Parasitic fringe elements feed on the Kerala temple tragedy

Image Courtesy: The Indian Express
Deepu Aby Varghese Deepu Aby Varghese folomojo staff

Nothing but the smell of burning human flesh filled the air in the premises of the Puttingal temple in Paravoor during the wee hours of Sunday. A killer inferno claimed 110 lives and burned scores of the others after a spark landed on a cache of explosives stocked in the temple premises.

The country on Sunday mourned the deaths of 110 festival revellers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself flew down from the capital to supervise the situation. Special medical aids for burn injuries were called in for immediate assistance by the state authorities.

Not even ideologies, political rivalries or religious taboos could pollute the feeling of solidarity with the victims of a colossal mishap that ensued the valedictory firework celebration in the temple festival—the relief process progressed in harmony. Social media too joined hands with the world that grieved the disaster.

But there were some so-called ‘fringe elements’ that stood out wielding propaganda which would be never accepted as political parlance.

With the elections in mind, the ‘fringe’ nimrods termed the disaster a ‘conspiracy’ ideated by their political opponents, spewing venom into the virtual realm of social media. The social media accounts which seem to be a part of the ‘fringe’ groups and outrightly state hateful comments, essentially declassify their intellectual catches of ‘win-win’ core political outlooks which focus to gather supporters by stratifying the society on the basis of ideological allegiance and religion.

Take a look.

Image Courtesy: Facebook
Image Courtesy: Facebook

While the authenticity of these posts could be debated or even if we assume that these posts never surfaced, the underlying evil in the ‘fabrication’ of these images attribute to the propaganda-driven political discourses. However, the series of connected tweets which are now available suggest the rogue posts allegedly by twitter handles @Jaikrishnashree and @MeenaDasNarayan certainly incite hate and rivalry among people.

What’s funny is that the twitter handle @Jaikrishnashree was named ‘Om  Hindu Kranti RSS’ until late Sunday. The profile was later renamed as ‘Shankhanaad’ which is too similar to RSS’s media wing ‘Shankhnaad’. The user masquerading as a right wing affiliate deleted all the alleged hateful content and left tweets endorsing US right wing mascot and presidential front runner Donald Trump.

Footnote: Before resigning to a conclusion about any particular sect, be it a Right or Left organization, it should be understood that these acts could be intended to demean and ostracize the political opposites as social media often offers a certain extent of anonymity. After all, it’s all about self-centredness and greed for power which act as driving forces to take advantage of even a tragedy such as this. 

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