Sangh Parivar

The Deputy Minister for Home Affairs declared that the estimate for building a fence across the Line of Control, the unofficial boundary between India and Pakistan, in Jammu & Kashmir has tripled. The current estimate is more a thousand crores of rupees, close to Rs. 1300 Crores. I wonder what kind of fence, might that be! Could it be a chain link fence, a barbed wire fence or a concrete reinforced wire mesh fence? How far away from the fence watch tower would be, how many men each tower will be posted with and what would be the interval between those towers and the flood lights? What would be the rate of illumination of those flood lights? Let me ask the Deputy Minister what would he and the Border Security Force manning those watch towers do if the a platoons of trained militants sabotage the power grid supplying power to those flood lights, shoot those light out, shoot the sentries in the towers and cut the barbed wire and dynamite those towers under the cover of fire by Pakistani regulars?

There have been many such WALLs in the past. Some of them are well known. One such wall is the Great Wall of China which stretches almost 5,500 miles including some 1300 miles of natural barriers like hills and rivers. It was built, rebuilt and maintained for more than 2000 years. It is still there as one of the world’s wonders. It did not stop Chengis Khan and Mongols from invading China massacring, plundering and raping millions of women and establishing his empire. The French built a wall known as The Maginot Line on its border with Germany. It was a formidable war with reinforced concrete and had numerous military housing and weapon storage. The Germans by passed it and invaded France through Holland. The Soviet Union and East Germans together built the Berlin Wall to permanently divide East and West Germany. Neither the East Germans nor the Soviet Union could keep the West Germans from unprecedented economic expansion and thereby making the East to crave for the unification of Germany. The Israeli government is building a concrete wall to keep the Palestinians from mounting suicide bomb attacks inside Israel, but Hamas and Hezbulla fire rockets from school and hospital tops in Palestine and Northern Jordan and the Israeli defence forces are forced to send their military to control it. It has become a public relations nightmare for the Israelis. The US government is building a wall on its southern border with Mexico. It is almost complete. This wall is to check the relentless flow of illegal immigrants from Latin America. Many American veterans mounted on their giant pick up trucks volunteer on that border with walkie talkies and rifles. It is a pain in the neck for both the American and the Mexican governments. There have been numerous walls of that kind in history and some of them are tourist attraction in various countries. They never stop enemies from mounting was and infiltrating.

In this context, I remember a story in the folklore in North Malabar, which I call my home. The story is that of a farmer who had a pet snake which he caught when it had just hatched. He brought it and housed it in the safety of the chicken coup. It was a harmless little thing and it grew up there drinking a little milk the farmer placed in a little plate every day. A few months later, his wife noticed that the snake had grown up and she did not like snakes as pets. Despite the farmer’s objections, she drove the snake away and the farmer replaced the lid to the chicken coup so that the snake did not reenter. Months later, the farmer noticed that his little chicks never hatched. Later he also noticed that his hen stopped laying eggs. Little did the farmer know that his pet snake had laid eggs before his unkind wife drove it drove it away. I forgot what happened thereafter. However, there is a saying in North Malabar “not to pet a snake, let alone housing it in the Chicken coup.”

The erstwhile North Malabar of the Madras Presidency is now called “Kannur.” The Deputy Minister for Home Affairs was elected as Member of Parliament from that Constituency for five times, until he was defeated a couple of elections before by a sycophant. Now he represents his own home constituency which is across the river. Folklores and ideologies differ when people are separated by hills or rivers. I wonder why I remembered that story in this context. Mullappally Ramachandran is highly regarded in North Malabar regardless of the fact that he belongs to the party of sycophants. Besides, he comes from a family which had participated in the freedom struggle. I watched the TV report on his reception in his home town. People were waiving a lot of green flags along with a few tricolor flags with a palm in the middle. The green flag carriers can tolerate tricolor with a palm in the middle, but it is a taboo for them if the tricolor had a “chakra” in the middle. I wonder if the Honorable Deputy Home Minister is familiar with that irony.