Swami Vivekananda once called Kerala a ‘lunatic asylum’. Is it still one?

The caste system and untouchability that prevailed in Kerala in the 19th century prompted Swami Vivekananda to call Kerala a `lunatic asylum’. Thanks to the efforts of social reformers like Sree Narayana Guru, Mannathu Padmanabhan, K Kelappan, V.T.Bhattathirippad etc, untouchability has died down and Kerala has become a model for other states in communal harmony.

Temples, mosques and churches coexist in Kerala without creating any communal tension. There are churches where Hindus offer worship and Muslims too make offerings in some temples. Religious festivals of one community is celebrated with gusto by members of other religions.

But all this is becoming a thing of the past. Today, there is growing intolerance and mistrust among religious communities toward each other.

The policy of communal appeasement followed by political parties of left and right persuasions has much to do with this situation. If the E M S Namboothiripad ministry was responsible for the creation of the Muslim-majority Malappuram district, the Muslim League and Kerala Congress which are part of the Congress-led UDF dispensation are responsible for pampering the Muslim and Christian communities. This has made Hindu organisations such as the SNDP Yogam angry and frustrated.

The Muslim Ministers in the UDF Government were the first to display their religious intolerance when they publicly refused to light traditional lamps at Government functions, holding it to be part of Hindu tradition.

In a recent incident, mega star Mammootty lighted the lamp and when he passed over the lighter to the minister he refused to light the lamp as he believes it is a religious ritual of the Hindus. This angered Mammootty, who said: “The Minister’s behaviour is not right. I am a man who follows Muslim religion and rituals. I observe every ritual a Muslim should observe and fast in every Ramzan month as well. But I light the lamp in many inaugural functions and I don’t think that there is anything wrong in that.”

There is also reluctance among Muslims to practise yoga, especially in educational institutions run by them, as they consider it to be part of Hindu religion and not of the great Indian culture.

The Christian community is generally known to have a broader outlook in religious matters. But there is increasing polarisation even in that community. The Synod of the Kerala-based Syro Malabar Catholic Church recently directed the young Catholic priests to drop their Hindu names and instead use only their Christian names given at the time of baptism as a “mark of their Christian identity”. Often many Christian girls and boys have more than one name — one name in the register of baptism, and another by which the child is usually known. The Church directive comes at a time when many in the young generation of Catholic priests have started sporting names identified with the Hindus.

Religious intolerance shown by other communities is inviting backlash from the Hindus. Recently, literary critic M M Basheer had to abruptly stop a column on the Ramayana in a Malayalam newspaper following a torrent of abusive calls received by him from unnamed persons who upbraided him for writing on Rama when he was a Muslim. “Every day, I would get repeated calls abusing me for writing on the Ramayana. At the age of 75, I was being reduced to just a Muslim. I couldn’t take it and I stopped writing,” he told a newspaper.

The growing communal divide is fraught with dangerous consequences for the state. This is well-articulated by Congress leader and former Defence Minister A K Antony, who said: “Ker­ala is in the grip of communal forces and that will end in a catastrophe. But, looking at the way the new generation is celebrating caste, the words of Swami Vive­kananda reverberate like a doomsday prophecy now: Kerala is becoming a lunatic asylum.”

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