Every film has a villain: Vipul Shah

Filmmaker Vipul Shah doesn’t see why religion is a point of concern in his latest controversial production, ‘The Kerala Story’. At a recent event, the producer said that every film has a villain and by extension, every villain has a religion. He wondered why a hullabaloo was being made only about ‘The Kerala Story’.

Released two weeks ago, ‘The Kerala Story’ found itself in the middle of a political storm when it began its campaign by claiming that it was sincerely chronicling the true stories of more than 32,000 Kerala women who’d allegedly been radicalised by Islamic fundamentalists. The makers later backtracked and changed the number to ‘three’ after backlash and allegations of misinformation.

During a press conference, Shah was asked about the concerns that the film targets the Muslim community. The producer said that was a reductive way of looking at ‘The Kerala Story’ and cited examples of ‘Sholay’ and ‘Singham 2’ to make his point that the villains in those films belonged to a certain religion, but nobody took any offense.

“In ‘Sholay’, Gabbar Singh is the villain, but Ramesh Sippy saab isn’t against the Singh community. Every film talks about some bad people, but we don’t associate religion with them. In ‘Singham 2’, a priest is a villain, so was an attempt made to vilify the entire Hindu community? Not at all. That was one character. Our films have some characters who are terrorists. If we didn’t raise such questions during ‘Sholay’ or ‘Singham 2’, then why are you targeting Hindus? Why this now?”

‘The Kerala Story’ was made with the utmost care so that no community or religion was offended.