Hadiya’s Plight In A Nation Of Snake-Oil Sellers

India’s apex court has – thankfully – put an interim break to the brouhaha over the much-publicized Hadiya conversion-and-marriage case. Whatever will be the final verdict in this case to be pronounced by the Supreme Court, there is one section, the key benefactor, that is rejoicing with a perverse pleasure from the rooftop. It is the Sangh Parivar, for whom the conversion and marriage of Hadiya (formerly Akhila) is a virtual manna from heaven in order to cause communal polarization and demonize the Muslim community, and, in the process, achieve political gains.

The votaries of Hindu nationalism have enormously succeeded, with their sinister and sustained propaganda, in marketing the Hadiya issue as a case of ‘love jihad’ and ‘forced conversion’. It has been a communal serendipity for the communalists as it contained all the paraphernalia required for their ‘love jihad’ plot: a Hindu girl’s religious conversion, and marriage to a Popular Front activist, and the annulling of the marriage by the Kerala High Court as ‘sham’.

The question is: Is it a case of ‘love jihad’? First of all, it wasn’t a ‘love marriage’ in the popular imagination. After Akhila converted to become Hadiya, she found her spouse on a matrimonial website after many months of groom hunt. They went through all the requisite rituals of a typical third-world match-making which would culminate in an ‘arranged marriage’.

But the rightwing extremists still tom-tom this as a ‘textbook case’ of ‘love jihad’. What on earth it means? For the uninitiated lot and late-comers, here’s a recap. Long time ago, the RSS and the BJP gave a detailed account of how a ‘love jihad’ looks like. The script goes like this: Extremist Muslim organizations, flush with plenty of cash and eager for an Islamic caliphate, deploy good-looking Muslim boys (do remember, charming Muslim guys are hard to find on the streets these days because all of them are busy luring Hindu girls with their street-smart guile!) with the required ‘love gear’ such as truckloads of dough  and flashy superbikes to lure Hindu girls, love them, convert them and marry them (and send them to Islamic State camps abroad to work as sex-slaves or cooks, as per the remixed version).

The snake-oil sellers of ‘love jihad’ want us to believe in the insanity that all the Hindu girls are super-imbeciles waiting to be lured by the ‘love jihad Romeo squad’ on the prowl in speeding bikes! There cannot be any more absurd argument than this: the very notion that Hindu girls have no mind or personality of their own and are so vulnerable and brainless to fall for the love jihad Romeos. The Hindutva brigade’s nonsensical theory ultimately belittles not just the Hindu womenfolk; it patently is an affront to the entire womanhood. It essentially treats them as cattle fodder sans any self-respect or dignity. But in this country such tripe sells much faster and easier as exemplified from the Hadiya case.

The Kerala High Court through its judgment on the 24th May, 2017 has maintained that the 24-year-old wannabe Homeopath converted to Islam under the influence of her college hostel-mates.

From the judgment: “Ms. Akhila is the only child of Sri.Ashokan, the petitioner, and Smt. Ponnamma. They both belong to the Hindu (Ezhava) community and hail from Vaikom in Kottayam District. Ms. Akhila was therefore brought up in accordance with the beliefs and rituals of Hindu religion. At present, she is aged 24 years and has completed her degree course in Homeopathic Medicine, BHMS (Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery). She had joined the Shivaraj Homeopathy Medical College, Salem for her BHMS course. It is not in dispute that, though she had initially resided in the College Hostel, she later on took a house on rent outside the College and started residing there with four other friends. Two of her friends were Hindus, while the other two were Muslims. Among them, she became very close with Ms.Jaseena. She had accompanied Ms.Jaseena to her house and stayed with her a number of times. Her acquaintance with Ms.Jaseena attracted her to the tenets and beliefs of Islamic religion.”

So, it was a bogus claim by the extremists. There was no charming Romeo in this case as per the ‘love jihad’ plot set in the RSS lab! And there was no force involved either, as Hadiya has testified before the court and talked to the media in Kochi en route to her Delhi trip to appear before the SC.

In the May order, the High Court, acting on the Habeas corpus filed by the father, annulled Hadiya’s marriage to Shefin Jahan and sent her to live with her parents against her wish. The division bench was perturbed at the marriage during the pendency of the case, which it suspected to have been done “with the object of transporting her out of India.” Here the question is: Does the law prevent a woman from marrying criminals? While donning the garb of an overprotective parent exuding plenty of condescending parental love and unadulterated patriarchy, the court cloyingly expressed doubts about the ‘criminal background’ of Jahan. The 95-page-long order, which was unpredictably schmaltzy in its ‘parental love’, triggered debates about the constitutionally guaranteed personal liberty and right of an individual – here a sane adult woman – to choose her life. Later, the Supreme Court rightly asked “even if the husband has a criminal record, does the girl not have a right to marry a criminal?”

Much before the case reached the Supreme Court, the well-oiled communal rumor-mongering mechanics from the Hindutva camp had launched their handiworks, ably abetted by a section of the pliant national media that glibly sucked themselves up into the vortex of the love jihad narrative ad nauseam, in the process helping the extreme rightwing elements to further their nasty agenda. (There was hardly any mainstream media headline without this ‘Kerala Love Jihad case’ prelude). Rancid social media trolls that teetered on the brink of misogyny and profanity were produced in abundance on Hadiya by the foot soldiers of the Sangh Parivar.

The Sangh Parivar’s was a braying campaign at full throttle, deploying even the official arms. National Woman’s Commission chairperson visited Hadiya at her home and ‘revealed’ to journalists that forced conversions are galore in Kerala; she was just parroting what the BJP state/national leaders have been uttering for quite a while. They portrayed Kerala as the recruitment ground for IS, and, pinpointing Hadiya’s case, sought NIA probe. The NIA, deputed by the SC to probe the case, after enquiring into the alleged terror links of Jahan and other related aspects, submitted before the apex court a 100-page sealed document; and on November 27, the NIA lawyer argued before the SC that Jahan has terror links. But NIA is yet to explain why then he isn’t booked till date if there are incriminating evidences against him. After all, ours is a country of able-bodied investigating officers who have perfected the impeccable art of putting innocents behind bars (sometimes for years sans trials) on fabricated, flimsy or non-existent evidences.

Nobody is saying suspected terror links, if any, or any such illegalities involved in this matter should not be investigated, but not at the cost of a woman’s life and her right to dignity in a democratic polity. Not by allowing rightwing extremists to pollute the society and benefit. What we are witnessing is communal razzmatazz with the Hindutva extremists using the Hadiya case to advance its ‘love jihad’ charade, seeking to instill fears among the Hindu parents to doubt even genuine friendships or organic interactions between their girls with Muslim boys, and to ‘otherise’ Muslims further using the ‘love jihad’ bogey across the country in general and in Kerala in particular.

The whole episode is a sad commentary on the current state of affairs in Modi’s fast-polarizing India. What would have ended as the disposal of a Habeas Corpus writ was blown up into a national communal pot by the Hindutva brigade, effectively assisted by an Islamophobic NIA and sections of national media. The ‘love-jihad’ frenzy – which sadly is back in communal vogue – will be used by the peddlers of hate politics to further their crooked political agendas in the days to come.

(First published in Counter Currents)
https://countercurrents.org/2017/11/30/hadiyas-plight-in-a-nation-of-snake-oil-sellers/

The dull roll of a Yatra

When BJP national president Amit Shah descended on northern Kerala recently as part of his ‘save Kerala mission’, he brought along with him a gaggle of journalists to gauge the menace of “Red-Jihadi terror” in the state. The embedded journalists looked around with rubbernecking curiosity for mass graves of RSS men killed by CPM cadres. They, however, could not find any mass graves; what they instead saw was posters (put up by CPM) with the photos of CPM men killed by RSS cadres. The journalists were in for a tiny epiphany: that it was not a one-way street of political killings in the state.

Yes, in Kerala, Kannur in particular, the cadres of both RSS and CPM would kill each other with clinic-like precision for political supremacy. Just one figure would be suffice to buttress this daylight reality. During the 2000-2016 period, a total of 69 men belonging to both CPM and BJP lost their lives in Kannur district in the mutual killing spree. Of this, 31 belonged to the BJP/RSS fold and 30 were CPM men. Figures like this would dispel the BJP parable that their men are chased and annihilated systematically in Kerala.

Well, after its political potty training on patriotism, the central BJP leadership, under the wily Amit Shah, has set its eyes down south with the desperate effort to make political inroads in Kerala. In the apocalyptic Saffron imagination baked in BJP’s national lab, Kerala is a dystopian killing field where Muslims and Communists (the top two enemies as per the Holy Book of RSS) unleash a reign of terror. The Jan Raksha Yatra (Journey to save people), currently on its last leg, is part of this nation-wide vilification campaign of Kerala, ably assisted by a section of the pliant media, to ‘save’ the state from the clutches of Communists and Jihadists. The high-octane campaign – littered lavishly with misleading statistics, outright lies and half-boiled rhetoric – ultimately maligned the state, prompting both the CPM and the Congress to counter the rightwing rants. Indignant at the national-level bid to tarnish the state, Keralites took to the social media to demolish the pack of lies.

The Yatra further lost its sheen when Amit Shah supplanted his save-Kerala mission with his save-son mission! An impromptu shift in priority. Newspapers told us that he hurriedly went back to New Delhi to save his son from the impending damning expose by The Wire web portal that his fictitious company has fattened like a sumo warrior with so much of ill-gotten wealth under the Narendra Modi rule.

With the chief warrior having gone, Kummanon Rajasekharan, one of Shah’s Kerala-level minions, took extra care to keep the Yatra alive, by stating that the 1921 Mappila Rebellion was the first Jihadi attack in Kerala! Despite the sheer stupidity, despite the awful intellectual bankruptcy, despite the pathological ignorance of historical complexities, his irresponsible utterance reeks of unadulterated communal venom. Renowned historians have written how people of the Malabar region – Muslims and Hindus alike – rebelled against British rule and the yoke of feudal landlordism. Eminent historian KN Panickar in his book Against Lord and State has termed the 1921 Mappila rebellion as the culmination of years of pent-up frustration among the agrarian class against feudalism coupled with the uprising against the ruthless British rule. The right-wing elements have always singled out the stray instances where the feudal Hindus were targeted during the rebellion. The purveyors of such reductive remarks better read history and the incestuous relationship between the British and the feudal landlords in the region. But then, it is quite unsurprising that the BJP leader termed the anti-British uprising as a Jihadi plot. The British rulers those days also peddled the same narrative by playing down the rebellion as the handiwork of ‘Muslim fanatics’, the same thought shared by the Hindu rightwing! After all, birds of a feather flock together. We all know that there exists an umbilical cord between the Hindu nationalists and the British. And it’s been in existence for so long. From the day VD Savarkar wrote that feet-crawling apology letter seeking pardon from the British rulers. Or even before?

It was not that the BJP’s Yatra was full of habitual sloganeering minus the required fun element. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who adorned the Yatra along with other national leaders, exhorted Kerala to learn from his state. He didn’t specify any specific area to learn the lessons from. Probably, he should have raised his state’s exalted public health sector that causes recurrent mass deaths of oxygen-deprived infants as a lesson for Kerala to emulate!

And buried not so deep in this diabolic bid by the Hindu rightwing for the non-existent Jihadi terror is its own shenanigans from the past. At the forefront have always been RSS and its blood-soaked, riot-happy past. From the Thalassery (Kannur) riot of 1971 to the recent murder of a young madrassa teacher inside a mosque in the border district of Kasargode, RSS has striven hard to sew communal discord and disharmony into Kerala’s secular fabric. In the Thalassery riot, it was the all-familiar plot of spreading venomous rumors that Muslims had stripped naked Hindu girls, and Muslim killers were attempting to attack temples and rape Hindu women. The government-appointed Justice Joseph Vithayathil Commission has documented the sinister role played by the rightwing elements in the riots.

Cut to now. In November 2016, eight RSS men were arrested for the brutal murder of Faizal, who’d converted from Hinduism to Islam. One of the accused brazenly told the police that he murdered Faizal. Months later, RSS men murdered a madrassa instructor, Riyaz Moulavi. RSS cadres barged into the room of the 34-year-old madrassa teacher and slit his throat in the early hours. The three RSS men, since arrested, didn’t even know Riyaz, let alone harbor any previous enmity. It was a clear attempt to create communal riots in the communally sensitive Kasargod. In both the instances, nothing untoward happened as people were sensible enough to exercise restraint.

In their insane alacrity to gain foothold in Kerala, BJP’s national leaders blithely airdropped into the state the same custom-made software of hatred and false propaganda which they have effectively deployed to their political advantage in north India. In this brainless bid to make political mileage in the state, the right-wing elements take Kerala for granted by ignoring the high-level literacy rate, sense of discernment of the people, communal harmony, and the superior social, political and economical advancements. The Hindu rightwing may need something else to win the hearts of the people of Kerala: something other than riots and lies.

http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/10/17/the-dull-roll-of-a-yatra/

Leave love alone!

When renowned writer-poet Madhavikutty (rechristened Kamala Surayya at the twilight of her life following her conversion to Islam) died, she was buried as per Islamic customs. And her sons showed no qualms in standing in the front row to offer the customary final prayer to the departed soul. While it is a measure of their sublime sensibility and dignified equanimity, it is also a testament to the great tradition Kerala is known for which essentially bred such finer souls. 

But today, that tradition is at the mercy of the Hindu rightwing nationalists in Kerala who yearn to milk political capital by disturbing the state’s placid social ecosystem. The cow claptrap, thankfully, did not cut any ice among the Malayalees, for, beef continues to be a succulent and secular dish among the majority Hindus here. The state-level minions of Amit Shah and Narendra Modi then had to find something anew. And they stumbled upon the bogey of religious conversions, the pet national-level dish that has been baked in the putrid kitchen of the Sangh Parivar. 

The fact is that the practice of inter-religious marriages is one of the many sweet icings that decorate the syncretic monochrome that we call Kerala. Here in the state, it is not unusual for men and women to marry from other religions. When they are thrown themselves into the delirious orbit of love, some undergo religious conversions in order to peacefully fit themselves within the society-approved and family-blessed institution called marriage. Some don’t, and continue to live with the religion they were born into.  

But, the Sangh Parivar, allergic to humanitarian scruples and sanctimonious about religious conversions, shows remarkable facility in according noxious communal color to such benign conversions. And they have a name for it: love jihad. Marriages between Hindu girls and Muslim men are bracketed with this highly mischievous term, painting the estrogen- and testosterone-induced predilections of youngsters with the poisonous brush of love jihad.

In Kerala, the canard of love jihad, once ruled out by the High Court of Kerala as a non-existent figment of imagination, continues to be peddled by the righting Sangh Parivar with the same street-smart guile of a snake-oil seller. Stray incidents of religious conversions involving Hindu girls and Muslim men are branded as the products of love jihad.    

The obvious tripe of love jihad as being the hackneyed plot straight out of a fourth-grade film notwithstanding, the notion that it exists has gained some amount of mainstream acceptability in the modish conversion-talk. At the height of the love jihad campaign not long ago in Kerala, when the vicious campaign reached its malicious pinnacle, there have been instances where even innocuous friendships between Hindu girls and Muslim boys in society were viewed with suspicion. Not a small feat for the Hindu right which has been striving hard to enter the state’s mainstream politics with its ideology based on hatred for the minorities.  

The bogey of love jihad is now followed by, not supplanted with, another humbuggery: Islamic State. The theory is that, like in the case of love jihad, there are organized gangs of Muslim men who lure Hindu girls into Islam, marry them and take them to the IS camps abroad. What a way to recruit foot soldiers for the Islamic State imbeciles! 

RSS and BJP minions extensively used this theory in the now-controversial conversion of Akhila aka Hadiya, a 24-year-old homeopathic doctor. Despite stating before the Kerala High Court that she converted to Islam on her own free volition and married as per her wish, the court, in an unprecedented move, sent her to her parents’ home against her wish to go with her husband. Personal choice and constitutional freedom to choose religion be damned! The court appeared to have been swayed by her father’s concern that she might join Islamic State. (He sought to substantiate his claim with an unverified phone call with his daughter in this regard.) Hadiya case is a classic case where even the judiciary impulsively falls into the bottomless pit of vicious propaganda unleashed by the regressive forces in the society.

The Sangh Parivar leaders, best known for regurgitating nocturnal nostrums in TV new debates to all the vexing problems under the sun, are out to save the Hindu religion from sinking to the abyss of obscurity and anonymity at the hands of ‘conversion-happy’ Islamists and Christians.  A Ghar Vaapasi (return to home) centre – part of the much-ballyhooed national-level campaign to bring all the wayward sons back into the ‘mother religion’ – was unearthed recently in central Kerala. The Ghar Vappasi centre functioned as a yoga centre. But scratch the false veneer of Yoga centre and you have a torture centre run by one of the branches of the Hindu right. The centre would brainwash Hindu women who have married non-Hindu men. 

The shady existence of the ‘Yoga’ centre was revealed the other day by a woman, an Ayurveda doctor, who had married a Christian. She was tortured for 22 days at this ‘Yoga’ centre either to leave her husband or force him to become a Hindu. She revealed that 65 such women were held captive there. They faced constant torture, including sexual harassment, at the centre, which has since been shut down with one person arrested. A probe is also on.   

It is unlikely that the rightwing will succeed in its ghoulish motives in a state like Kerala. But the disharmony and mutual hatred that the rightwing elements sow using such nasty campaigns can have long-term ramifications in the state known for its lovely syncretism. The question we need to ask is: How long the purveyors of hatred keep on sprinkling communal venom into the fabulous realms of man-woman relationships? Will they leave love alone?

(http://www.countercurrents.org/2017/09/29/leave-love-alone/)

Dear Amma, spare us from the pungent odor

There’s a pungent odor in the air. And it seems to be emanating from the vaunted portals of Amma. For the uninitiated unlucky lot: Amma used to have only one meaning: mother. But that was in the past. A not-so-surreptitious bastardization of this benign word happened with the Malayalam film actors coming together and naming their association after Amma, as an acronym for Association of Malayalam Movie Actors, several years ago. This innocuous baptizing act would have remained innocuous but for the wicked ways in which this association has been functioning. The shenanigans of Amma have not gone through any public scrutiny thanks to the kind of veneration and adulation its members – the movie stars – continue to enjoy among the gullible masses.

The unAmma ways of Amma were in their ugly display recently when its members – venerable actors and Amma office-bearers – did a modern-day vaudeville act before journalists in the wake of an alleged kidnap and assault of a young actress in April this year. Though the actress escaped unhurt the incident was an indicator of the murky dealings that lie underneath the film industry. It is rumored that the kidnap was the culmination of a real-estate deal gone horribly wrong. (The allegation of mafia dealings in the Malayalam film industry is as hackneyed and trite as many of the film plots.) The accused – a charming ruffian who is now under police custody – used to moonlight as the driver of an actor for two years, with deep contacts in the film industry to boot.

The remixed vaudeville act aka press meet, following Amma’s general body meeting, was held after Dileep, a popular actor, was grilled by the police for hours in connection with the kidnap-assault incident. As two stars – Mammootty and Mohanlal – remained mute spectators in the press meet, two actors and Amma office-bearers exhibited their authority laced with a bit of chest-thumping to declare that the Amma meeting didn’t discuss the assault issue as though it was unworthy of discussion. Questions from journalists were silenced with angry outbursts. They declared that the Amma is with its two ‘children’ (the actor who was grilled and the actress who was assaulted). The apparent bid by Amma’s ‘children’ to declare the actor squeaky-clean and to establish that everything is hunky-dory appeared to have boomeranged.

Not everything is bad with Amma, mind you. The association extends financial assistance to old and out-of-job actors. But more than such welfare schemes, Amma is infamous for something else: it suffers from a peculiar kind of disease called Obsessive Compulsive Ban Disorder, wherein it would ban any artist whom it thinks unfit. In fact, it has perfected it as an impeccable art. Many have fallen victims to this disorder. The prominent one being the late Thilakan, considered one of the greatest actors of Indian cinema, who was shunted out like an outcast criminal. He fell victim to the ugly whims and perverted fancies of those who steer the wheels of Amma. Like an all-powerful feudal lord, Amma banned the ageing actor from acting, and in the process he lost many acting roles. Even today nobody has any clue as to the ‘crimes’ committed by Thilakan other than the fact that the petty-mindedness and petty politics of Amma members were the trigger. Underlings and minions who usually do the dirty bidding at the superstars’ behalf were deployed to ‘teach’ the veteran actor a ‘lesson’ or two. They would hold press conference, read out the chargesheet against Thilakan, and pronounce him guilty like a kangaroo court would declare a desperado guilty before hanging in a Sergio Leone Spaghetti western!

Anyone who doesn’t fall in line or holds a different point of view from that of the Amma office-bearers (read the top stars and others who pull the strings) are punished with bans (sometimes life-time ban), which virtually deny them the fundamental right to work. Another target by Amma has been film director Vinayan. Any technician or artist who associated with him were also banned. (The late Mala Aravindan, a prominent yesteryear comedian, was banned for a year for committing the cardinal sin of acting in a Vinayan movie). Vinayan petitioned the Competition Commission of India (CCI) because the ban was an infringement on his right to job. The CCI in March 2017 ruled that both Amma and FEFKA, another film employees’ association, indulged in anti-competitive practices in banning Vinayan. The CCI imposed fine on various office-bearers of both the associations. The Commission’s ruling, a tight slap on Amma’s high-handedness, stands testament to the undemocratic ways in which this association functions.   

To the exception of a few, the mostly superstar-studded films are burdened with common sense-denying obtuse plots and pointless detritus from the retro era. The stars and their cohorts, while basking in the self-delusional stardom and uppity, are least bothered because they are sustained, inter alia, by a well-entrenched and thriving fan industry. The only solace is that the Malayalam film industry is at the cusp of a refreshing change with a lot of youngsters entering the scene. But will it be possible with Amma with its patriarchal, feudal, and ban-happy avatar at the helm is the question. 

Life of a bibliophile in these times of kindle

Picture: Wikimedia Commons
Collection of National Media Museum

Listen carefully and you can hear the eternal dirges being chanted by the votaries of e-books and kindle. They sound like the mysterious incantations of a shaman. In their apocalyptic imaginative world with bio-engineered post-humans and cyborgs, will the good old books we grew up with become the essential anachronistic disturbances like bullock-carts lumbering past a modern highway of motor cars? 

Do I sound like a 21st century Luddite professing a dinosaur-era scenario, who refuses to see the revolution on the digitization wall? Agreed that Kindle and e-books are here to stay. Ease of download, fast reading, plethora of good deals and free books, ease of carrying… Kindle lovers will bombard you with the many juicy side of that sleek gadget. Or e-books for that matter.  

But can an e-book or kindle give us the pleasure of reading from the good old book? 

Do you want to deny your nostrils the essential aroma of a farm-fresh book that you just bought from the bookstore down the lane, the freshness lasting for so many days making you the proud owner and keeper forever? A worthy possession you want to bequeath to your progeny? 

Do you want to deny yourself the atavistic aroma of that ancient-looking old book with frayed edges and stained pages you just bought from the pavement? The pleasure of running your fingers over the pages is ethereal; the old-world aroma emanating from the pages makes you travel on a psychedelic trip on a time-machine: the fact that it has travelled places, passed down from one hand to the other must make your soul vault in ecstasy. 

Now some recent hard truths, from around the world, which should make any bibliophile happy.

World over, sales of traditional books, despite the deluge of e-books and kindle, are only going up.

And sometime back, Britain's largest book chain, Waterstones, was planning to scrap sales of Kindles because there were not many buyers. And it is a trend. A growing army of readers still prefer the old-fashioned experience of reading words printed on a page to reading from e-reader or kindle. 

Another study found that readers using a Kindle were "significantly worse than traditional book readers” when it comes to recalling events that occurred in a mystery short story. The kindle readers scored poorly on various matrixes like the plot reconstruction measure, narrative coherence, etc.

Now, do you still want your entire rows of books in your living room (bought, borrowed, stolen, grandpa-bequeathed, girlfriend-presented, concubine-gifted, office Christmas Santa-gifted…) to be replaced by that drab sleek gadget? No bibliophile will say yes to this question, will you?

Now, will you pass me my old book, please?

(First published here: http://gatewaylitfest.com/life-of-a-bibliophile-in-these-times-of-kindle/)