Author:
Publication: Vishwa Samvad Kendra/
Thiruvananthapuram
Date:
The massacre at Marad brings the
frontline of terror closer to our doorstep.
It was the 2 nd of May , sundown
under a crescent moon at the Marad beach. The Hindu fishermen, most of
whom had just hauled their daily catch and were resting on the beach, never
knew what hit them. Three teams of about a hundred armed men climbed out
of their fiberglass boats on to the shore. Another batch eased out of a
house near the Marad Juma Masjid. Armed with swords and machets, clutching
Coke cans filled with gelatin, they rushed in from all directions.Within
minutes, the hit team melted away leaving behind the dead and the living
dead. The dead -Chandran, Dasan, Gopalan, Krishnan , Madhavan, Prajeesh,
Pushparaj, Santhosh,.hacked to death in a choreographed storm of flashing
swords and machets. Thirteen others, some of them women, had to fight for
their lives at the Kozhikode medical college. Some had their private organs
torn out. You can find them, a Chandran, a Dasan, in every town or village
in Kerala. Among them , Pushparaj received special treatment from
the murderers. After bringing him down with swords, the assailants who
had left him for dead came back to lift boulders which they dropped over
his writhing body. Pushparaj died on the spot, his internal organs bursting
in the impact.
In the subsequent police firing
on a crowd of Hindus, 13 were injured, one of them seriously. Today,twenty-five
Hindus are in preventive police custody.
Later ,the Kerala police recovered
the bloodstained swords, some of them with pieces of hair sticking to them,
from the nearby mosque along with 17 unexploded bombs. The AK Antony government
took over the Mosque under the Section 27 of the Kerala Police act.
Kozhikode city Police Commissioner
T K Vinod Kumar told mediapersons, "it was a pre-planned and sudden attack".
There were no incidents in that area which may have acted as a provocation,
and there was not even a petition submitted to a police station in that
area.
The 'Secular' response : Marxist
leader of the Opposition Com: Achuthanandan cited the building of an
Ayyappa temple at the Idukki reservoir as the reason for the attack.
K Karunakaran and his son Muraleedharan blamed the 'Thrishul Deeksha'.
The Communists held sit-ins all over Kerala as a protest against 'communalism'.
Asianet TV channel spokesman, K P Mohanan, suddenly developed an attack
of 'unbiased secularism' and called for condemnation of 'whoever was responsible
for the attack'. Who knew who was responsible? The pattern was quite clear.
When Hindus die, its better to be vague about who is responsible or blame
both communities as being equally responsible for the violence. You just
cannot blame the Muslims alone, can you? Massacre or no massacre, it was
'secularism' that mattered.
V R Krishna Iyer, the 'human rights'
activist who protested vehemently against the war in Iraq and the Gujarat
riots was (un)characteristically silent. So were 'Cultural leaders' like
ONV Kurup, M Mukundan and M T Vasudevan Nair who would usually break into
cultural demonstrations and signature campaigns at the drop of a hat .
When Medha Patkar , human rights / enviromental activist arrived in Kerala
on the 11 th, just ten days after the massacre, some of the less cynical
among of the Hindus were expecting her to utter the 'M' word. No such luck,
Medha condemned the Gujarat violence of last year and the war in Iraq .But
Marad was totally off her radar screen. Hindus were invisible. Expendable
chaff for the greater cause of 'secularism'.
Of the 96 people arrested in connection
with the massacre, 22 were active workers of the Marxist party , 28 of
the IUML. 'Secularism' it seems, cuts across political barriers. Terrorism
has been internalized by political secular set ups.
Marad is not just a beach but a
frontline in the battle for survival.
May 2 nd at Marad is the latest
atrocity in the long series of attacks carried out to clear the beach of
Hindus. If one ignores the atrocities of 1921,the attacks against the Hindu
community in Marad can be said to date back to 1954, when, on the 28 th
of March, Islamists attacked a procession to a Hindu temple at Naduvattom
near Marad. Even before that, the anti- Hindu offensive had started in
Kozhikode. October 1952 saw the murder of the President of the Cow
protection council at Payyoli. The attacks continued for three months.
Secular governments came and went.1958 saw a concerted campaign being
organised against the procession annually taken out from the Madathala
Vishwanathan temple near Chavakkad. The troubles lasted for one year. A
steady exodus of Hindus from the costal regions of Kozhikode accompanied
these incidents.
With the roughly 130 Hindu families
of Marad gone, the stretch of Kozhikode beach , 65 kilometers long, from
Ponnani to Marad, would be totally secure- Hindu free, just as Hitler's
Germany became Juden frie . There are 26 private landing zones on
this stretch, ideal for clandestine beach landings in moonlight .for transit
of weapons.of currency. It had taken the Islamists 50 years to clear the
beach.
Till today, Marad is the only beach
in Kozhikode where Hindu fishermen dare to go to sea on Friday. In other
places a ' fatwa ' is enforced preventing anyone from going to sea on that
day.
Marad is a breach through
which militants and sophisticated weapons can enter the state. It should
be noted that today our security agencies consider Kerala a major
transit point and hideout for Islamic militants in the country. Former
Chief Minister E K Nayanar himself had made a statement to this effect.
Recent interrogations of militants captured in Mumbai and the telephone
records recovered from Kashmiri militants reinforce this truth. We are
sitting on top of a volcano. It is another wake- up call to the Hindus.
The Marad breach has to be closed.
Wounds healed. Lessons learnt.
The Hindus of the state are duty-
bound to support their brothers at Marad.
