The plot of The Kerala Story — produced by Vipul Shah and directed by Sudipto Sen — reveals how women who are goaded into (forced) conversion to Islam join ISIS for jihad. It also intrepidly claimed that 32,000 Hindu and Christian women in the state were turned into Muslims and recruited into terrorist outfits.
The trailer has fomented a high-pitched national altercation. Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has added fuel to the fire by calling the film “communal polarisation”. He also drew the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) into the fray, accusing the film of spreading the RSS’ goal in Kerala. The state culture minister, Saji Cherian, urged people to boycott the movie, alleging that the state is portrayed in a bad light.
As reported in an article, “The release of this movie in Kerala has been opposed by political parties like the Left Democratic Front (LDF), which is currently in power, the United Democratic Front (UDF), which is in Opposition, and their respective youth organisations. The Kerala Congress has also voiced opposition to the movie, claiming that it shows Islam in a bad light. Now, the Muslim Youth League general secretary has also objected to the film and called it a propaganda film endorsed by the ‘Sangh Parivar,’ and that a case should be filed against director Sudipto Sen.”
Looking back
Muslim rule was already a spent force by the time Aurangzeb died in 1707. Also, most Islamic monarchs were preoccupied with consolidating power, dealing with internal revolts and coups, or dealing with intense opposition from Hindu kings, in particular, and the Hindu public in general. So, when did they have the time and resources to convert a multitude of Hindus in the midst of all this chaos? Perhaps it is true that during Islamic control, many Hindu elites were persuaded to join Islam in order to keep their positions of power and privilege by knowing our culture and demographics, allowing them to steal with minimal collateral damage. But that was all on their own volition.
Similarly, some generations of Hindu court musicians were allowed to continue performing on the condition that they converted to Islam. However, the profuse majority of Hindus endured during these testing times, without yielding to the Islamic atrocities, which lasted just a few hundred years in the timeline of Bharat that dates back to at least tens of thousands of years. One needs to ruminate on what happened to the children of Hindu mothers abducted by invading Muslims. What about the offspring of thousands of Hindu women held in harems by sultans, emperors, army generals, and ministers?
These kids were born to Hindu mothers but raised as Muslims. Amir Khusro was born to an Uzbek Muslim father and a Hindu Rajput mother. His children were brought up in a Muslim household. Jodhabai, a Rajput Hindu princess, was Jahangir’s mother. As a pious Muslim, Jahangir controlled India and helped spread Islam throughout the country.
Invaders would have required copious armies with crores of men to convert these Hindus! The invaders lacked the time and resources to do this, and also the motivation and desire to do it. They had just come here to rob, plunder, abduct women, and enjoy power. For example, Salar Masud, the nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni, could assemble an army of Turks, Persians, and Afghans just on the promise of looting and plundering Ayodhya. He persuaded them by saying that Ayodhya was far larger and wealthier than Somnath, which had been devastated by his maternal uncle. Masud and his army were defeated by King Suheldev in the famous battle of Bahraich in present-day UP in the year 1023; Masud too was killed.
As a result, it is clear that our Hindu forefathers did not cave in and convert to Islam as freely as projected to be the case. So, how can we account for the large number of Muslims in modern India? Why are there so few Hindus (of all religions) in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh?
Jihad is the answer
Hindu girls are wilfully picked by Muslim men—lately under the pretence of a fake Hindu identity—and seduced under the disguise of love, to convert to Islam. That is tantamount to jihad, as in Islam, marrying a kafir is forbidden; she must first convert to Islam before marriage. But this “stealth-war” jihad is as old as Islam itself. It is the most powerful instrument ever used to convert kafirs, or infidels, to Islam. Mind it, this love jihad was not invented by today’s “communal” Hindus or the RSS, as phony liberal intellectuals allege.
The Christian Church invented the name “love jihad” after observing a huge number of young Christian females being seduced by Muslim men in Kerala, although it has been perpetuated for thousands of years. On December 9, 2009, in Shahan Sha A vs. the State of Kerala, the Kerala High Court had directed the state government to provide information on love jihad, observing that there was a movement or project called “Love Jihad” or “Romeo Jihad” conceived by a section of Muslims in Kerala to convert girls from other religions to Islam. Justice KT Sankaran had found indications of ‘forceful’ religious conversions under the garb of ‘love’ in the state and asked the government to consider enacting a law to prohibit such ‘deceptive’ acts. “Under the pretext of love, there cannot be any compulsive, deceptive conversion,” he said. In one of his interviews from 2010, former Kerala CM and CPI (M) veteran VS Achuthanandan said, “They (the ruling party) want to turn Kerala into a Muslim-majority state in 20 years. They are using money and other inducements to convert people to Islam. They even marry women from outside their community in order to increase the Muslim population.” He further added, “The Muslim youth were also inveigled to marry Hindu girls.”
Current situation
Now let us return to present-day conditions. A little while ago, a WhatsApp message goading Muslim youth to entice and marry Hindu women went viral, which was then exposed by social media. The message read, “If a Muslim youth marries a Hindu Brahmin girl, he would be awarded with Rs 5 lakh; similarly if someone gets hitched to a Sikh Punjabi girl, he would be given Rs 7 lakh,” the notorious WhatsApp message said. “If the girl is from the Kshatriya Hindu community, the cash reward would be Rs 4.5 lakh, a Gujarat Brahmin girl Rs 6 lakh, a Punjabi Hindu Rs 6 lakh, a Christian Roman Catholic Rs 4 lakh, a Christian Protestant Rs 3 lakh, a Jain Rs 3 lakh, and a Gujarati Kutch girl Rs 3 lakh.”
This is true for millions upon millions of Hindu women who were coerced or lured into marrying a Muslim. The outcomes are consistent. This love jihad is not limited to India. It is now taking place throughout Europe and Northern America, taking full advantage of these continents’ democratic and liberal administrations.
To combat this scourge known as “love jihad,” the world must unite and follow a long-term approach in tandem:
- To get results, we must educate their youngsters about this threat, and awareness campaigns must be organised.
- Campaigns in the media or on social media should be used to raise awareness. All incidents of love jihad in history and the present must be documented. Hindu volunteers must launch a campaign to visit all Hindu homes with a girl child, an adolescent, or a college-age girl based on the collected data. Posters with creative designs should be produced, printed, and plastered on the walls of schools, universities, and other important locations. Local journalists should be encouraged to prominently feature “love jihad” tales.
- Political parties, too, require public awareness campaigns. All political parties in India must understand that their existence and survival are contingent on India remaining a Hindu-majority country! In Islamic nations, there is no free political activity. All political officials must be addressed with a request to assist in the passage of legislation prohibiting this type of religious conversion.
- In the unlikely case that a Hindu girl marries a Muslim man of her own free will, the law must prohibit her from converting to Islam and must allow her to raise her children as Hindus. Apostasy is punishable by death in Islam. The dread of being killed is one of the reasons why a Hindu lady who converted to Islam may not return. Such women must be protected by the law. Societies and civic groups must goad the legislature to safeguard all men and women renegades of Islam.
- Hindu groups should set up cells to coordinate their operations with those of other religious and social organisations. Non-Muslim communities such as Christians, Parsis, and Jews should also be supported.
As the saying goes, “The solution of a problem begins with its acknowledgement.” The Indians must stand together against this socio-political malice.
Yuvraj Pokharna is an independent journalist and columnist. He tweets with @pokharnaprince. Views expressed are personal.
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