Goa's Civil Code and Uniform Civil Code

 

The Benefits Of Being Hindu

What are the benefits of being a Hindu?

Kerala actor Joy Mathew has kicked up a debate on social media about the differences between Hinduism and Abrahamic religions. The post has gone viral since then.

“Benefits of being Hindu- No need to go and learn religion in childhood. No restrictions about what to do or what not to do. No hard and fast rules about how to live your life,” began the Facebook post of Mathew, who is known as a ‘political actor’ in Kerala.

Mathew, however, has confessed that it is not a post written by him. “One of my friends sent this to me on WhatsApp. I am posting it here for my readers since I find elements of truth in it,” he said, adding, “I am not a slave to any religion."

The one-liners in his post say, in Hinduism, "there is no need to wear a cap, no need of circumcision, no baptism."

“There is no compulsion to go to temples. Only believers have to go. If you wish to go, you can go to any temple irrespective of the caste, language or the ritualistic traditions.

You won’t be labeled agnostic. You won’t be excommunicated.

At the time of marriage, you won’t need a character certificate from the priests. Bride’s family won’t go to the temples to check if you practise religion.”

You can live your life peacefully with only one or two children as you like.

Since there is no restriction to drink, you don’t need to spoil your life by getting addict to weed and drugs.

You can watch films. You can dance. You can sing. You can give and take money for interest.

You can live your life as you like. There are no doctrines.

There are no scary stories about the life after death.

You don’t need to spoil your life dreaming about rivers of wine and houries in heaven.

You don’t need to fear about becoming the firewood in the hell.

There is nothing that goes against the modern science.

There are no special rules for women. No one will abuse if a woman dances. Instead, they will clap and encourage. They will even send girls for dance classes. And for sports too. You don’t need to cover your face, nor head. You can wear the dresses of your choice. Women can eat along with men.

You can worship any god of any religion. You can light stars. You can make cribs. You can celebrate any festival. You can wish your friends on any festival.

Also, you can share this post without fear” he concludes.

Reversing Love Jihad in Kerala

 

India is the biggest target for missionary activity

Who is afraid of Hindutva?

Tarek Fatah - Who Caused Delhi Riots? Who Lied to India’s Muslims?

Javed Akhtar on CAA-NRC

Who is a Hindu - Prof Faizan Mustafa

Mullah v Allah. Do India's Mullahs hold Muslim Women in Captivity?

Swadeshi Muslims of India

1/5

2/5

3/5

4/5

5/5

It’s a fight between Hindus

THE assault by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee has roots in India’s pre-Partition intra-Hindu battle lines. While the most cited example of this bitter rivalry is Mahatma Gandhi’s murder by Nathuram Godse, the pre-Independence standoff continues to stalk Indian society just as menacingly writes Jawed Naqvi in The Dawn

The murders of Gauri Lankesh and her rationalist colleagues — allegedly by members of a Brahminical group suspected in Gandhi’s assassination — confirms this narrative. Theatre icon Girish Karnad who died of a prolonged illness on Monday was on the hit list of the group.

Banerjee is a Bengali Brahmin of a secular hue and the RSS is a Brahmin-led body of the Hindu right with origins in the intense intra-Brahmin rivalry that goes back to pre-Independence Poona, now Pune. It was here that nationalist leader B.G. Tilak took a violently hostile stance against M.G. Ranade’s social reformist interventions at annual Congress sessions. Tilak’s men would raid Ranade’s camps with sticks and stones, not dissimilar to the hooligans unleashed by the Hindu right today.

Given the spurious but all-pervasive critique of Indian liberalism under way, blaming them for the opposition’s rout by Narendra Modi, this equation between Brahmins and Brahmins (or Hindus and Hindus) needs to be clearly borne in mind. In today’s context, Prime Minister Modi is vocal about a Congress-free India, which in the Hindutva echo chamber may sound like Muslim-free India.


It is difficult to understand the grudge against Indian liberalism, when that is all one has to save and fight for.


But the real targets are reformist and secular Hindus. Tilak wanted a Ranade-free India. W.C. Bonnerjee, the socially regressive president of the Indian National Congress, would have preferred a Brahmo Samaj-free India. The Samaj was the progenitor of reformist Ishwarchand Vidyasagar, whose bust was razed by Hindutva hooligans in their anti-Mamata melee recently. Likewise, in ancient India, the nastiks or non-believers (from the Hindu fold) challenged Brahmin hegemony and suffered for it.

Gleaning from several recent reviews of the landslide Modi win, it appears to have become fashionable to accuse an imagined airy-fairy, unintelligent intellectual class, supposedly unconnected with the masses and allegedly confined to the upmarket Khan Market and British-built Lutyens’ Delhi, for the political debacle of the Congress and the left. The truth is that barring the excellent Bahri bookshop that still holds true to its intellectual purpose, Khan Market was transformed into a hub of flashy consumerism bereft of any thinking capacity from the 1990s, offering a fertile ground for the arriving right-wing menace to grow and prosper. As for Lutyens’ Delhi, that is where Hindutva leaders reside, including Prime Minister Modi, mostly in quarters vacated by assorted architects of Nehru’s India. It is difficult to understand the grudge against Indian liberalism, when that is all one has to save and fight for.

The flip side is just as true. The point apparently missed by Muslim votaries of Partition to everyone’s detriment in the subcontinent was that the more real fight had existed towards the end of British rule not between Hindus and Muslims, but between Hindus and Hindus and between Muslims and Muslims. Imagine if Jinnah had met Gauri Lankesh or Girish Karnad and joined their fight against regressive Hinduism. What if they had struck up an alliance with the Dravida social justice movement of southern India and other equally progressive Hindu (though some called themselves anti-Hindu ideologues)? The Muslim League might have had a different view about the future of a united India.

Just as there emerged regressive forces to disrupt Jinnah’s secular quest in Pakistan, the intense rivalry between Tilak and Ranade presaged the contest between a secular opposition and the RSS. Tilak represented British India’s reactionary impulses laced in narrow nationalism, which were to be co-opted by Hindutva forces.

Many of his heirs have lurked on in the Congress. They include those who bear hostility towards Dalit reformist Ambedkar and other progressive groups. Ranade, the reformist stalwart, embodied the best in India’s quest for social equality, an amalgam of progressive forces set into motion in Bengal by Ram Mohan Roy, and in Maharashtra by Jyotiba Phule and several others.

History is witness to this phenomenon on both sides of the border. Soon after the Quaid’s death, his dream of a secular state was smashed by those lurking in the shadows of Muslim revivalism. In India, Nehru, who dreamt like Jinnah of a parliamentary democracy with an egalitarian intent, was overwhelmed in his own cabinet by stubbornly regressive but powerful satraps. (Read Nehru’s desperate letters to the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh under whose watch the early Ayodhya-centric communal campaign was unleashed.)

Detractors of the Nehruvian worldview gained enormously from the rise of the Hindu right, which was spurred unwittingly by Manmohan Singh’s economic reforms, although he claims to be an ardent devotee of the first prime minister. Singh helped create a nouveau-riche middle class with definitive regressive and feudal social features. This new urban populace can hardly qualify as a liberal vanguard of anything. Rather it has swamped the main opposition Congress as much as it has spurred the consolidation of the RSS and its many arms, including the BJP.

It may disturb some in the left to be reminded that the neo-liberal consumer society did not spare their rank and file either. If after 70 years of struggle for the Orwellian sugar-candy mountain, all that the left have to show for their cultural legacy is the annual Durga Puja in Bengal, then it becomes easy to see how the cadres slip out occasionally to vote for the BJP or desert the party altogether. Worse, the left’s innate sectarianism does not allow for a pause to see that if Mamata Banerjee goes, the Hindutva sway over Bengal would be complete.

Rather than holding her alliance with Muslims responsible for the BJP’s victory in Bengal — a dishonest assessment — the left should make an existential accord with Mamata to stave off its own and ultimately India’s disastrous denouement.

Hindu Rashtra is a Colonial Definition

Romilla Thapar

Why is there demonizing for Hindus and Modi Ji - Bilatakalluf Discussion with Tahir Gora

Tarek Fatah on Situation of Hindus, Sikhs & Other Minorities in Pakistan

"Hindu Pakistan" - Good or Bad? : A lecture by Sanjay Dixit

Surely it is not the politicians’ fault is it?

A dream fable from a strangely familiar land where people blame their politicians for their own failures writes Tabish Khair in The Hindu

I dreamt that I woke up in a foreign country with many languages, cultures and religions. It was also a country with a working democratic system and a Parliament full of different parties.

The people of this country, despite wide swathes of illiteracy, mostly participated in the political process, and often held strong views. But they tended to complain endlessly about their representatives. Some of them would aggressively — even violently — endorse one party against the other, but they would also castigate politicians in general.

“If only we had good politicians,” one of them lamented to me. “Yes,” added his friend, who actually supported a party in the Opposition. “All these politicians just play us against each other in order to win. They never think of the people and the country first. Sheer opportunists, all of them. With no moral, no character, nothing but a hunger for power.”

In my dream, I listened to them, and it sounded familiar. I had heard similar sentiments while awake too. But I was curious. I asked them to explain.

Two cults

“Well, you see,” one of them said. “We have various religions, but the major one is known as the cult of stone and the second biggest one is known as the cult of air.”

Ah, I said. That sounded familiar too. “And what do these, er, cultists look like?” I inquired.

“Look like?” he answered. “They look human, like me and him, of course!” He pointed to his friend, who — to my foreign eyes — looked almost like his twin. “My friend belongs to the cult of air: we call them Aerialists. I belong to the cult of stone: they call us Lithicists.”

Ok, I rejoined. “I don’t see any problem yet — let alone a problem your politicians can take advantage of.”

“No, you won’t, you don’t know the place,” the Aerialist responded. “But you see, we had this church in which we worshipped our god who cannot be seen, and the People’s Party of Aerialists claimed that it had been built on the spot where one of their visible gods had been born...”

“Not that you lot were actually using that Aerialist church,” the Lithicist rejoined with a laugh.

“Facts, my friend, facts. You are talking belief; we are talking facts. Your lot broke down our church by sheer force. You broke the law in the process,” the Aerialist responded.

The two friends paused at this point of disagreement and then agreed that, in any case, they did not care this way or that, and the matter would be decided in court before the next election.

“I still do not see how politicians can...,” I began to say, but I was interrupted by the two.

“That’s not the only issue the courts will decide before the next election,” the Lithicist interposed. “You see, the Aerialist Church has its own personal laws.”

“So do other churches here,” the Aerialist broke in.

“But my friend,” the Lithicist continued. “You will agree that your personal laws are a bit harsh on your women: the husbands obviously get more rights than the wives. Why, they even get more wives!”

The Aerialist looked a bit uncomfortable and waved away the issue. “I say, let the courts decide,” he replied. “They will, they will,” his friend laughed.

I was still quite confused in my dream. “Look here, gentlemen,” I objected. “It is not that I am unfamiliar with such controversies, but what I still do not understand is why you seem to be blaming all this on your politicians?”

Both of them replied together: “Because our politicians take advantage of such situations!”

“But how can they?” I asked, bewildered. “You have said that the courts will decide, and you have told me that you have a constitutional democracy and functioning courts in your country. If so, surely, the courts will decide against the conservative Lithicist position in the case of the demolished church and against the conservative Aerialist position in the case of the personal laws. I mean, you have already indicated that, in terms of law and justice, it was wrong to demolish the Aerialist church and that it is wrong of Aerialists to discriminate against women in their personal laws. So, problem solved: your courts will take the right decision before the elections and no politician will be able to use these issues again!”

Accepting court orders

Both the friends laughed incredulously at me.

“That is what you think, do you?” they scoffed. “Well, let me tell you, Mr. Foreigner (or maybe they said Mr. Dreamer), many Lithicists won’t accept a court order in favour of the Aerialist position on the matter of the demolished church, and many Aerialists will not accept a court order against their personal laws. So, do you know what will happen before the election if the courts take the correct decisions in both the cases? Mobs of Lithicists and Aerialists will be out in the streets protesting and smashing windows for different reasons, preventing reasonable voters from voting… The election will be totally polarised. Politicians!”

“Surely it is not the politicians’ fault if so many of you refuse to accept the correct...,” I started objecting, but that is when I woke up.

Congress - The party of Hinduism?

Liberals hoping that Rahul Gandhi’s Congress would rescue them from Hindutva may be in for a rude awakening writes G Sampath in The Hindu


The stage is all set for Assembly elections in five States — Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Mizoram and Telangana. Described as a ‘semi-final’ for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, they offer a foretaste of the electoral strategies likely to be on view next year. Though State and national elections often have their own specific dynamic, some useful inferences may be drawn from the campaigns of the national parties, especially the Congress.

An important conundrum is whether the Congress can emerge as a meaningful alternative to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its Hindu majoritarian politics. On the evidence of its campaign so far, especially in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, the party appears to have chosen the path of least resistance. Given that these two States also happen to be among those where the BJP’s Hindutva dimension is in full bloom, they presented the Congress with a good opportunity to test its political counter to the divisive agenda of its adversary. The combination of high anti-incumbency and a two-way contest with the BJP meant that the Congress could have taken the ideological battle to the Sangh Parivar.

Wooing the upper castes

But the Congress did nothing of the sort. It steered clear of the BJP’s majoritarian depredations, and opted to woo the same upper castes that constitute the BJP’s core vote base. It has embraced what has come to be known as ‘soft Hindutva’. In Madhya Pradesh, for instance, the Congress has promised to build cow shelters in every village if voted to power — this in a State where desperate farmers were fired upon by the administration. In Kerala, its State unit has played along with so-called religious sentiment, opposing the entry of women (between the ages of 10-50) in Sabarimala instead of standing by the constitutional principle of equality.

In Rajasthan, too, the Congress’s game plan is to retrieve the upper caste vote from the BJP. Hindutva politics has queered the pitch in such a way that today no party can specifically woo the savarna voter without pandering to communal sentiment. In effect, this means not confronting the infusion of religion into the heart of democratic politics. Conversely, challenging it would require two things from a party: certain ideological non-negotiables, among which, in the case of the Congress, would be the Nehruvian legacy of secularism and a politics of caste rooted in the principle of social justice.

Given the cynicism that has become commonplace in public discourse, it is fashionable to scoff at any expectation of principles in politics. But it is delusional to imagine that the very realpolitik that unleashed the genie of communal hatred on national politics will also be able — now that its disruptions are coming home to roost — to put that genie back into the constitutional bottle. In fact, the most troubling takeaway from the Congress’s approach to these Assembly polls is that even an outright victory for a Congress-led alliance in 2019, however improbable it may seem at present, may not really signify a defeat of communal forces.

The clearest indication yet that the Congress cannot be expected to counter the normalisation of Hindu majoritarianism came during party president Rahul Gandhi’s campaign tour in Madhya Pradesh, where he stated that the “Congress was a party of Hinduism”. He prefaced it by saying that it was “not a party of Hindutva” but the fact that he felt compelled to paint the Congress in Hindu colours marks a clear shift in the party’s overt political line.

For some time now, there has been a debate on the Congress’s use of ‘soft Hindutva’ as a counter to the BJP’s presumably ‘hard’ Hindutva. Mr. Gandhi’s supporters have argued that what has been labelled as ‘soft Hindutva’ is nothing but a free and open expression of his personal faith as a devout Hindu. Even if this were true, his temple visits, which rarely seem to take place without a photo-op, the recent emergence of vermilion on his forehead, his pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, and his coming out as a Shiv bhakt, are all gestures saturated with political significance.

Smart politics?

They could either be read as a smart political response to the widespread ‘Hinduisation’ of the socio-political sphere, or as an admission of defeat to Hindutva forces, for this is exactly what they seek — an India where Hindu identity would be the starting point of any mobilisation for political power.

Last month, a Rajasthan Minister was booked for violating the Representation of the People Act after he gave a speech asking all Hindus to vote for the BJP. Mr. Gandhi has never verbalised such a plea with regard to his own party. But can we truly characterise his description of the Congress as a “party of Hinduism”, or his embodiment of Hindu symbolism on the campaign trail, as actions in keeping with either the spirit of the Representation of the People Act or the secularism the Constitution speaks of?

There are other aspects of this symbolism-driven ‘soft Hindutva’ that are as troubling: an overriding anxiety not to be seen as sympathetic to Muslims; and a low key yet consistent messaging that underscores Mr. Gandhi’s position at the apex of the caste hierarchy as a “janeu-wearing Hindu”. The phrase, used by a Congress spokesperson after Mr. Gandhi’s visit to the Somnath temple last year, was invoked by a BJP leader recently in the context of yet another temple visit by Mr. Gandhi, when he asked, “What kind of janeu-dhari are you? What is your gotra?” The focus on Mr. Gandhi’s caste pedigree once again reveals how temple politics is never without its attendant caste politics.

Put simply, it gives the lie to Mr. Gandhi’s self-serving distinction between Hindutva and Hinduism, a distinction that is also becoming increasingly popular among an influential section of Indian liberals who, much like Mr. Gandhi, seem to have suddenly woken up to their Hindu identity in the last four years. For these ‘proud Hindus’, one of whom has recently penned a bestselling book on why he is one, the classical secularist position that one’s religion is a private matter and not an instrument to garner social or political capital is, of course, past its sell-by date.

The distinction between Hinduism and Hindutva — which only matters because of the political uses of religion —rests on two premises. First, that Hinduism is inclusive and progressive, while Hindutva is exclusionary and regressive; second, that Hinduism is individualistic and preaches tolerance, whereas Hindutva is a supremacist ideology that deploys angry mobs to subjugate other religious communities.

On Sangh Parivar’s page

While this is, no doubt, an interesting distinction, it is even more interesting that no Hindutva ideologue has ever expressed any discomfort with this definition of Hinduism that categorically rejects Hindutva. If anything, representatives of the Sangh Parivar have been pleased with the transformation of the Congress president into a tilak-wearing, temple-hopping ‘Hindu politician’.

The Congress becoming more ‘Hindu’ is but another sign of savarna consolidation, a movement of which Hindutva is the flag-bearer. Mr. Gandhi’s version of non-threatening Hinduism and the Parivar’s aggressive Hindutva are in complete agreement on one issue: caste. They both want to be the party of choice for the upper castes, and so long as this remains the case, the Congress cannot be expected to operationalise in its politics the principle of equality. In other words, liberals and other good-hearted people hoping that Mr. Gandhi and the Congress would rescue them from Hindutva may be in for a rude awakening. As is well known, god doesn’t help those who don’t help themselves.

The BJP and a well-meaning Supreme Court are playing with fire in Assam: Shekhar Gupta

Shashi Tharoor states that Christianity is the fastest growing religion in India

‘Hindus have to come out and say: not in our religion’s name’

Why Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni undertook a penance for the Kathua gangrape in a Kerala temple. According to him, it was his response as a Hindu and a believer. He said he was following the Gandhian tradition of personal atonement for a public evil.


Amrith Lal in The Indian Express

 

Sahitya Akademi winner and Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni.

Some weeks ago, this year’s Sahitya Akademi winner and Malayalam novelist KP Ramanunni said he intended to atone for the rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl in a temple in Kathua, Jammu. This, he said, was his response as a Hindu and a believer. He said he was following the Gandhian tradition of personal atonement for a public evil. He said he would do a shayana pradakshinam (circumambulation of the sanctum sanctorum by rolling on the ground) along with others at the Sreekrishna Temple in Kadalayi, Kannur. In an appeal, he stated the reasons for his penance. “The Hindus have a responsibility to show an example of resistance from their own platform of faith against the forces of evil. Because, the fundamental dharma of Hinduism is to pray for the well-being of all the world and stand with truth,” he wrote. He found support from the Kerala Samskrita Sanghom, an organisation of Left-leaning Sanskrit lovers, and a section of intellectuals, including poet and scholar K Satchidanandan.

But when Ramanunni and two others, including a Hindu monk, declared that they would undertake the penance on June 7, many Hindutva bodies opposed the decision. On the designated day, the writer, accompanied by a large posse of police, activists and believers against and in support of the act, undertook the penance by following all the rituals and traditions of the temple.

Ramanunni’s act of atonement has raised a slew of questions. The Hindu right saw it as an anti-BJP political protest. Some felt it was a vacuous spectacle. A few felt secular politics ought not to enter temple spaces or engage with rituals, since that would lead to a validation of Hindu right-wing politics. Even the claim of the circumambulation being a Gandhian act of atonement has been questioned: Can such a singular, individualistic act revive the Gandhian political tradition in a state where the tradition has been marginalised? How different is it from the instrumentalist use of religion by politicians? There are no easy or simple answers to these questions.

For the 63-year-old Kozhikode based writer, this was one way to engage with other Hindus and believers. It was very much in line with the religious syncretism that underlines his fiction, from the much-celebrated Sufi Paranja Katha (A Tale Told By a Sufi, 1995) to his last work, Deivathinte Pustakam (The Book of God, 2017). A recent paper by the Left thinker, B Rajeevan, Sarva Dharma Samabhavana, which called for reclaiming religion from bigots by combining the thoughts of Gandhi, Ambedkar, Sree Narayana Guru and Marx and positing its subaltern self against communalism, inspired him. In this interview, Ramanunni speaks about his attempt to wrest back religious thought from hate. Excerpts:

What made you undertake the act of penance at the Kannur temple?

Every religion, I believe, is getting more and more radicalised and places of worship are increasingly turning into centres of crime. How does one address this issue? I don’t think a purely rationalist approach that excludes religious thought can provide any solution. There are democratic spaces and revolutionary strands within the religious sphere that could help resist communalism. I see Mahatma Gandhi as a practitioner of this sort of a politics. He called himself a sanatani Hindu and revolutionised Hinduism. The fraternal feelings he espoused for Muslims were part of his revolutionary understanding of religion. It was also a carefully thought-out moral and political strategy. The idea was to repair the communal divide the British had created in India. But this strand of political activism ended with him, there was no continuity. It also allowed Hinduism to become reactionary and communal. We need to revive the Hinduism of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, Swami Vivekananda, Sree Narayana Guru, Gandhiji and so on.

Many Muslim groups openly declare that what organisations like the Islamic State preach and do is not Islam. Hindus, too, have to come out and say what is being done today in the name of Hinduism is not Hinduism. The Kathua rape and murder was a heinous crime carried out and defended in the name of Hinduism. There has always been a strand of self-purification and self-criticism within the Hindu religion; doing penance is a part of that tradition. When a Junaid is killed only because he is a Muslim, all Hindus have to bear the burden of that sin, I believe. The rape and murder in Kathua was not just of a Muslim child but also of Hinduism. It is to build such a conscience that I undertook the shayana pradakshinam at the Kadalayi temple.

But why such a protest at a temple?

We hold a lot of town-hall meetings against communalism. We speak to secular people, and all of us are mostly in agreement. I find this funny. This is almost like putting up resistance on the Pakistan border when there is an attack on the Chinese frontier. The communal forces are spreading hate through believers, using places of worship. These spaces have been abandoned by secular intellectuals, whereas communal organisations are mobilising around them. This wasn’t so in the past. Temple festivals and functions were more social than religious events. Now, the attempt is to turn ordinary Hindus into bigots. This is done by inviting bigoted people, including sanyasis, to give lectures. But these talks are aimed at creating prejudice against other religions. This sort of brainwashing of people, especially ordinary believing women, has been going on for a while. There is a need to engage with believers, and in their spaces. As a believer, a practising Hindu I have to do it, I will do it.

When did you start thinking about this need to engage with believers?

Some months ago, I planned to tour religious places to spread a message of communal harmony. There was some criticism and people backed out. Around this time, Marxist thinker B Rajeevan and poet K Satchidanandan had spoken about mobilising around the idea of sarva dharma samabhavana, which spoke about equal respect to all religions. Rajeevan’s concept inspired me. I have always held that ours is a secularism inclusive of faiths, not one that rejects faiths.

Political parties, including the CPM and the Congress, have been fully supportive of my initiative. They, of course, didn’t want it to be a party programme. That’s when Kerala Samskrita Sanghom came in support. This is an organisation of people who love Sanskrit. Many of its member are also believers, and some of them had worked in organisations like the RSS in the past. We chose the temple in Kannur because it is known as the Guruvayur of Malabar. Swami Athmatheertha had initially expressed interest in joining me, but he opted out. Organisations like the Hindu Aikya Vedi, a Sangh Parivar outfit, viciously opposed us. If we talk about repentance and penance in a temple, they knew it would hurt their interests.

Is this a one-off thing?

We have discussed the need to work among the believers. Or else, Kerala will soon become a different place. We have a history of communal harmony and shared spaces among different faiths. That is now under threat. Even fraternal relations with people of other faith are now looked upon with suspicion. Communal hatred is increasingly becoming a part of everyday life. Muslims, made insecure by the communalisation of Hindus, are withdrawing into the shell of religious spaces. Communalism is mutually reinforcing. A secularism that keeps out religion is not capable of fighting this regressive trend.

Your initiative has been described as a Left-backed anti-BJP political activity or dismissed as a publicity gimmick.

Malayalis have become very cynical. Social media is most vicious, it is full of bigots and cynics. They will try to discourage or make fun of you. Unfortunately, those who support you are not vocal in public. We live in an age where forces of virtue are weak and the powers of vice are efficient.

What about the criticism that political parties have an instrumentalist approach towards religion? That their interventions in matters of faith have only a political motive?

That’s when you reduce your engagement with believers and matters of faith to tactics. A large majority of people who vote CPM in Kerala would be believers. In fact, there are Leftist traditions that engage with religious faith in a positive way. It is important to have a democratic mindset that respects someone’s right to believe in god. According to me, if he exists, god is the greatest discovery of mankind; if he doesn’t, he is mankind’s greatest invention for the support and betterment of humans.