It’s that time of year again when Kerala becomes the target of generous doses of hate.
The latest wave was sparked by a scene in the trailer of Kerala Story 2.
In what is supposed to be the “Kerala part” of the story, beef is force-fed by caricaturish Muslims, to a character named Surekha Nair.
When accused of spreading hatred for political gains, the filmmakers claimed they have no links with the BJP
But is that really true?
An RSS-linked organisation has helped with the ideation of the movie.
Turns out, the production house behind the film has even donated to an organisation that says it helps Hindu women in interfaith relationships and weddings.
And overall, the BJP has created an atmosphere where eating beef has been turned into a political weapon.
The irony? The same BJP that gets crores in donation from beef exporters.
I am Pooja Prasanna
And Let Me Explain.
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So first about the movie’s makers.
The Kerala Story films were made by Sunshine Pictures, owned by producer Vipul Shah and actor Shefali Shah.
The first film was accused of spreading hate.
But it did wonders for business.
Sunshine Pictures’ revenues jumped from Rs 26 crore in 2022–23 to Rs 133 crore in 2023, and Rs 103 crore in 2024.
It would seem that while hate may be controversial, it’s also quite profitable.
Now let’s talk about the ideology driving the camera.
This report – on News 18 – is an interview with Brij Kishore Kuthiala, who chairs the board of an organisation called Bharatiya Chitra Sadhana — an organisation linked with the RSS.
It says the RSS and BCS are working towards a kind of cinema that would contribute to “nation-building”
And that in the past few years, this initiative has supported the ideation and creation of films like Samrat Prithviraj, The Kerala Story, Bastar: The Naxal Story, and The Kashmir Files.
Remember what producer Vipul Shah said? About being called BJP stooges?
Yeah. That line doesn’t hold anymore.
We should also talk about where some of the money goes.
Sunshine Pictures donated Rs 1.1 crore as CSR funds to an organisation called the Vijnanabharathi Educational and Charitable Society.
This society is run by a man named KR Manoj, referred to on the website as Acharya KR Manojji.
This donation isn’t surprising- because in 2023, Vipul Shah announced that they would donate money to rehabilitate “victims” of religious conversion.
Manojji, a few years ago, used to run the Sivasakthi Yoga Centre in Thripunithara in Kochi.
It was shut down after two Hindu women went to court saying they had been kept in captivity and tortured there.
One former employee went to court saying that women in inter-faith marriages were beaten up, and kept under sedation.
To be clear, there were also women who defended the centre, saying it helped them come out of such relationships.
These women appeared at a press meet and made some eye-popping claims — that 7,000 people had been radicalised in Kerala and Manojji’s institute had reformed them.
These numbers were never independently verified — including by us.
But as is evident from all this, there is a web here.
Hindutva helplines encourage parents or anyone to report inter-faith relationships.
Places like Siva Sakthi yoga and Aarsha Vidya samajam make massive, unverified claims.
Then an even bigger exaggeration of these numbers become a movie, which is ideated by an RSS-linked organisation.
It’s a study in how this kind of moral panic gets industrialised.
Now we’ll have to zoom out.
How has India become a place where this hate has been normalised?
Where the people of a state are forced to actually post pictures of eating meat as a symbol of dissent?
Part of the answer lies in the law.
From the time that India’s Constitution was drafted, there is no doubt that protecting the cow was important.
Many political parties have pandered to this sentiment and introduced cow slaughter bans, either fully or with conditions. This includes the Congress, let’s be clear about that.
But here’s where BJP’s hypocrisy shines.
And I am going to illustrate that using two maps.
There are only a few states in India now that don't ban cow slaughter-
West Bengal, Kerala, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Mizoram, and Tripura.
In Manipur, the ban comes from an old royal resolution, there is no new law.
Now notice something.
The BJP is in power in Arunachal, currently leads the government in Manipur, and is part of the ruling coalition in Nagaland.
Before the Nagaland elections in 2017, the BJP promised there would be no beef ban there like there was in UP.
Manipur CM Biren Singh said the same in 2018 — no beef ban.
So why would the BJP not bring the law in these states?
Here’s where the second map comes in.
It’s easier to enforce a ban in the core Hindi belt, where there are larger populations that don’t consume meat at all.
But once you move to the North East — and states like Kerala and Goa — meat consumption is near-universal, including beef and buff, that is buffalo meat.
In these states, a cow slaughter ban isn’t about sentiment. It’s simply not enforceable.
So the BJP practices selective outrage.
Where bans are enforced, they’re brutal.
Gujarat’s law allows life imprisonment for cow slaughter.
In November 2025, three Muslim men were sentenced to life under this law.
In another case in 2019, a man was accused by his neighbour of stealing a calf, slaughtering it, and serving it at his daughter’s wedding.
There was no proof, and no forensic tests on meat proved it was beef.
But the Sessions Court judge shifted the burden of proof on the man, saying he had to prove that it was not the same calf that he served.
The burden of proof does not lie with the accused even in rape and murder cases.
Anyway, the HC eventually reversed the order and set the man free.
Uttar Pradesh uses the anti-terror National Security Act for cow slaughter.
In 2019, Indian Express reported that till August, NSA was invoked against 139 people in the state, 76 of them for cow slaughter.
NSA allows people to be jailed without trial or formal charge.
So the laws have grown more stringent.
The BJP and the wider right wing ecosystem have weaponised anger against beef eaters.
And all the while, the party has received generous funding from beef exporters.
Scroll recently reported that India’s largest beef exporter, the Allana Group, donated an unprecedented Rs 30 crore to the BJP in 2024–25 — even as beef exports crossed $4 billion for the first time since 2018.
Yes, you can now counter this saying India officially permits only the export of buffalo meat — technically carabeef or buff, not cow meat.
But when someone is attacked, lynched, or booked under terror laws, no one stops to check whether it was beef or carabeef. The mob does not care.
The hypocrisy doesn't end here.
Look at these numbers. Under the Modi government, India remained one of the world’s largest buffalo meat exporters, shipping about 1.48 million tonnes in 2014–15, according to this data. After a brief dip due to global price and supply factors, exports stabilised, and in 2023–24 India exported roughly 1.3 million tonnes worth around $3.7–3.8 billion.
Major markets included Vietnam as a trading hub, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Iraq and several Gulf countries.
And under GST, meat exports — including beef — are zero-rated, which basically means exporters don’t end up paying tax on what they ship abroad.
So while morality around beef has been central to BJP’s politics, it has not stopped benefiting from it.
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Produced by Megha Mukundan, Script by Dhanya Rajendran, Inputs by Nandini Chandrashekar, Camera by Ajay R, Edit by Nikhil Sekhar ET, Graphics by Dharini Prabharan