The Kerala Sastra Sahithya Parishad (KSSP) has welcomed Home Minister Ramesh Chennithala’s statement that the government would examine the proposal for introducing a legislation, similar to the one enacted in Maharashtra, against superstitious practices, including black magic.
KSSP State president N. K. Sasidharan Pillai and general secretary V.V. Sreenivasan said in a statement here on Wednesday welcomed the government’s move to consider enacting the Maharashtra-model Act — Prevention and Eradication of Human Sacrifice and other Inhuman, Evil and Aghori Practices and Black Magic Act, 2013.
The statement said that in the wake of the murder of a woman at Karunagapally during a black magic ritual, the media was exposing many cases of exploitation in the name of faith across the State.
The KSSP functionaries, however, said the Minister's statement that action would be taken if the government received complaints about such superstitious and black magic practices could not be accepted. The government, instead, should probe such cases and take suo motu action, they added.
They said the KSSP’s State conference at Udinoor in Kasaragod in May had called for stringent laws to prevent exploitation under the garb of rituals. The KSSP would launch a campaign demanding a strong legislation against such exploitation, they said and added that advertisements and TV programmes that adversely affected the people’s rational thinking and propagated superstition among them should be banned.
They also called upon social, political and cultural organisations and individuals to support the demand for the proposed legislation.
