Kerala grappling with conversions, not ‘love jihad’: Filmmaker caught in JNU row

Sudipto Sen's film In Name of Love based on religious conversion was screened last week at JNU amid protests led by the left-wing students union.

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Documentary filmmaker Sudipto Sen on Monday said he was only trying to highlight that the issue in Kerala is not one of 'love jihad' but of conversions, after his film on religious conversions was opposed at JNU by a section of students.

Sen's In Name of Love was screened last week amid protests led by the left-wing students union of the Jawaharlal Nehru University. It led to violence between the union members and the organisers, many of whom belonged to the right-wing Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

His entire movie, Sen said, was based on an interview given by former Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan in 2010 in which the Marxist leader, as shown in the film, spoke about the issue of conversion.

"The issue in Kerala is not one of 'love jihad'. It is of the largest conspiracy being hatched against the country of India... I am only supporting what Achuthanandan said.

Kerala will turn into an Islamic state in 10 years, the filmmamker added.

"After 10 years of what he had said, we did an evaluation, and in that evaluation we found such hair-raising facts... We can say that in 10 years from now, Kerala will be converted into an Islamic state," Sen told the media in New Delhi.

Asked whether he was open to conversation with the left-wing students who opposed his movie's screening, he said his film was his "language" and that he was not averse to opposition provided people watched his movie first.

"I personally do not believe in 'love jihad'. Our film is based on the issue of conversion, it is based on the statistics of 33,000 girls who were either converted to Islam or trafficked to Middle East."