THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) has called for urgent enactment of legislation to prevent forceful religious conversions. The VHP state delegates session which concluded here the other day expressed serious concern over, ‘’the large number of Hindu youths being converted to Islam and later initiated into terrorism.’’ The resolution passed in the delegates session demanded that a proper legislation with no loopholes to stop religious conversions aimed at recruiting people to terror camps should be introduced in an urgent manner.
The resolution, introduced by VHP state president S J R Kumar, pointed out that VHP had, from time to time, been alerting the government that there was large-scale conversion centres under the cover of religious study centres in several parts of the state.
The man missing cases reported from Padna in Kasargod underlined the fact that youths in Kerala had been linked to an unknown person providing religious training to such youths in West Asia. The resolution pointed out that all those who had been missing had received religious training in such camps. It said that despite the repeated alerts from VHP, the so-called secular forces were terming it as mere utterances of fundamentalists.
“It is the neglect of the warnings against the terrorist elements that has led to the serious situation currently prevailing in the state. The current trend of converting youths for the sake of initiating them to terrorism should not be allowed to continue. The intervention of the court, government and general public is essential for this,” the resolution said. It also raised concern over educated youths being influenced through scoial media platforms like Facebook and messaging platforms like WhatsApp.
The resolution observed that Muslim League, the soft face of the Muslim community which constitutes over 20 per cent of the state’s population, has been providing a shade for the terror elements, though it was not directly linked to such activities.