Not, of course, that this matters simply for India’s spiralling international reputation. On the contrary, Modi’s usurpation of his country’s media is having a real-world impact on the safety of Muslims. In 2023 alone, India Hate Lab, a Washington DC-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, recorded 668 hate speech examples targeting Muslims. Even more striking, there’s suggestive evidence that calumny against Muslims in the cinema can have an practical impact on the streets. Admittedly, the line between media and violence is hard to trace explicitly, but it’s surely telling that 59 cases of communal violence were reported in India last year, a significant rise on the 32 from 2023. Other links are even more explicit. After the release of The Kashmir Files, anti-Muslim videos soon went viral on WhatsApp, with one exhorting Hindus to shoot the “traitors” in their midst. Muslims themselves are clearly worried too, with one opposition politician comparing The Kashmir Files to Nazi propaganda.