This one is a bit long, like all things passionate and of thereof, one has to speak ones heart out... Please bear with me. Perhaps you should get a cup of delicious eSutras Tea or cocktail kit before you read this ?
It is a response to Tom Dispatch and his article 'extremeism at ground zero'. *
Well Tom - allow me to express by way of real life narration, why it is far better that any form of extremism be tackled and spoken about primarily by conscious individuals from within the ranks of the extremists rather than a beration of why's and if's of the situation by over zealous by standers from the lots of the vicitims.
Ground zero exists and so does terrorism religious or otherwise.
I have observed over the years the changes in Islam in Kerala, a small peace loving state in the Southern realm of India, Keeper of the World's Soul.
When I was a child, and visited my grandmother’s home in Kerala, we had many Muslim friends. The Muslims I knew were relatively non-observant; the men sported no beards or skullcaps, the women wore saris and they merely drew the pallu (the part of the sari that is thrown over the shoulder) coyly and demurely over their heads, much like their Hindu counterparts in the North of India.
Today, in Kerala there are large numbers of bearded men with skullcaps and women in all-enveloping black burqas. Astonishingly, in the length and breadth of Kerala, I have seen billboards advertising 'burqa fashions.'
I have also watched the growth of mosques in Kerala. In one stretch of the national highway between Kollam and Trivandrum, there are five huge mosques and several smaller mosques within the space of just one mile, and all but one have come up in the recent past, maybe ten years. You see scores of young boys with skullcaps and scores of little girls with headscarves going to the local “madrassa”, or religious school, I imagine.
I also stood by and wondered where were the Hindu, the Christian, the Jewish, the Atheistic and the Buddhist children were. After all, my Kerala always was and is the epitome of the great Indian melting pot. Equally welcoming and equally skeptical. My Kerala was never occupied by the British, choosing rather to dip into their rich money box an pay “kappam” or tribute money to the greedy westerners. My Kerala was the first state in my beloved India to become 100 % literate, building more schools in the first year of independence than the English had built in 150 years of colonial imposition.
My Kerala was indeed God’s own land, where the very air permeated with compassion and intelligence, then why impose these giant unruly mosques on her bosom to try and capture Him? Even worse, why are some of her innocent young minds regimented, military style with scarf , skullcap and strict dogma to seek Him inside these mausoleums ? - I asked myself.
Much has happened in Kerala to bring these changes about. I paraphrase from my friend Rajiv Sreenivasan. One is that the fragmented politics of Kerala has enabled smallish groups to wield disproportionate influence. As an example, various governments in Kerala, dependent on the support of the Muslim League, (a political party that has gained power through numbers over the years ) have allocated tracts of public land to it: startlingly, right in the middle of the famous Kovalam beach, of Beatle days there is now a large mosque on what was public property in democratic India.
Sigh.
Furthermore, enormous amounts of Saudi and other Muslim fundamentalist money have apparently come into Kerala in the recent times. I am not talking about the monies wired back by hapless workers toil in the desert sun. I am talking about money sent in the name of God, the one God as seen by the benevolent monarchs of desert kingdoms, afar. A friend tells of a banker he knows told him of multi millions of rupees in transfers for instance to the Guruvayoor area (which, despite housing the most famous and ancient Krishna temple, of Kerala is heavily Muslim)just so to ensure no Hindu moves in.
He told me that nationalized banks in India are willing to provide Islamic banking to large customers: that is, they happily pay them no interest according to Islamic law, and are therefore quite content to ask no inconvenient questions.
These inward flows have resulted in all these real-estate acquisitions and the radicalization of Kerala's Muslims. They otherwise have no particular reason to feel discriminated against or oppressed, for they have had more than their fair share of jobs, opportunities and other entitlements. Kerala's Muslims certainly live better than Muslims in Pakistan, and they have done well for themselves. There are plenty of well-educated and well-employed Muslim doctors, engineers, IAS officers, lawyers, writers, teachers, etc. And yet every so often you hear about inhuman violence triggered by Muslim fundamentalists in Kerala.
If these educated and privileged Muslims turn so violently against their Hindu neighbors, there is no hope for Hindu-Muslim amity anywhere else in India. The two-nation theory has won, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan was right.
For Kerala has always treated Muslims well, and it is indeed God's own country for them. From pre-Islamic times, Arabs came to Kerala to trade, their dhows following the monsoon winds across the Arabian Sea. Islam first came to India -- and that too, peacefully -- to Kerala, where the first mosque in India, the Cheraman mosque, apparently built in the 7th or 8th century CE, stands at the great old port of Kodungalloor (the Roman Muziris).
Muslims came as sailors, married local women and stayed on: the very word 'Moplah' (the common word for Muslims in Kerala) means 'son-in-law.' The Zamorin , the Hindu King of Calicut had Muslims in his navy, including the famous commander Kunjali Marikkar, of Omani and Kerala parentage. But most Muslims in Kerala have no Arab blood, and they are the descendents of Hindus forcibly converted by an overly zealous Muslim army during Tipu Sultan's invasion of Malabar.
This famous freedom-fighter of India , often called the Tiger was if not himself a fearsome jihadi, did harbor many of them in his army. Innumerable are the family histories of fleeing Christians and Hindus from Malabar to the princely state of Cochin to avoid him. Even today 'Tipu's padayottam' (military foot march) is remembered in the racial memory of Kerala Hindus and Syrian Christians as a catastrophe spoken of in hushed tones. Tipu Sultan has been praised by several historians for his religious tolerance and respect for other faiths and cultures. Whether the atrocities inflicted on Kerala had Tipu’s sanction or were committed by bloodthirsty soldiers looking for plunder is for historians to judge… however the fact remains that at his departure, a decade later Northern Kerala had more Muslims than in 600 years of trading with Arabs, who by the way took pains to transfer wealth of knowledge of the sciences and the arts to Europe during the dark ages of that continent.
Yet, relations have generally been good between Hindus and Muslims in Kerala. It was not uncommon on pilgrimages in Kerala, to meet Muslims who was making the pilgrimage with their Hindu friends and vice versa.
With all this, a Maraad happens in 2003. Totally out of the blue. Maraad was an atrocity of unimaginable violence against defenseless men, on the sandy beaches of Kerala,right in front of a Hindu temple. The reported facts about the incident in Maraad, Kozhikode, Kerala, are as follows.
• A group of Hindu fishermen sitting on the beach near a temple is attacked suddenly, without provocation or warning, by a mob of Muslims armed with swords. After a chaotic ten minutes, nine people are dead or bleeding to death on the beach. Many are seriously wounded. The attackers vanish into the night.
• A cache of swords and other sharp weapons, including blood-stained ones, as well as powerful country bombs is recovered from a mosque in the vicinity.
• Various politicians make soothing noises, 66 persons have been arrested in connection with the crime. A judicial inquiry has been instituted.
• The dead are: Gopalan, Chandran, Santosh, Madhavan, Asghar, Dasan, Pushparaj, Krishnan, and Prajeesh. One of them had been married for just five days. All Hindus.
The only plausible reason for Muslim violence is sheer religious bigotry, an unreasoning jihad. It is difficult to deal with this through reason.
My friend and reporter, Rajeev Sreenivasan wondered then in 2003 what the world's reaction would have been if the situation were reversed and a Hindu mob had killed nine Muslims in front of a mosque. Surely iconic reporters of Indian politics Kuldip Nayar and Praful Bidwai , would not have been thunderously silent: they would have badgered the National Human Rights Commission.
The Washington Post and The New York Times, not to mention The Times of India, The Hindustan Times, The Indian Express and the Hindu, would have indulged in en masse head beating about the end of civilization in India….
Well it is August 2010 and the Popular Front of India (PFI), a small Islamic fundamentalist group has apparently carried out violent attacks on those it regards as enemies of Islam. Police and government authorities in Kerala charge that PFI activists recently chopped off the hand of a Christian college lecturer T.J Joseph as “punishment” for his reputed derogatory remarks about the “Prophet Mohammed.”
PFI and its allies are plotting to make Kerala a “Muslim-dominated” state within 20 years. “For achieving that goal, the outfit,” said Achuthanandan, the socialist leader of Kerala, “ PFI is pumping money to attract youth and providing them weapons. “Youngsters are being given money and lured to convert—to marry Muslim women and then give birth to Muslim children so that they can multiply.”
Now why would that be the case in my Kerala I wondered? Surely a 100% literate state can do better ?
My good friend –there is more than plain sight, my conscious whispered. It is not about literacy, it is not about the individual, but about the inducement of hatred using systematic propaganda, religious or otherwise. Much like the mind sets of “moplah” soldiers who overnight deserted their king and countrymen of 3 generations, to take the side of the Muslim invader Tipu Sultan, aiding and abetting in the murder and pillage of their Hindu and Christian kinsman of 1781 Kerala, most modern day Muslims still in private, even while saying nothing in public that faithfulness to Allah and religion triumph flag and country.
This trace of deeply harbored religious fervor is that which can so easily be inculcated by the propaganda of terror mongers.
With terrorism, being both lucrative and exciting and I say this all inclusively, it is easy to see growing environments, of radicalization and mind-games, that quickly create cadres of evil-doers amidst even the most benign of peoples in any society. Let us not forget that peaceful Cambodia came up with Khymer Rouge, that vivacious Spain have the Basques and the seething Tamils of Sri Lanka…have all shown that they are capable of unimaginable cruelty against their fellow man.
Any amount of 'talks' and 'goodwill gestures' and 'walking the extra mile' is unlikely to change the situation unless the hate-mongering institutions with a fundamentalist agenda are dismantled, be they Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Hindu, Spanish, English or Arabic.
So long as the US cannot get her allies, her friends and her enemies to do this, there will be an endless supply of cannon fodder.
* Read Tom's article here: Read here :
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