The Hindu Aikya Vedi in Kerala has a new mission at hand – to ‘study’ why young Hindu women are increasingly becoming ‘vulnerable’ and converting to Islam.
Hindu Aikya Vedi chief Sasikala teacher, along with Kottayam district secretary and other members of the organisation, visited Hadiya's parents last week. 25-year-old Hadiya – born as Akhila – had converted to Islam in 2015.
Her subsequent marriage to a Muslim man named Shafin Jahan sparked a major controversy, after the Kerala High Court nullified their marriage. Her father Ashokan had approached the court against her conversion.
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Speaking to The News Minute, Sasikala teacher says that she met Hadiya's parents at Ashokan's sister's house. This is adjacent to Hadiya’s own house where she has been under house arrest since May this year.
The purpose of the visit was strictly to study the circumstances under which Hadiya was influenced and not to counsel her or convince her to convert back to Hinduism, Sasikala teacher told TNM.
Asked about the “love jihad” narrative in Kerala in recent times and the counter that there was no real tangible proof, Sasikala teacher said that the Supreme Court ordering a probe in Hadiya case was itself an indication that love jihad was a reality.
Hadiya has already converted and we didn’t go there to deal with her case at all. Instead, we are visiting the parents of women who converted to Islam, to know what made them so vulnerable. We are speaking to many such parents on how the woman was brought up, what might have influenced her to forego the religion she was born into.Sasikala Teacher
It is not like we are on a spree to meet such parents all of a sudden. We have been meeting such parents for a few months now, we have visited Nimisha’s mother Bindu in Thiruvananthapuram. Whenever we are in a particular place in connection with a programme, we ensure that we reach out to parents of women who have converted. At the end of our research, we will publish a paper in the matter.
While the visit is already becoming a controversial topic, Sasikala teacher claims they know the reason why Hadiya converted.
"Her father is an atheist and her mother is a believer of Hindu religion. Hadiya was closer to her father than her mother and her father's attitudes on religion influenced her and she never believed in Hindu gods. And when she went away from home, Islam was the religion she was first exposed to and that influenced her. This is something that Ashokan himself has accepted, that his lack of belief influenced his daughter too," Sasikala teacher says.
(This article was first published on The News Minute and has been republished with permission.)
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