Fourth Anniversary of Maradu Killings

It was the 2nd of May 2003, four years back, under a crescent moon at the Marad beach. The Hindu fishermen, most of whom had just hauled their daily catch and were resting on the beach, never knew what hit them. Three teams of about a hundred armed men climbed out of their fibreglass boats on to the shore. Another batch eased out of a house near the Marad Juma Masjid. Armed with swords and machets, clutching Coke cans filled with gelatin, they rushed in from all directions. Within minutes, the hit team melted away leaving behind the dead and the living dead.

The dead -Chandran, Dasan, Gopalan, Krishnan, Madhavan, Prajeesh, Pushparaj, Santhosh, were hacked to death in a choreographed storm of flashing swords and machetes. Some had their  private organs torn out.
 
Marad attack was part of a long series of attacks carried out to clear the Malabar coastline of Hindu presence. If one ignores the atrocities of 1921, the attacks against the Hindu community in Marad can be said to date back to 1954, when, on the 28th of March, Islamists attacked a Hindu procession to temple at Naduvattom near Marad. Even before that, the anti- Hindu offensive had started in Kozhikode. October 1952 saw the murder of the President of the Cow Protection council at Payyoli. The attacks continued for three months. Secular governments came and went. 1958 saw a concerted campaign being organised against the procession annually taken out from the Manathala Vishwanathan temple near Chavakkad. The troubles lasted for almost a year. A steady exodus of Hindus from the costal regions of Kozhikode accompanied these incidents.

With roughly 130 Hindu families of Marad gone, the stretch of Kozhikode beach, 65 kilometres long, from Ponnani to Marad, would be totally ‘cleansed’ of Hindus, just as Hitler’s Germany became Judeo free. There are 26 private landing zones on this stretch, ideal for clandestine beach landings in moonlight for transit of weapons or currency. It had taken the Islamists 50 years to clear the beach.

Till today, Marad is the only beach in Kozhikode where Hindu fishermen dare to go to sea on Fridays. In other places a ‘ fatwa’ is enforced preventing anyone from going to sea for fishing on that day, considered holy by the Muslims.

Let us hope Marad serves as a wakeup call to all Kerala Hindus.

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