“As I have joined BJP, now the Kerala people will join (like a flow of water) in large numbers to the party i.e BJP”, said E Sridharan the ‘Metroman’ of India, if translated from Malayalam. Even though probably he is the most regarded individual in the history of modern Indian railway, the state of Kerala has never heard such an ideal political blunder so far. In a moment when the linear southernmost state of India is stepping into state’s Legislative Assembly elections 2021, let’s have a detailed look onto the history of the party which he preferred to join. I would recommend the readers to read part 1 of this essay also.

Cow lynchings & ‘Jai Sri Ram’ mob lynchings

Akhlaq, father of an Indian Airforce man in Dadri, Uthar Pradesh was lynched by the ‘Cow Vigilantes’ on the crime(?) that it was cow meat that he was carrying from a meat shop, even though it was mutton.¹
Who approved those meat shops to function illegally if it was, is the million-dollar question. Later, when one of the main accused died out of pneumonia, his body was covered with the Indian tricolor and was visited by a Union minister of BJP!² The Akhlaq lynching of Dadri in UP is seen as a landmark in the rise of Cow Vigilantism violence in the country. Mohd. Afrazul from West Bengal working in Rajasthan on a daily wage basis, was beaten close to death and then torched alive by a Hindu terrorist, Shambhulal Regar being the inhuman act shot live using his own camera. Mr. Regar was not only given a greatly delayed court proceedings, but also gifted with a ticket by the Uthar Pradesh Navnirman Sena to contest in the 2019 Loksabha elections!³
Sibghatullah, son of an Imam in the Noorani Masjid at Asansol, West Bengal, had just gone to see what commotion was there in the town which was already tensed after repeated chanting of a song as part of the Ramnavami celebrations which claimed that, as The Hindu reports referring the original audio records, ‘Muslims will soon say “Jai Sri Ram”, an apparent threat and religiously motivated insult; from where he never came back and rather lynched by the Hindu fanatic mob.⁴

These incidents can be equated with the electoral victory of Pragya Singh Thakur from UP, who was named by one of her co-accused Swamy Asimanand with regard to the five deadly bomb blasts that rattled India: two at Malegaon in Maharasthra, one at the Mecca Masjid of Hyderabad, one at the Ajmer Dargha and one in the Samjhota Express travelling between India and Pakistan. They were carried out by Abhinav Bharat, an even more terrorized Hindu fanatic outfit having members from the Indian Army like Col. Prasanth Purohit. It’s quite natural for her, another BJP evidently fanatic MP, to hail Nathuram Godse the assassin of Gandhi Ji as a patriot!⁵

Corporate hegemony & oppression of dissent voices

Now if you ask me at the height of your privileges to forget about all these satanic measures taken by the Hindu fanatic apparatus online and on the ground so far, and just concentrate on the economic measures taken by them, then let me remind you of the policies and bills like NPR, NRC & CAA 2020 aimed at not just sidelining Muslims towards the brink of extinction but also exclusion of – Muslims as – an unwanted element from the customer base among the population of India; the tragic alterations in the Environmental laws purposed for nothing but liberalizing the already violently used and contaminated natural resources for the benefit of a handful of crony capitalists who fund the BJP; the Farm products liberalization laws which is viewed as extremely fatal to the very livelihood of the farmers across India and benefitting nobody except the Indian conglomerates, due to which the Farmers Protest 2021 broke out; only to be remembered in view of the agitation against the Kudamkulam Nuclear Reactor which was violently turned down; waiving off the trillions of Indian rupees to be paid back to the Indian exchequer by similar billionaires cum bankrupts; or the alarming pro-corporate regulation of the Minimum price regulation of essential medicines absolutely at the expense of people’s lives, if not the notorious Fuel price regulation or liberalization.

The associated country wide arrests, abductions and murders of whistleblowers and activists that continue unabated, along with ridiculous impunity availed by the same people happy to be snapped with the same lawmakers who massively favor them, make E Sridharan’s decision no holier than the facebook’s policy to support the cause of Israel over that of Palestine.

In-line with the professional fanaticism in Kerala

It’s high time for high profile professional fanaticism in Kerala now. And in that regard Mr. Sridharan is entering perfectly timed to the Kerala politics. The Hagia Sophia Masjid now and a church then was converted back to a Masjid in Turkey last year, which off course had a great resonance among Muslims and Christians alike worldwide, so was in Kerala. But the issue was confined to the online discussions and furious fights between some knowledgeable persons and more keyboard warriors, effectively supported by predominantly Muslims of all kinds on one hand and short tempered Christians and Hindutva fanatics fighting tooth and nail radicalizing the Kerala Christian community further on the other, except when a highly unwanted editorial page article was published by Chandrika daily, the Muslim League party mouthpiece, that too by Sayyed Sadiq Ali Shihab Thangal, the great leader hailing from the maestros of secularism and coexistence in the Kerala Muslim community, and being a greatly unthoughtful action, it became a legitimate reason for all radicalized Christians to fight deliberately and sustain feud with Muslims of Kerala, particularly online.

Subsequently, Santosh George Kulangara, a popular globetrotter from Kerala and a Christian by belief, publicly posted his pics offering an amount towards the fund raising for the construction of Ramjanmabhumi temple at Ayodhya. There he represented willingly or unwillingly the Christian community as a whole – except a significant minority holding that this will add up to the already running radicalization drive⁶
– who purposefully forgot the past of Aya Sofia as it was not even constructed by Christians originally, as “according to the Chronicon Paschale, the church was consecrated on 15 February 360, during the reign of the emperor Constantius II (r. 337–361), by the Arian bishop Eudoxius of Antioch”. Most notably, his father Constantine the Great, as Hesychius of Miletus wrote, built Hagia Sophia with a wooden roof, developed an edifice on the church as well as enlarged and beautified, along with removing 427 (mostly pagan) statues from the site, off course the site of a pagan temple where the church was later built, as per the early accounts.⁷We can learn from history that the church was burnt down, certainly by Christians, at the aftermath of the exile of the Patriarch of Constantinople John Chrysostom who came into a conflict with Empress Aelia Eudoxia, wife of the emperor Arcadius (r. 383–408).

They also forgot that the church was under the custody of Eastern Orthodox Christians who were ruthlessly massacred by the Crusaders – Christians themselves – in the Nika sedition in the year of 532AD, being it is the most violent riots in the city’s history, with nearly half of Constantinople being burned or destroyed and tens of thousands of people killed.⁸
After all these chapters, it was the time of Ottomans who conquered Constantinople and the church was converted into a Masjid. It had been indeed a mosque roughly for 600 years until and unless when Mustafa Kamal Ataturk converted it into a museum, quashing all sentiments of the existing predominantly believing Muslim majority of the whole Turkey. These fellow Christians in Kerala forgot as well that this temple in Ayodhya is being built at the site where Babri Masjid stood tall and strong for around 600 years with active prayers being offered, and was demolished in a complete religious frenzy fanatic campaign known as Karseva in 1992. It is historically remarkable that no unequivocal evidence supports the claim that Babri Masjid was built over a temple, that too destroying it; except some religiously and even more politically motivated speculations.

Former DGP of Kerala Jacob Thomas, another Christian by belief and one among the hundreds of high profile employed Christians of Kerala disproportionately to their demography in the state, invented a super theory in Economics when he joined the BJP recently and asked about the pro-Ambani phenomenally hiking fuel prices in India; which can be deciphered as that when imposed with unusually high price for (fossil) fuels, the people will stop buying it, rendering a convenient situation for the Government of India to launch a full-fledged alternative transportation program!⁹

Former DGP of Kerala TP Senkumar is notorious for unleashing a blatant Islamophobic attack on Muslims of Kerala, by endorsing the absolutely false campaign of Hindu terrorists in India, that Muslims are hijacking Hindu girls using love as a weapon to wage Jihad against Hindus and Christians, along with asserting the all other conventional Hindu terrorist narratives on the ‘Muslim birthrate’ and ‘conversion by Christians’, in a way that the two communities will take over the state of Kerala.¹⁰
In fact, after the theory of Mughal attacks, ‘Love Jihad’ is seen as the most effective misinformation propaganda of Hindu fanaticism, a strategically planned national disinformation campaign popularized by radical Hindu groups to educate on what they (would like to) believe is an organized conspiracy of Muslim men to force or trick Hindu women into conversion and marriage,¹¹that not only fueled the Muzaffarnagar mass rapes and displacements of at least 5000 Muslims being instigated by the current Home Minister Amit Shah,¹² but also radicalized the Kerala Christians as well,¹³when so many churches and their dioceses held that the lie of ‘Love Jihad’ was true, facilitating a state wide religious awareness campaign through the Sunday sessions against the ‘Muslim Jihadi Romeos’, a totally unprecedented emotionally disturbing situation fatally injuring the much acclaimed religious coexistence of the state of Kerala.

The readers must know that the Kerala Police have categorically stated in a report submitted at the High Court of Kerala that ‘Love Jihad’ doesn’t exist as such,¹⁴ or the Central government has explicitly concluded in the Parliament that Love Jihad allegations have no factual basis,¹⁵
specifically on contrary to what the Hindu fanatics fermented and the Church spread even officially like that of Syro Malabar Media Commission, being supported vehemently by most of the Malayalam news channels and print dailies, particularly Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhumi and Kerala Kaumudi.

Before these all or in the beginning of this evident ‘Christo-Racist nationalism and anti-Muslim rhetoric’ (26th February 2021) in Kerala, Alfonse Kannanthanam, another Christian and an IAS officer then, joined the very BJP, effectively allowing the Hindu fanaticism a legitimacy among Christians especially. The infamous ‘No Halal’ scandal that was amplified significantly by Christian handles online, got an epitome when a facebook ID Ashiq Latheef Thirur (or Asheq Lathif Tirur) bragged about building an Islamic provincial emergence in Kerala, that too using Halal cut restaurant business! The fanatic BJP handles and the radicalized Christians had been soaring with rage over the post, something not only later found to be belonging to a Hindu fanatic as very much expected, but also that never made these keyboard tigers think how would a 26% portion of the Kerala population, Muslims, create an ‘all new special Islamic emergence’ in Kerala, the idea of which no Muslim would buy, that too over another strong Semitic community of 24% strong Christians, as per rough calculations.

And most recently, the super senior and one of the most seasoned Christian politicians in Kerala of all time, PC Thomas, quite expecting a ticket of BJP in the upcoming Legislative Assembly elections 2021, alleged Muslim community of waging the non-existent so-called holy war of Love or ‘Love Jihad’ against Christians and Hindus, being not just clueless but also in the most ridiculous manner any Kerala politician can ever make such a statement, especially as he had been along with Indian National Congress for more than three decades. Consecutively, a BJP independent candidate was seen furious in his election campaign reiterating on the Goebbels’s lie, the ‘Love Jihad of Muslim boys on Hindu girls’, with an additional, old yet effective flavor, the ‘Syrian connection or the ISIS connection’, as he wooed the votes for him and BJP to stop this ‘Syrian Love Jihad’ in the state, correlating to Tarun Chug, the National secretary of BJP, who said “won’t allow Delhi to be Syria”¹⁶
With all these incidents of extreme fanaticism, violence, terrorism explained by rapes, murders, pogroms, massrapes, displacements of Muslims, SC & STs, Adivasis, OBSs and other untouchables; and impunity along with massive cover up of these crimes by a single party, the BJP, working as a mask and public face of all Hindu terrorist organizations around the world including Arab world who accommodated them with even plots to build temples, the decision of once a great Railway Project Engineer E Sridharan Nair makes him nothing but a sympathizer of Hindu terrorism, to put it aptly.

1. 1.https://cjp.org.in/mohammed-akhlaq-lynching-case-timeline/
2. 2.https://www.indiatoday.in/fyi/story/mahesh-sharma-bjp-mohammad-akhlaq-ravi-sisodia-bishada-345600-2016-10-08
3. 3. https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/shambhulal-regar-man-arrested-for-lynching-muslim-man-on-camera-may-contest-2019-lok-sabha-polls-from-agra/316823
4. 4. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/asansol-imams-call-for-peace-comes-in-for-praise/article23408750.ece
5. 5. https://www.timesnownews.com/india/article/sadhvi-pragya-singh-thakur-again-calls-mahatma-gandhi-assassin-nathuram-godse-a-patriot-watch-video/706593
6. 6. https://thewire.in/religion/kerala-syrian-christians-caste-anti-muslim-rhetoric
7. 7.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#History
8. 8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia#History
9. 9.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots
10. 10.https://scroll.in/article/843190/a-rise-in-birthrate-among-muslims-will-change-keralas-demography-says-former-state-police-chief
11. 11. https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/no-case-of-love-jihad-in-kerala-centre-tells-parliament/story-dQHAMLCBvkBcgoQJbtxF1L.html
12. 12. https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/ahmedabad/documentary-sheds-light-on-amit-shahs-link-in-muzaffarnagar-riots/
13. 13. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/kerala/love-jihad-more-in-kerala-than-up-need-law-to-stop-it-state-bjp-chief-7207853/
14. 14. https://indianexpress.com/article/india/kerala/love-jihad-more-in-kerala-than-up-need-law-to-stop-it-state-bjp-chief-7207853/
15. 15. https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/02/04/no-case-of-love-jihad-from-kerala-term-not-defined-by-law-centre-tells-parliament.html
16. 16.
    https://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/bjp-sharpens-attack-on-shaheen-bagh-protest-party-leader-says-won-t-allow-delhi-to-become-syria-120012901682_1.html

Abdulhadi Farooqi