Je suis Charlie; Je suis Perumal
The new year started with a slew of brutal attacks on freedom of expression. The satirical weekly newspaper, Charlie Hebdo was attacked resulting in the loss of seventeen precious lives for its ‘alleged’ insult of Prophet Mohammed. I use the term ‘alleged’ because it is difficult to gauge the insult or pain caused. Such ‘insult’ is a relative term.
A faithful Muslim, I suppose, cannot be offended by this because just a piece of cartoon cannot distort or diminish the respect he had grown for the prophet since his childhood. He may just laugh at the ignorance of the cartoonist and move on. On the other hand, such cartoon feeds the cowardice radical elements such as ISIS to remove Muslims from the mainstream and use them as their targets to get themselves popular.
The subsequent peaceful protest with the slogan, ‘Je suis Ahmed’ in support of the police officer, Ahmed Merabet, killed in the shooting was aimed at stopping miscreants branding Muslims as terrorists. They carried the slogans that stated that Islam has nothing to do with radical Islam and that such fanaticism kills Muslims too.
A similar analogy can be drawn to silencing the voices of a Tamil writer named Perumal Murugan. He is a Tamil professor in a Government college in Namakkal. His house was vandalized and attacked for his work ‘Madhorubagan’. The brutal attack has forced the author to cease writing through a ridiculous forced contract. An interesting fact is that the book was released in 2009. The incident coincides with increasing presence of RSS-Sangh Parivar-caste fascist groups in the state.
The novel is about a sexual rite performed in the past where in childless women have sex with men to bear children. Modern India has started approving surrogacy as a solution to childless couple. The above mentioned ritual is even more modern. In Hindu culture, such tradition is known as ‘Niyoga Dharma’. Such tradition suggests the modern thinking by the past Hindu society. Such acts diminishes the values inculcated by the religion. There is an eminent danger that our future generations may misunderstand religion and its values with the thoughts proposed by fringe elements.