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M M Basheer, a literary critic, was all set and promised to write a series of six newspaper columns in ‘Mathrubhumi’ on the Ramayana this August. But, he had to stop at column five due to sustained campaign by unknown people on phone. The callers reprimand the Muslim writer for writing on Rama in the Malayalam daily.
The Indian Express quoted Basheer as saying on phone that, “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.”
Violent flow of abusive calls even came to the editors of the newspaper, daily after the appearance of Basheer’s first column on August 3. It was titled ‘Sri Rama’s Anger’. After four days, when the fifth column was published, the series was called off by Basheer who was a former professor of Malayalam at the University of Calicut.
Basheer said, “The callers would ask me what right I had to criticize Lord Rama.”
“My series was on Valmiki Ramayana. Valmiki depicts Rama with human characteristics and does not shy away from criticizing his actions. The callers were taking exception to the poet’s criticism of Rama, which was given in quotes. Most of the callers would not hear out my explanation but just abuse me,” he said.
“To the few who showed patience, I explained that the previous year I had written on Adhyatma Ramayana (the popular foundational text of Malayalam by Thunchathu Ezhuthachhan) and I spoke about Rama the God… But few among the callers knew the difference between the two texts and very few cared. Most callers kept insisting that I tried to attribute human qualities to Rama because I was a Muslim,” Basheer said.
A practicing Muslim, Basheer was never associated with any religious platform or group and is respected as a teacher besides an Asan scholar. He is also recognized as the associate of the modernist movement in Malayalam literature.
The five Ramayana pieces of Mathrubhumi, written by him depict Valmiki’s critique of Rama calling Sita for ‘agnipariksha’. The writer brought in the brilliance of the poet Valmiki. The articles were about Valmiki’s insights while presenting the human condition.
Even though callers did not reveal their identities, charges were repeated by Hanuman Sena, a fringe Hindutva outfit, in posters that were put up near to the head office of the newspaper in Kozhikode.
-Sumana
