A Thousand Cuts

Title: A Thousand Cuts – An Innocent Question and Deadly Answers
Author: T J Joseph
Translator: K Nandakumar
Publisher: Penguin, 2021 (First)
ISBN: 9780670094455
Pages: 305
 
Kerala leads other Indian states on several parameters, including literacy, general education, health infrastructure and rural development. On some factors like life expectancy and sex ratio, it comes even close to western nations. However, its society is deeply divided on caste and religious lines. Kerala tops the list of people who fled India to join the Islamic State terror movement. It is also an open secret that Islamism in India is mostly financed by organizations in Kerala. However, Kerala itself has not witnessed much violent Islamist action. Like the tens of thousands of its people toiling for their livelihood in the Middle East, Kerala exports jihadi elements to other parts of India to create havoc there. It is in this background that the events mentioned in this book occur. It is the story of how Islamists physically attacked a college professor and chopped off his right palm accusing him of insulting the Prophet through a question he had set in an internal test paper. The incident is not a novel one as we continue to see similar happenings – sometimes even more serious – almost on a daily basis in many parts of the world. What is shocking in this case is the union of the state government machinery with the Islamists in hunting down the professor who had absconded for his safety and the Christian management which dismissed him from service to please them. Having lost the sole livelihood of the family and driven to despair, the professor’s wife committed suicide. This pathetic act persuaded the management to revoke the dismissal and reinstate him two days prior to his superannuation. T J Joseph reminisces on those events in this book.
 
Joseph explains in detail the thought process that went in for the selection of the question in dispute. He wanted to present some matter for adding punctuation marks for B.Com students studying Malayalam as second language during their second semester. The author selected a book titled ‘Thirakkathayude Reethishastram’ (Methodology of Screenplay) by noted filmmaker P T Kunju Muhammad which was suggested as reference material by the university. There is a dialog in the book between a mad man and god which ran thus:
 
Mad man: “Creator, Creator”
God: “What is it, sonofabitch?”
Mad man: “A mackerel – if one cuts it – how many pieces will there be?”
God: “You dog, how many times do I have to tell you it’s three?”
 
Now, Joseph wanted to add a name to the mad man. Since the man calls god padachon (Creator in Malayalam) it was obvious that he was a Muslim. The professor thought of a common Muslim name that was also carried by the film maker and named the protagonist Muhammad. And all hell broke loose!
 
The Muslim community of Thodupuzha, where Joseph was teaching at Newman College, came out in droves to protest against what they perceived as an insult to the Prophet and blasphemy on the words attributed to god. The agitation turned violent and the college authorities suspended the professor, in effect accepting the mob’s charges as true. The police also filed a case against him for fomenting enmity among communities. Joseph left his home and remained a fugitive for a few days by which time he had hoped to arrange anticipatory bail. His plans did not materialize as his friends did not want to be seen as associating with a tainted person. He then surrendered to the police and the court remanded him to judicial custody for a few days before granting bail. His ordeal was just beginning when he came out. Three months later, a group of Islamists armed with knives and machetes waylaid his car while coming back home after attending a church service. They hacked his right palm off and inflicted several cuts on other limbs. The chopped off palm was later surgically reattached. At this point, the management dismissed him from service. When it became evident that he will not be taken back even after four years, his wife committed suicide in a fit of depression. The management of the college, which was manned by Christian priests, then relented and allowed him to rejoin on a Friday while he was to retire on Monday with the intervening days as holidays for the college. The author has made a touching narrative of the incidents that devastated his family.
 
What we find alarming in the whole episode is that the law enforcement of Kerala cozied up to the Islamists and made their path smooth for inflicting the punishment prescribed by Sharia law for blasphemers. When a militant organization initiated violent action on the streets, the police chased the professor without asserting facts. Joseph’s leaving the scene is also culpable since nobody was then present on the ground to explain his side of the story. The mob’s interest got weightage over anything else, even if those interests were born out of ignorance, against truth and flagrantly unethical. In addition to this, the police took the innocent professor’s son into custody and brutally tortured to make him divulge his father’s hiding place and also to force him to surrender. When Joseph was released on bail after preliminary investigation, they did not accord him any guards for protection. However, after he was assaulted and right hand hacked, he was given round-the-clock police protection in a classic instance of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.
 
The police’s slovenly attitude is expectable even though it cannot be pardoned. What is totally embarrassing is the college management’s vengeful attitude. This was a Christian minority institution and the professor was a member of the same congregation. Even then, they joined the protestors in declaiming the author, became their mouthpiece and abused him. It ensured that the case was filed solely on his name and worked to create evidence by scouring the wastepaper basket and retrieving the crumpled written copy of the question paper in the author’s own hand. The management even convened a press conference and apologized to the Muslim community for wounding their religion and sensibilities. This in fact added fuel to the fire and protestors turned rioters. The author does not mention any antecedents that might have prompted the priestly management to behave in this fashion. Joseph claims that his actions as a professor was impeccable and he had engendered no issue for the relationship to fray. However, in the second part of the book in which he reminisces on the events prior to the incident, he does not speak anything about his experience with the management. There is a chapter on his interview for the post of lecturer, but a deep silence ensues thereafter. The author does not seem to be very forthcoming on this point.
 
The book is very absorbing to read and reminds the readers of the disastrous consequences attached to seemingly trivial mistakes. It also provides warning signs on the radicalization of Muslim youths and the government’s tacit acceptance and passive encouragement in the hope of securing vote banks. No cultural leader or intellectual in Kerala voiced his or her protest. No author has used the name ‘Muhammad’ for their characters thereafter. The author’s deep roots in farming and his family’s early espousal of agriculture is a model to all. The translation by Nandakumar is a very fine example of conveying the ideas without missing any of the nuances though on a few occasions, it appears too pedantic.
 
The book is highly recommended.
 
Rating: 3 Star