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Concern over silence on threats to Muslim scholar in Kerala

M.M. Basheer, a noted literary critic and former professor of Malayalam at the University of Calicut, stopped his column on Ramayana in Mathrubhumi daily following a spate of abusive and threatening calls made by right wing groups.

Trivandrum: Writers in Kerala are dismayed over the isolation of a Muslim scholar who was forced by Hindu fundamentalists to stop his daily column on their epic on the ground of his religious credentials.
M.M. Basheer, a noted literary critic and former professor of Malayalam at the University of Calicut, stopped his column on Ramayana in Mathrubhumi daily following a spate of abusive and threatening calls made by right wing groups. The column dwelt more on the brilliance of Valmiki, the poet, in describing the human aspect of Hindu deity Rama.
The writer was commissioned to write columns during the Ramayana month, but Basheer discontinued the column at the fifth after none raised any voice against the threats meted out to him. Posters threatening Basheer was put up near the newspaper's head office in the northern city of Calicut the day after the column started appearing on the daily on August 3.
Writer N S Madhavan said that he was surprised by the silence maintained by the civil society over the incident. Socio-cultural organisations and even political parties used to react strongly against such religious intolerance in the past. Madhavan has viewed the current silence as a reflection of the slow decay of institutions in Kerala.

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