Thiruvananthapuram: The Vishwa Hindu Parishad party made headway in its goal to ‘reconvert’ followers of other religions to Hinduism with another ‘reconversion’ event on Christmas day.
At two such events held in Kottayam district on Thursday, more than 50 people are believed to have been converted to Hinduism. The ‘ghar vapsi’ (back home) programmes were held at the district headquarters in Kottayam and in Ponkunnam in Kottayam district. Of the converts to Hinduism, one was reportedly Muslim and all others were Christians.
Those who converted to Hinduism were drawn from 11 families in Kottayam and 20 families in Ponkunnam.
Over the past couple of weeks, similar programmes were held in Kollam and Alappuzha districts in south Kerala. Some of the converts in Alappuzha told a local newspaper that they opted to embrace Hinduism in order to be get reservation benefits. A Vishwa Hindu Parishad helpline had earlier announced that about 200 people would be converting to Hinduism on Christmas day.
Shiv Sena officials have said that the organisation would hold ‘reconversion’ events at Kozhikode, Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, and that the objective is to bring Hindus who have “left the faith for various reasons”, back to the fold.
State chief minister Oommen Chandy said this week that there was no compulsory conversion or reconversion happening in the state and that when people voluntarily took a decision it did not warrant government intervention.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is yet to win a single seat in the Kerala assembly or bag a parliamentary seat from the state. In the recent Lok Sabha election, BJP veteran O. Rajagopal came close to a win over a Congress’ member of parliament, Shashi Tharoor, but fell short in the final round of counting.
Last week, BJP’s national president, Amit Shah was in the state to take a closer look into the party’s organisational structure and functioning in the state.
