Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Kashmir unrest resonates in Kerala; Sanghparivar and savarna media partnership plays it hard


On behalf of the recent Kannur Issue, Where 16 youth were arrested for conducting a peaceful protest in support of Kashmir citizen, Maktoob Media comes up with a follow up story. 

Afthab Ellath, one among the arrested, talks about the democratic way in which the protest was conducted and how police responded to it. He pointed out the cyber attack and abuse that the protestors face from the Sanghparivar, which later resonate as “intelligence reports” in mainstream news papers in Kerala like Mathrubhumi.

Read Afthab’s comment on the issue :

Afthab Ellath

The sanghi behavior is quite expected. One can easily find that even the police case was based on a visibly hindutwa goon’s request and they blindly acted on it without verifying any fact, even without asking any other witness available on the scene. There were no slogans, but was a cultural program meant to create a democratic dialogue regarding the human sufferings going on in Kashmir. Don’t we, as the citizens resposible for the Indian liberal democracy, have also the responsibility to discuss and know what is going on the people whom we consider as part of our population?
Still we invited all who have a different opinion to express it at the event while the goons were trying to disrupt the program. One from the audience actually accepted our invitation and expressed his difference of opinion. He was talking while the police reached the site. that was the democratic sensibility of the organizers that the liberal savarna media like mathrubhoomi disregard in their agenda to incriminate us.
It is clear that the actual attack on a democratically and legally organized event came from the sangh fascists and the police was acting on it based on their own biases. One of the police man came to the scene was actually threatening us continuously that we should be charged with UAPA. One of the reason was his assumption that we were all Muslims. So when he found the name of Akhil he was exclaiming in surprise that whether he was not a Muslim? This is the dangerous bias of the police that Kerala public sphere should seriously discuss about. If we refuse to address such biases there will be more and more islamophobic entrapping of the Muslim youth in Kerala as we have been witnessing in the past.
Of course, the CI spoke to us in a decent manner and he assured us that he has not found any violations from our side. Still he was having an impression that we were interested in issues like Kashmir only and in no other issues near to us and he claimed that this is the precise reason people like us are suspected. We explained him we have used all our avenues in ways we could  intervene in the issues of violences around us.
Any way the continuing cyber attack and the media brutality going on with the help of the journos in mathrubhumi etc shows how shrunken our democratic spaces are. These are the people who are managing the affairs of public interests unfortunately and we urge all the people with democratic sensibilities to come out and raise their voice, or else the hindutwa will start dictating the terms of democracy in Kerala soon.

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