Remember Faiz Ahmed Faiz writing about Allah? He was a communist. But many communists in Kerala believe that when the Muslims in this country are hit from head to toe for their culture, identity and faith, they should not even utter the word Allah' in their protests on streets. In the ballroom dance of electoral politics, these communists forgot to read Marx who said thatreligion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, soul of soulless conditions….’ before he brought in the word opium of the people!’ It is an opiate atheist mind which refuses to address `the condition for the need for religion.’
For Marx, the problem lies in the obvious fact that religion merely helps you to forget the pain and suffering. From the Marxian perspective of religion, relief from pain may be received to a certain extent from religion, but the real treatment is to solve the underlying problems `causing’ the pain. The Muslims who protested in Kerala for that matter, did not chose to sit at home and pray to Allah and do nothing about it politically, but came out on streets to protest against their oppression. There is nothing anti-Marxist in this behaviour. For Marx, with all its problems, religion was not the real problem. Religion was seen as a set of ideas, and ideas and expressions of material realities. For him, with all its problems, religion was a need of the oppressed people and the structural conditions had to be addressed first. Had Marx regarded religion as a more serious enemy, he would have devoted more time to it in his writings. Instead, he focused on economic and political structures which were oppressive to people.
For the Muslims in Kerala, if they believe that God is present everywhere, the street is not a revolutionary cow without Allah. The real tragedy is that this discussion is taking place when religion is misused beyond repair in Indian Parliament and on the streets of India by the Hindutva forces. If the Malayalee communist believes that the use of God or religion is both same, both those who are oppressed and those who oppress in the name of God and religion are the same, then I must say with all my convictions in atheism: `who the fuck is bothered about your non-God faith?’
K.P. Sasi is a film maker, cartoonist and writer
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