“I have never heard of beef being force fed in Kerala,” said Jacob Thomas, Kerala’s former Director General of Police (DGP) who is currently an active member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He was referring to a controversial scene in the teaser for the upcoming The Kerala Story 2, in which a Hindu woman is forced to consume beef by her Muslim in-laws.
On February 20, TNM sat down with Jacob Thomas for an interview. He spoke at length about his affinity to the RSS as an organisation, and explained how he, as a Christian man who is part of the Sangh, views the Hindutva attacks on Christians in the country. As a former high-ranking cop from the state, he also shared his perspectives about the film franchise The Kerala Story.
The former cop elaborated, “I have never come across anybody being force-fed any food item against their will or received such complaints.” According to him, since the tagline for The Kerala Story 2 says ‘Beyond the Borders’, one cannot assume that everything shown in the teaser is from Kerala.
On the exaggerated claims and disinformation peddled in the film’s prequel, Jacob Thomas said, “Film is an entertainment medium, and in docu-fiction movies, there will be exaggerations. Titanic is a movie; it is a historical fact that the ship Titanic sank in the Atlantic Ocean. But then we don’t know about the love story. Like that, there may be many exaggerations in this film too. Sometimes, the names are changed, or the numbers are also. If it is 32, it can be 32,000 in movies,” he added. He was referring to the filmmakers’ initial claims that 32,000 women from Kerala were languishing in jails abroad after having been deceived into converting to Islam. The claims were later fact-checked and disproved. They later corrected the claim, reducing the number to three.
‘Religious conversion happened in Kerala’
“Islam promotes conversion from other religions. Christianity also does that,” Jacob Thomas said, in answer to a question about the overblown allegations of forced conversions in The Kerala Story film franchise.
He went on to state that Kerala has witnessed incidents of young people converting to Islam. “There have been many instances of girls and boys from Kerala being taken to ISIS camps in Syria and other regions, such as Afghanistan. We cannot deny that there has been human trafficking from Kerala to radical extremist organisations and Islamic groups in Gulf countries,” he said.
Reports of religious conversion had come in from districts like Kozhikode, Malappuram, and Ernakulam during his time in the police department, Jacob Thomas added. “Since Kerala has no anti-conversion law, police can only act if there are complaints,” he said.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here.
