Help us resist the Hindutva thought-machine: K Satchidanandan writes to the Chief Minister of Kerala

BY JDEVIKAIN CULTURE, DEBATES, FEMINISM, GOVERNMENT, IDENTITIES, LAW, LEFT WATCH, MOVEMENTS, POLITICS, RELIGION, RIGHT WATCH, VIOLENCE-CONFLICT

[This is the text of the open letter written by the eminent poet and public intellectual K Satchidanandan to Com. Pinarayi Vijayan]

Dear Sir,

I am writing this letter to you in total despair and with utmost concern.

You must by now have come to know that Hadia, who had converted to Islam  and married a man belonging to the same religion voluntarily going by  all credible accounts including her own statements, is now in a state of house arrest  besieged as she is  not just by police, but the RSS brigade too who would not permit her to meet people and speak her mind.

Sadly the whole question has been reduced to a communal issue by vested interests. In fact, it is a larger issue that involves human rights and a  grown-up woman’ s freedom of choice and agency. She is being treated like an infant; the high court has annulled her marriage citing improbable reasons and ordered an inquiry reducing the whole issue to one of ‘ love- jihad’, an absurd and self-contradicting term manufactured by the right-wing thought- machine. The Supreme Court has already challenged the High court’ s untenable position on the issue.

Many of us are deeply worried about Hadia’ s state of physical and mental health as she seems to have been tortured by her father and is being kept under surveillance by RSS with his connivance.

We are happy that Kerala’s  Women’s  Commission has taken interest in the case, but we also think that your intervention at this stage is very crucial in obtaining Hadia’ s release and finding out her state of health and the truth of the whole issue. We have full faith in your ability and readiness to intervene at this critical juncture without any delay.

With warm regards,

Prof. K. Satchidanandan