Marad – A wakeup call to all Kerala Hindus

 

May 2^nd 2003

Place-MaraduBeach

Time- Sun Set

 

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
whole operation took only 14 minutes leaving 8 dead bodies and scores half 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.

 

After
the brutal attack the Jihadi’s went straight inside to Maradu Juma Masjid to
hide the lethal weapons. When the Police team arrived, the Jihadi women in the
area cordoned off the Masjid preventing Police personnel’s from entering the
mosque. It was only after hour’s police were allowed to go inside the mosque
and seize the weapons concealed there. By that time those who took shelter
inside the mosque escaped in the darkness.

 

It
was later confirmed that for those who took part in the Jihad against Hindus,
their Political ideology never came in the way. Not only there were NDF and
Muslim league activists but activists of CPM as well! The role of top level
Muslim league leaders including E Ahammed and
Kunhallikutty and the support of Jihadi Police officers and then district
collector Sooraj was also reported.

 

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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