Syed Ali Mujtaba
Anti-Muslim propaganda fails to die in India. After the Tablighi Jamaat episode, now Muslims of Malappuram district of Kerala are being targeted for killing a pregnant elephant that was apparently done to death by eating pineapple laced with explosives.
According to forest officials, the wild elephant had left the forests of the Silent Valley in Palakkad district and wandered into the nearby village in search of food and reached Mannarkkad, where it found the cracker-stuffed pineapple. When the elephant ate the pineapple, an explosion took place that badly hurt her as it suffered critical injuries. The elephant was left in searing pain and eventually died standing in a river.
The tragic and heart wrenching incident happened in Mannarkkad, in Palakkad district and not in Muslim majority Malappuram district which is about 54 kilometers from Mannarkkad.
It was a BJP leader and the Godi Media who linked the incident to the Muslim majority district of Malappuram and the whole event is now communalized on anti-Muslim lines. Thousands of Hindu zealots are using their Twitter handles to spread Islamophobia and once again the anti Tablighi Jamaat and anti-Muslim atmosphere is generated in India.
The anti-Muslim canard started when the BJP MP and former Union Minister Maneka Gandhi commented on her Twitter handle @Manekagandhibjp about this incident. She vilified the entire Muslim population of the Malappuram district, holding them responsible for the animal’s death.
In her Tweet, Maneka Gandhi said, “Mallapuram is known for its intense criminal activity especially with regards to animals. No action has ever been taken against a single poacher or wildlife killers, so they keep doing it. I can only suggest that you call/mail and ask for action”, she reported to have commented on the elephant’s death.
Later, Maneka Gandhi repeated the same lines while talking to news agency Asia News International (ANI). She portrayed Malappuram, a district which has Muslim majority, as India’s most violent district. “It is a murder. Malappuram is famous for such incidents, and it’s India’s most violent district. For instance, they throw poison on roads so that 300-400 birds & dogs die at one time,” she told ANI.
Maneka Gandhi’s comment had a political perspective. The BJP’s is gleefully carrying on its head this burden of the Nehru dynasty that has no relevance to BJP politics. So her comment is meant to turn heads of BJP and RSS masters’ for them to recognize her hidden talents and be rewarded for the same. This lie of the former BJP MP was to bell the Muslim cat and by doing so, gain limelight.
As soon as Meneka Gandhi’s comment was made public, the Godi Media including Times Now, Republic TV, Zee News, India TV, Dainik Jagran, Hindustan Times, News18, First Post, and many Hindi and English news outlets lapped it up, without verifying physical location of the incident.
To add juice to the story, the Godi media started giving the demography profile of Muslim dominated Malappuram district. What it obliquely pointed out was Muslim majority Malappuram district is a thorn in India’s Hindu identity. This was not the first time Godi Media did such a place profiling. Some time back it haunted Azamgarh in Uttar Pradesh as a terror factory and a center of Jamaat Islami.
The other aspect of Godi Media’s ingenuity was that like the Palghar incident where two Sadhu’s were killed by tribals and Sonia Gandhi was dragged into it and a ruckus was created. Similarly, the media lapped up Maneka Gandhi’s comment and linked it to the Muslims of Malappuram and held them responsible for the elephant killing. Like lynch mob, the anti-Muslims anti-Islam hate media factories targeted an entire community for the consolidation of Hindu votes.
A Twitter handle named ‘Sumit for You’ which has more than one lakh followers said; “Muslims in Kerala killing elephants. They are jealous of elephants now. Shame Malappuram, the jihadi ISIS…”
Another tweet read, “Indian Islamists have a particular hatred for elephants, cows, and monkeys because these are symbols of Hindu faith system. The brutal murder of the pregnant elephant in Kerala’s Muslim majority Malappuram district is perhaps part of this same hateful mindset.”
The Malappuram district since its inception has been vulnerable to xenophobic, Islamophobic remarks and rants by the Sangh Parivar. The demographic features of Malappuram make it seductive place for anti- Islam and anti-Muslim propaganda. And now when Maneka Gandhi, without any shame whatsoever propagated a lie, the fault-lines of Malappuram district’s demographic profile were criminalized.
Notwithstanding, the killing of the elephant is inexcusable offence, and the killers must be punished but it is also important to know the whole gambit of the news without anti-Muslim anti-Islam propaganda.
There is no mention in the media discourse on the nature versus human conflict going on in the Western Ghats. Animals come out from their natural habitats, in search of food; as it happened in this elephant’s case, while the human species to save their food from being poached, devise ways to protect them from the animals. They use electrical barbed wire and other such things to fence and protect their morsel from being eaten by the beasts. This dimension of nature versus human conflict has never been highlighted in this elephant killing.
The animal right activist like Maneka Gandhi and Godi Media wear filtered glasses and started anti-Muslim, anti- Islam rants without understanding the delicate nuances of the human relationship with nature in this part of the world.
Now without sounding dis-compassionate towards animals, a counter to the fuss made about the pregnancy of the elephant can be raised by the question that did the elephant killers had any clue of the animal’s body till the autopsy was known.
Now, if this is linked to the pregnancy of Jamia Millia Islamia student, Safoora Zargar who was arrested for her alleged role leading the anti-CAA protest, the question is where does the compassion disappear as it is shown in the case of this elephant. What comes out clearly from this story is that human compassion for fellow human beings is overlooked and compassion for a beast of burden is brought out and made use of.
Last but not the least, some Indian leaders and media are mountain blind. They have no clue of the myriad problems of the silent valley in the Western Ghats. What they like to do is to find a slightest opportunity where they can stat anti-Muslim anti-Islam angle propaganda so that they can blindly train their guns against both.
The tail piece: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has said that strict action will be taken against those involved in the killing of the pregnant elephant in Kerala and culprits will be brought to justice.
Syed Ali Mujtaba is a journalist based in Chennai. He can be contacted at [email protected]