Wake up Kerala, you are in danger: Swami Agnivesh

I thought the recent floods were the worst disaster that could befall Kerala. Now the state is facing is a worse peril. While the floods devastated the material landscape of Kerala, the RSS-BJP combine is out to devastate its social and spiritual landscape. This is far more sinister. The natural disaster united and energized Keralites. The present unnatural disaster improvised to boost BJP’s electoral fortunes is threatening to pollute the soul and tear apart the social fabric of Kerala.

This is the time for all Keralites to think clearly, refusing to be misled by deceptive propaganda. Surely, no Keralite worth his salt can believe that the state government is an enemy of a religion just because it implements an order of the Supreme Court. The government is under a constitutional imperative to do so, as Modi’s own government has clearly stated in this instance. The BJP and the RSS were clearly in favour of women’s entry into the Sabarimala Temple. They have taken an opportunistic U-turn, because they have their eyes only on making electoral gains by communally polarizing the people. They know no other way to power and profit.

This is not the time to count petty gains or mind caste equations. An unprecedented danger stares the state in the face. If not handled wisely, this could inflict un-healing wounds on the psyche of the state. Clearly the RSS-BJP strategy is erected on a presumption of the gullibility of Keralites in respect of religion. Now is the time to prove that the people are wiser than the politicians
take them to be.

Taking advantage of the Sabarimala issue, the Sangh Parivar has mounted a frontal challenge to the rule of law, to secular democracy, to the authority of the courts and the Constitution of India. It has smuggled divisive politics into the sanctuary of people’s faith. They want to ‘capture’ Kerala, even if the state is destroyed in the process.

I urge my sisters and brothers in Kerala to ask themselves if they should be misled and their trust abused by an unscrupulous political formation, which sells gods, hijacks temples and corrupts popular religiosity as the bullet train to the citadel of power.
Kerala has a unique history and heritage of socio-religious reform. Kerala navodhanam was the vital moral and spiritual energy that powered the state to peace, prosperity and progress. The Sangh Parivar knows that Kerala is the strongest bastion against communal and caste-driven politics. They believe that the only way an inroad into the state can be made is by using religion as a Trojan horse, smuggling their agenda pretending it to be something other than what it really is.

What happens to Kerala has ramifications far beyond the state. Kerala is as much a symbol as it is a state. It is a symbol of hope and sanity, of reason and common sense, of the enlightenment and empowerment of the common man. This very hope breeds hopelessness in Sangh Parivar. But it is a hope, an inner strength, that Keralites cannot afford to squander. I urge each and every Keralite to stand as a fortress of sense and sanity against this cynical and calculated assault on the very soul of ‘God’s own country’.