Former Kerala Director General of Police (DGP) TP Senkumar is in the eye of a storm after an interview he gave on ‘Love Jihad’ and the ‘burgeoning population of Muslims’ in the state.
And even as Senkumar is getting tagged a ‘Sanghi’ and being heavily criticized for his pro RSS remarks, he told TNM that some of his comments had been misconstrued.
In an interview to PS Ramshad of Samakalika Malayalam, a weekly run by The New Indian Express Group, published on July 4, Senkumar had said that Love Jihad, in which young Muslims lured Hindu girls in the name love to get them converted to Islam, existed in the state. However, Senkumar told TNM that he was talking about love jihad by Islamic State loyalists in the state and not the Muslim community per say.
“Love Jihad does exist in the state and it is for people of the Muslim community to come against it and they are doing it. I have never said that Love Jihad was by the people of the Muslim community. My remarks were not against them, but that Love Jihad activities were operated by the Islamic State,” Senkumar told TNM.
He said that when he was the DGP, the High Court itself had looked at cases of Love Jihad and entrusted two such cases to him for further investigation.
“The IS was operating Love Jihad and everything related to it. It is for the Muslim community to eliminate it fully from the state and the voice against this practice has to come from within the community. What do you think made some women go to Afghanistan to join Islamic State? People who didn’t understand what I had said, and have misquoted me” he said.
He had told Samakalika Malayalam that the Muslim community accounts for 42% of the childbirths in Kerala these days. He went on to says, “The Muslim population is just 27%, in the state. This birthrate change Kerala’s demography. Amongst Hindus who constitute 54% of the population, the birth rate is below 48%. The birth rate among Christians, who form 19.5% of the population, is 15%,” he had said.
These comments have been interpreted as ‘anti-Muslim’ and have led to many calling him ‘Sanghi’. Senkumar however says that these comments have been deliberately misconstrued and such efforts to paint him as a person against the Muslim community have been done before too.
He also said that his statement that the Muslim population in the state registered more growth while the Hindu population was declining, was based on facts.
“It was not my observation, but I quoted data. The data was not created by me, but prepared by local administration. Reports based on the data have appeared in the media and I have seen it on news portals. It is a fact, not something I have distorted. What do you people (media) think? We can’t talk the truth? When people make a fuss of it, it is equal to saying that we shouldn’t utter the truth,” he told TNM.
Senkumar also blamed the interviewer for misinterpreting certain facts. “Ramshad was a secretary of PDP leader Madani, he was with Thejas daily,” Senkumar alleged.
PS Ramshad, however, said that he had recorded all the statements made by Senkumar, “He has known me for the past several years. I had written stories using his quotes in the past too. Nothing in the interview was distorted, I have written whatever he had told me,” Ramshad said.
He denied reports that he was joining the BJP. The former DGP had attended a function organized by BJP mouthpiece ‘Janmabhumi’ on Saturday. “Why are people finding fault in that? I had earlier attended functions of Jamaath-Islami. What is wrong in it? Let people interpret things in the way they wish,” he said.