Human sacrifice case blows up the myth of Kerala ‘exceptionalism’

@the_news_21

Thiruvananthapuram: The ghastly ‘sacrifice’ of two women in Elanthoor in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district has blown up the myth of exceptionalism’ of the self-declared ‘God’s Own Country.

An idea mostly associated with the United States of America, ’exceptionalism’ denotes that a particular society is qualitatively different from others on the strength of its history, values and cultural and political developments.

In Kerala’s case, this notion has been at the core of the left-liberal narrative which holds that the state differs from other parts of the country, considering its collective political consciousness, scientific temper and egalitarian ethos, nurtured and flourished through the centuries.

In their conversations, the left intelligentsia leans too much on this self-deluding idea to justify the Marxist-oriented social processes and politics, for which the southern state is the last bastion in the country.

The gory human sacrifice case that began unravelling earlier this month has badly punctured this claim.

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A sleepy little town in the southern district of Pathanamthitta, Elanthoor all of a sudden hit international headlines after a routine person-missing police investigation led to the grisly tale of twin murders.

M Shafi (52), a self-styled occultist ensnared two women in extreme financial constraints from Ernakulam district by offering them good money for their presence during a ritual. In a well-crafted plot, he had convinced a couple in Elanthoor, Bhagaval Singh (68) and his wife Laila (59), that the rites he proposes to perform, at the end of which a woman will be slain and the blood-soaked body mutilated, will bring them prosperity.

The couple allegedly agreed to Shafi’s plans. The two victims were lured to the site of the ritual, separately between June and September this year, and tortured and slaughtered in cold blood each time at the house of the couple.  After mutilating the body each time, the trio allegedly made a libation of the victim’s blood and was even suspected to have consumed a bit of raw flesh to make the ritual complete.

The bodies of the victims were exhumed a few days back from the premises of the couple’s home. The accused had allegedly admitted to the gory details of the crime during police interrogation. The local media started making a veritable feast out of the story, relishing every bit of its sensational ingredients.

As expected, Kerala’s hyperactive intelligentsia and cultural personalities have voiced shock as the lid went off at the ghastly crimes. The bottom line of their reaction was that this was not expected to happen in a society which stands out on account of its historical experience, progressive credentials and key social development indices like total literacy and a storied public education and healthcare systems.

What is interesting to note, however, is that whenever this sort of crime happened in other states they tended to go a little overboard holding flawed social processes, reactionary political ideas and inequitable development models responsible. They often cite Kerala as an altogether different model, in whose ecosystem these kinds of evils have largely been rooted out through conscious social and political activism.

The ‘human sacrifice’ case has triggered the call for a renewal of a social movement against superstition and satanic rituals. There is talk of the left establishment planning to launch a public awareness campaign to rally people to make a final assault on the last vestiges of social evils.

Some quarters have even demanded that legislation with stringent provisions be brought in to crackdown on black magic and similar occultist practices, suggesting that a draft bill is already gathering dust.  The hue and cry remind a throwback to the run on ‘god men’ and ‘god women’ some time back, which ended up generating more smoke than fire.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the level of political and social development does define the quality of a society. But crimes do happen in all societies. The recurring gun violence in the USA and nefarious cultist acts like releasing poisonous chemical gas in a Tokyo subway in Japan are cases in point.

They cannot be stopped by mass campaigns. The pragmatic option before a modern society could be enhancing the potency of preventive mechanisms against such perverted criminal acts that cost innocent lives by stepping up crime surveillance and making law enforcement stringent. Rule of law demands this to happen without turning society into a police state.