Kerala's descent into Talibanish hell has been encouraged by the Malayali pseudo-liberal intellectual elite and an ostrich-like government who combined to allow all kinds of fanatical criminals to run amok. Occasionally, like this month's Joseph incident, there are protests.
Call it Islamic fundamentalism; label it Talibanism or downright terrorism, the state which appears on tourist brochures as "God's Own Country" has been the happy hunting ground of bigoted street fighters for about a decade now. But a combination of factors, not least important among them the political correctness of pseudo-secularists and bureaucratic inertia, blocked the story of Kerala's' downslide to medievalism from the national consciousness.
So, unlike the Bangladeshis, who identified Talibanism as their chief enemy and rallied against it as a nation in the 2008 election, the Malayalis behave like ostriches in the sand. Ignorance is bliss, but only for a while. On July 4, the people of Kerala and India saw terrorism in their state in veritable full frontal nudity when a humble teacher in Ernakulam district's Thodupuzha New Man College had his right hand severed by fundamentalists. His perceived fault? TJ Joseph, who taught Malayalam language, had set a question paper for his students in which Prophet Muhammad was allegedly 'insulted'.
It was a Sunday morning and Prof Joseph has gone to church with his 88-year-old mother and a sister who is a nun in New Zealand. When he was on his way back home his car was waylaid in public by a group of sword-yielding fanatics. They smashed the windows of the vehicle and dragged the professor from the driver's seat and forced him on to the ground. Then, as passersby watched horrified, they chopped off his right palm using an axe. To deepen the confused mortification of the onlookers, they exploded a smoke bomb and made good their withdrawal.
After the assailants left, Joseph's hapless mother and sister began shrieking for help. Some people collected and rushed him to a nearby hospital where he underwent a major surgery for 12 hours. Eventually, his palm was rejoined to the hand. When I contacted the doctors who had carried out the surgery, they told me that several weeks would pass before the performance of the hand can be ascertained. "There has been a lot of loss of blood and tissue", they pointed out.
That is something like the state of Kerala's psyche following the macabre incident. It is not as if just a handful of crazy goons from the so-called Popular Front of India (PFI) were responsible. Every Malayali and Indian who has encouraged the growth of the PFI over the past decade by advancing vote-banking rhetoric or simply looking the other way has contributed to this horrendous crime. In many ways, Kerala's future is doomed by ISI-backed Islamic fundamentalists who manipulate the democratic system and I had stressed this fact as far back as November 6, 2005 in an article in The Pioneer.
Back then, I had strived to raise the hackles of the national leadership and intelligentsia by outlining how the so-called National Development Front (NDF), the previous avatar of the PFI, was thriving. It had a 100-acre exclusive zone (of which only 25 acres was legal) in Manjeri, Malappuram district, named "Green City". It was guarded by armed volunteers and totally inaccessible to the law. I'd quoted intelligence officials who told me of the suspicious activities that go on there, but were powerless to act against because of some "secular" godfathers in Thiruvananthapuram and New Delhi.
The NDF was formed by a group of Students' Islamic Front of India (SIMI) activists in the early 1990s. It was then known as the National Defence Force. It later took the name of National Development Front and merged in 2006 to form the PFI. It now wields influence in mainstream political parties. Its cadre doubled as workers of parties even far removed from the Islamic cause, including Kerala Congress which has Church links. I had asserted: "the soft nature of the Indian State is the direct breeder of terror. Also, the policy of appeasement followed by both the Congress-led UDF and the CPI (M)-led LDF has led to the growth of this hydra-headed monster — Islamic fundamentalism.
Today, after the Joseph incident, journalists like me who placed professionalism over correctness, feel no joy at being vindicated. Kerala society, shaken out of its torpor and facing the fact that the way of life they had long sworn by is a thing of the past, is now in deep introspection. The same political parties who had advocated for the release of Abdul Nasser Maudani (aka Madani) and even sent emissaries to the Tamil Nadu government seeking his release, are now issuing solemn statements in condemnation of the perpetrators of the attack. Not only do they expect the people of Kerala to have short memories (i.e. forget their earlier role which helped the ISS, then NDF and now IPF grow to such menacing levels) but also recognise that Joseph had actually provoked the fanatics by framing a question paper with a blasphemous slant. The latter policy, astute enough but one which the politically sensitive Malayali people will see through easily enough, is aimed at keeping the Muslim vote bank intact.
Joseph had been suffering the wrath of the fanatics since March this year, but nobody came to his help. This makes all Malayalis hang their heads in shame. Shortly after the question paper's contents became known, Muslim hardline organisations around Thodupuzha and Muvattupuzha went on a rampage destroying shops and establishments. They called for the arrest of the professor and even attacked the old Sreekrishna Swami temple. Pressure, both direct and indirect, was exerted on the college and its authorities obliged by suspending Joseph. Even the police registered a case against him for "creating religious conflict." Prof Joseph absconded and the police took into custody his son Mithun, an engineering graduate, and his brother-in-law and inflicted custodial torture on the duo. Finally Prof Joseph surrendered and was remanded to judicial custody for 14 days. He got bail on the sixth day from the High Court of Kerala.
What should the Indian State do now? The PFI was formed by merging the NDF and two other like-minded groups — Manithat Neethi Parisari (MNP) and Karnataka Forum for Dignity (KFD). After that they constituted a Taliban court in Erattupettah in Kottayam district, the base of two important terrorists owing allegiance to the SIMI. They operate a Taliban court in Erattupettah called Darul Quada or God's abode. This cocks a snook at the Indian education system and counters the secular nature of the Constitution. The brainchild behind the indoctrination is Eaasa Moulavi, a front-ranking scholar of the Popular Front, often considered the brain behind this Taliban-like outfit.
Sources in the state police say that several CDs were seized from PFI activists depicting al-Qaeda forms of torture on dissenters —chopping off of hands, plucking out ears, eyes and cutting off noses are some of the barbarisms now routine. The police have inferred that the PFI leadership is using these films to steel the resolve of their cadre for jehad.
How many articles in nationalist newspapers like The Pioneer are necessary before the powers that be in Thiruvananthapuram and Delhi wake up to the problem of home-grown Islamic terrorism in general and the Kerala version in particular? Actually there is reason to believe that nothing would happen. Each Joseph-like incident is followed by the all-too-familiar shedding of crocodile tears, trading of blame and then return to normalcy. Resultantly, Kerala is on the brink of collapse as a modern province.
