Cultural and political activists came together at the Gandhi Park here on Tuesday evening, in solidarity with filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, who is facing criticism from the Sangh Parivar after he and 48 other filmmakers and activists sent a letter to the Prime Minister highlighting the lynchings in the name of religion.
CPI(M) Polit Bureau member M.A. Baby, who inaugurated the protest meeting, said that no true devotee could bear it when murders were committed in the name of Lord Ram.
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“Adoor and others had raised the issue that people are being forced to chant Jai Sri Ram and are being attacked over it. Their Ram is not the Mariyadha Purushothaman that Gandhi had worshipped. No one in the government has condemned any of these incidents, raising the suspicion whether the lynch mobs on the streets have State support. The Sangh Parivar wants to bring the whole of the Indian population under its control by using the mask of religion,” said Mr. Baby.
He said the threats against Adoor could not be dismissed as hollow words, as those making these threats had proved in the past that they were capable of carrying them out.
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“It was by murdering Mahatma Gandhi that these communal forces began their politics of violence. In the past few years, they have gunned down the likes of Kalburgi, Dabholkar, Pansare and Gauri Lankesh. We recently witnessed the kind of violent threats that writer M.T. Vasudevan Nair had to face. Their mentality is clear from this,” he said.
He said that the Sangh Parivar had been following two methods to get everyone under its control, either by buying them out or by threatening them into silence.
“While they successfully managed to silence many, people like Adoor stand up and say that what is going on is not right. We need a wide resistance against these ongoing mob lynchings,” he said.
Filmmaker Harikumar, Satheesh Babu Senan, film editors Bina Paul and B. Ajithkumar, film critic V.K. Joseph, actor Alencier, district panchayat president V.K. Madhu, activists of the Purogamana Kalasahithya Sangham and others were present.
They raised placards saying “with Adoor.”