The moral police in action

Thasni Banu, a 20–year–old Muslim girl is a final year BA student of the Unity College, Manjeri. A feminist by her leanings, she was in love with Nasser, a rationalist activist. She wanted the marriage by Civil Marrige Act, but her parents were reluctant. Enter a band of Islamic saviours led by some local NDF workers, who kept up a vigil in front of her house, chased away her friends who came to call on her, and imposed a virtual house arrest on the girl for weeks together. 

Nasser finally filed a habeas corpus petition in the Kerala High Court, and the police stepped in to produce the girl in court. She prayed for allowing her to marry as she wished and the court ordered her to stay in a hostel for a month to see whether she changed her mind. ln the last week of February, she went back to the court which ordered the police to give her protection to marry her man in the civil courts at Manjeri.

Two rationalist activists, E.A. Jabbar and his wife M. Fousiya, both teachers at the Melamuri Government Upper Primary School, Malappuram, had helped the young girl in her fight for justice and against the obscurantists who were threatening her for over one and a half years now for her unconventional views. She had been challenging the teachers in Quran classes, asking simple questions like why women could not go to mosques. Fouziya and Jabbar were the witnesses to Thasni’s civil marriage last week at Manjeri. This week, they went back to their school and found themselves stopped by a crowd who abused them and threatened to beat them up. They were accused of being anti–Muslim agents of Hindu forces by the same rabid sections who were trying to stop Thasni have her way, they say.

Jabbar had earlier been beaten up by these groups as he stood by Thasni Banu in her days of persecution. He had helped her seek court support and had campaigned for community support to the girl. Now they are facing threat, and the DYFI and local CPM activists have come to their support against the Muslim fundamentalists.

There are several such instances in Malappuram and neighbouring areas where the fundamentalist Muslim groups are quite active, taking up all issues on behalf of the most obscurantist sections in the community. They use strong-arm tactics, threaten and beat up their victims and try to enforce a Taleban–like social code even as the local police, political parties and religious leaders look the other way. There is little organised resistance against their activities, though there are several groups among Muslims expressing unhappiness with the way these sections are working in the community.

But the NDF general secretary Ashraf Bin Ali denies any involvement of his organisation in the Thasni Banu case. “These charges are concocted, and they express the version provided by the police”, he said. He said the NDF is an organisation working for economic development and protection of human rights. “We are regularly holding public meetings, and we feel the major threat this country is facing is from fascism and we fight it.” The NDF feels that many of these allegations against it are being raised only because they are firmly opposed to the fascist forces who keep up a slander campaign against them.

There is substance in this argument as special branch police and Central intelligence agencies in Malappuram are infested with pro–RSS sections who regularly put out stories inflating many instances through a friendly press. 
The stories about Pakistani spies in Malappuram, a favourite with the RSS  press, is a case in point. There are a few hundred Pakistani nationals in  Malappuram, who are old men who used to do business in Lahore and other cities in the days before Partition.

As their families are back home in Malappuram, they want nothing but a peaceful death in their homes. There are several cases of these old men being arrested and even sent back to Pakistan in spite of the fact that Prime Minister Viswanath Pratap Singh gave Indian citizenship to around 75 such persons.

Still, the NDF is involved in many cases of assault. The NDF itself has suspended two of its activists for their involvement in the murder of a Muslim fakir.

The obscurantist onslaught, however, is continuing. A Muslim scholar in Kannur, Mohammed Farook, who gives a humanist interpretation of the Quran, has been recently attacked for his unorthodox views. He has accused the NDF of engineering the attack on him.

In January, two girls were thrown out of their madrassa, the Muslim religious school, in Payyanakkal near Kozhikode, as they participated in their regular school youth festival. Their father, Ahmed Koya, complained that they were thrown out as they contested in Thiruvathirakkali, a traditional dance in Kerala. 

He has approached the courts  for justice. However,the madrassa authorities are adamant that the girls can come back only if they give a written assurance that they would not take part in such cultural programmes in future.

At Pandinjattummuri in Malappuram, two women were travelling in an auto when a group of people forced them out, shaved off the women’s heads and paraded them on the street. They were accused of being prostitutes. Later, the persons who perpetrated the crime went on a campaign that these women had physical relations with some AIDS patients. No police action has been taken on the issue, say local people.

Again women were the victims at Ozhukur, another village in Malappuram, where Fathimath Zuhra and her mother were ostracised by the mosque committee, for the girl had married a Christian. Zuhra was a poor labourer and she was seduced by the Christian from Palai in south Kerala, where she spent some time with him. 

Later, he threw her out and she came back to her village. But the local groups took up the issue and ostracised the mother and the daughter. She could not even get any employment in the village. When the issue became a controversy, activists of the Confederation of Human Rights Organisations, of which the NDF is an active partner, brought up a compromise formula where the mother and the girl apologised for the events and were taken back to the community fold.

There is a striking and ominous similarity in the way the moral police force has been acting in the Muslim majority districts of Malappuram and Kozhikode in Kerala and in the border districts of  West Bengal:

Ø In July ‘98, Hira Khatun (19) Kapasdanga village (Murshidabad) was married off against her wishes by her parents to a local drunkard, Yasin. Unable to bear his tortures “from the night of the marriage itself”, she got herself a divorce from the man in four days flat. To teach the family a lesson, Hira’s father, Shamsuddin (60), was dragged before the local ‘court’, two of whose ‘judges’ are CPI (M) Panchayat members. After being interrogated for over 28 hours, during which time the poor man was denied both food and rest, the verdict was out: Shamsuddin was fined Rs.70,000 for his daughter’s ‘temerity’.  Shamsuddin was allowed to go only after he had paid Rs.15,601 on the spot and wrote off 1.5 bighas of his land. Repeated complaints to the local police station while the ‘trial’ was on produced no response.

Anura Bibi of Chandipur village (Murshidabad), incurred the wrath of local fundamentalists for some ‘misdemeanour’ after talaaq from her husband. For this, she was thrashed in public, garlanded with shoes, paraded publicly in the village before being banished. 

Ø Begum Bibi of Godhanpara village (Murshidabad) was held ‘guilty’ of having sent her daughter to a local fair with a young man. She, too, was thrown out of her village. 

Ø In early March, in Balidhaura village (Bahrampur district), the village court had its sitting in a school to settle some land dispute. Raibahadur Chaudhury of this village wanted to say something in his defence. But he was clubbed to death before he could open his mouth.