The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story at the box office, citing its spectacular run to attack audiences that showered their love on the two movies and went in droves to the theatres to watch them.
Ayyub, known for her Islamist tendencies, most notably reflected in her description of a gangster-turned-mafia Atiq Ahmed as a ‘lawmaker’, lamented that the box office success of both The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story speaks more about the audiences than the makers and those promoting it.
Attacking people who went to watch the movies, Rana Ayyub tweeted, “These films are getting this reception because they validate the prejudice and hate that exists within. These films endorse the bigoted living room conversations that were earlier spoken in whispers but are now given the respectability to be spoken on public platforms.”
In essence, Rana lambasted the Indian audiences of being inherently ‘prejudiced’ and ‘bigoted’ to have thrown their weight behind movies that she accused of being Islamophobic and showing the Muslim community in a bad light.
However, The Kashmir Files was a movie based on the real-life incidents of tragedy and persecution that Kashmiri Pandits faced in the early 1990s, when lakhs of Hindus from the Kashmiri Hindus fled from the Valley amidst targeted killings, terror attacks, religious persecution, and a campaign of threats and intimidation to force the Hindu minority to leave Kashmir.
The Kerala Story, on the other hand, depicts a cautionary tale of how Hindu girls in Kerala were trapped in a relationship through love jihad, brainwashed, and enlisted to serve the terror outfit ISIS in Syria-Iraq.
Both stories were a runaway success at the box office, with people from across the country proceeding to their nearby theatres to watch the predicament of victims in Kashmir and Kerala, kept under the wraps so far for fear of being labelled ‘Islamophobic’ and tearing away at the ‘secular fabric’ of the country.
But undeterred by the imminent attack by ‘liberals’ and ‘Islamists’, the makers of ‘The Kashmir Files’ and ‘The Kerala Story’ went ahead and brought forth the sordid story of deceit, radicalisation, and terrorism with the hope that their attempt would create awareness among people to the social evils threatening the society but which has unstated support from the ‘liberal’ class, including the likes of Rana Ayyub, who would instantly rush to discredit such endeavours by hurling labels of ‘Islamophobia’, ‘bigotry’, ‘propaganda’, and so on.
The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story are among a few honest attempts to shed light on a systematic, organised persecution of Hindus by Islamic supremacists who harbour a dream of turning India into an Islamic country by emasculating its Hindu majority. Ms Ayyub’s fulmination against the audiences for watching these movies is yet another attempt to shield Islamists from their criminal activities and shift the onus onto the people by gaslighting them into believing that they are ‘prejudiced’ and full of ‘hatred’ for supporting the movies.
Interestingly, while Rana Ayyub claims that the box office success of The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story speaks volumes about the people of the country, would she bother to define what box office success of films like Pathaan, PK, OMG: Oh My God! reveals?
The Shah Rukh Khan starrer Pathaan created box office history by being among the highest-grossing films in the history of Indian Cinema. It racked up around Rs 655 crores in India alone, even though ‘propagandists’ like Rana Ayyub have routinely made preposterous claims that Shah Rukh Khan is targeted because he is a Muslim.
Similarly, Aamir Khan starrer PK, which brazenly mocked Indian Gods and Hindu religious beliefs, was the first Bollywood movie to gross over Rs 300 crores in the Indian market, underscoring the tolerance and adherence to constitutionally guaranteed ‘Freedom of Expression’ of the Hindu majority, even though it bore scenes where Hindu Gods were subjected to ridicule and mockery.
The box-office collections and the success of movies like Pathaan and PK demonstrate the maturity embodied by the Indian audience, their ability to take criticism of their Gods in their stride, and their ability to treat movies as nothing more than sources of entertainment.
By contrast, the hostile reaction by Rana Ayyub and her co-ideologists and co-religionists over movies like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story reflects their intolerance, bigotry, and stubborn denial of the history and the social maladies afflicting the society.
