An article in the RSS mouthpiece Organiser that targets Kerala’s beef-eating practice and that attacks Communists, Muslims and Dalits, has triggered public outrage across the State and drawn derisive comments on the Malayalam social media from Keralites across the globe.

The article titled `Kerala: God’s own country or Godless country’ displayed prominently in the magazine, seems to be written as a defence of the `beef raid’ on Kerala House in Delhi a fortnight ago. The `beef raid,’ which was widely condemned had been projected as yet another example of the right-wing intolerance of plurality and cultural heterogeneity of the country. The raid, along with the Dadri lynching, which whipped up debates on the citizen’s right to choose food in the State, had hurt the BJP’s performance in the local-body elections held early this month.

Senior CPI(M) leader Pinarayi Vijayan, commenting on the article in his Facebook post, termed it as the RSS’s `declaration of war’ on Keralites. “The RSS is challenging the culture and history of Kerala and the self-esteem of Keralites,” he noted. The article, he said, was a compilation of `outright lies’ aimed to tarnish Kerala, Communists and the minorities.

The article, hints that it was E.M. Sankaran Namboodirippad (EMS), the first Communist Chief Minister of Kerala, who had popularised beef eating. The author says: “EMS also regularly visited the houses of Dalits and took part in their social functions at which dishes of beef were served which he partook, affirming to them with his purported logic that `there is nothing wrong in eating beef when one can eat mutton.’ Thus, the hotels and restaurants run by Muslims and Christians across the length and breadth of Kerala started serving beef as a prominent unavoidable dish since the time Communists captured power in the State in the 1950s.” Vijayan alleged that the article was part of the RSS attempt to destroy Kerala’s secular approach and leftist mind in order to hack at the country’s secular polity.

Factual fallacies

The author, who has got most of the facts wrong, in his enthusiasm to criticise Communists and Muslims, apparently dishes out wrong information. Here are some samples from the article: Kerala “has the history of the highest number of political murders; it has the highest number of suicide rates compared with the rest of Bharateeya states; it has the highest number of people afflicted with mental ailments and various psycho-somatic disorders (all the mental hospitals in the State are burst at the seams); it has the highest number of divorce rates amongst its married people; it has the highest number of youths of opposite sex living together without marriage...” These are all patently false. He goes to the length of calling the current Chief Minister, Oommen Chandy, who has right from his school days, been a Congress man, as pro-Communist.

While referring to the Muslim-majority district of Malappuram in northern Kerala, the author’s imagination peaks: “Malappuram located in the central part of Kerala is a miniature of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where the Muslims are allowed to live undisturbed by carrying on the practice and propagation of Islam and to receive funding from wealthy Arabs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.  In the District of Malappuram, one can find cow slaughter houses at every nook and corner and a thriving leather industry.  The unwritten law strictly enforced by threat and social excommunication in the District is that if at all any Muslim of the District wanted to sell his land it should be offered to only Muslims.  Similarly if at all any of the remaining Hindus of the District wanted to sell his/her land it should be bought only by the Muslim.”

From time immemorial, the huge majority of people in Kerala have been non-vegetarian and the majority of the non-vegetarians, irrespective of religion and caste,, eat beef and buffalo meat. Of late, right-wing outfits have been intolerant to this tradition and the Organiser article is generally viewed as an expression of this intolerance. Interestingly, the recent beef controversies had tended to unite Keralites rather than divide them.

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