Tamils pray at Kaaba for saffron rout

Chennai: “We pray for the total destruction of the RSS and the complete defeat of the BJP”. That was the intense prayer, the dua, spoken in Tamil, after the mullah took the congregation of devout men and women through the ritual of worship in Arabic at the Kaaba in Mecca.

It must have happened pretty recently considering the video was posted on Monday on his twitter handle by Tarek Fatah, Canadian journalist-writer-broadcaster-secularist-liberal activist. The video went viral with the ‘chowkidars’, Islamic radicals and of course the secularists engaged in hot debate over the desirability of using such a holy place and pious occasion for carrying out a hate sermon — the sanctity in mixing prayer with politics.

Beyond that long string of tweets carrying intense arguments fired at all sides was the slap from the inimitable Tarek.

Introducing the Kaaba video on his handle @TarekFatah, the brave liberal who had taken on many hardliners and even the heavily radicalised Islamists, pointed out that this group at Holy Kaaba “all seem to be from Tamil Nadu, acting like sheep being led by their Mullah”.    n P2

There have been loud demonstrations of anti-BJP and anti-Modi hostility several times in recent months in Tamil Nadu. Now the Kaaba video in which they are praying "for the total destruction of the RSS and the complete defeat of the BJP" adds yet another dimension that stretches this hate-saffron factor beyond the distant seas. True, there could be similar worship episodes involving Indians from other states too and they escaped Tarek's radar. Perhaps, perhaps not.

After the ghastly terror attack in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, there is stepped-up focus on south India within the intelligence agencies that had been mostly engaged with shadows creeping across the northwestern and northeastern borders. The recent raids and detentions in Tamil Nadu and Kerala by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) are clearly linked to the Lankan strikes as it has now been established that there have been collaborative contacts by the ISIS operatives in these three regions.

In fact, the NIA alerts to Colombo early this year spawned out of the agency's raids on multiple locations in Chennai, Coimbatore and Tindivanam while investigating the plot to kill marked leaders of Hindu outfits in December last year. The information obtained from the suspects during those raids, passed on to Sri Lanka, obviously got wasted in the tussle between President Maithripala Sirisena and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

"Forget the political rhetoric in that worship at Mecca. It would be worthwhile for the NIA and other agencies to check out on that group of worshippers and their sponsor", said a senior official requesting anonymity."It becomes necessary to shift the searchlights on each and every suspect individual, outfit and event, if you are dealing with extraordinary situations.

And we are now facing an extraordinary situation", he added.In the big heap of tweets responding to video posted by Tarek Fatah, there is one showing angst at the "waste of time, money and dedication" in that political prayer. "What kind of breed is this??? Travelling all the way to Saudi to pray for someone's destruction??" posted Chowkidar Sanjeev.

And there was another twitteratti claiming he found half of the passengers on his flights during a recent trip from Trivandrum to Europe through Bahrain were women from Tamil Nadu going on group tours to Mecca on Haj Umrah. Nothing wrong with that raised level of devotion, actually, but the worrying part would be when they end up using their precious Kabaa time praying politics.