Dear Shri PC George,

Let me confess that I was once one of your admirers. I liked the way you put your viewpoint across and the readiness you showed in calling a spade a spade. My admiration for you did not last long. In fact, in the last Assembly elections, I wanted one person to lose. And it was you. Fortunately, the voters of your constituency fulfilled my dream.

One reason why I began hating your brand of politics was because I realised that you had no scruples and you changed your opinion as fast as the chameleon changes its colour. What was more reprehensible was that you found merit in Muslim-bashing, which has now become your vocation.

As a journalist, I am for free speech. Unlike in the US where journalists enjoy certain privileges under the First Amendment, you and I enjoy the same freedom in India. Of course, when you were an MLA, you enjoyed certain special privileges about what you said in the House. Now, both of us are on the same wavelength.

When you were released on bail hours after you were arrested for your speech in which you poured scorn on Muslims, I realised how lucky you are to have the name PC George! Munawar Faruqui was not that lucky.

He is a stand-up comedian. Like you, he was also arrested on a complaint made by a so-called votary of Hinduism. The most ridiculous aspect of his arrest was that he never made any derogatory comments on Hindu icons. Do you know how many days he had to spend in jail? Thirty-five days! 

You would have heard about a Delhi journalist from Kerala. His name is Siddique Kappan. He was a hitchhiker. He got a free ride in a vehicle going to Hathras in Uttar Pradesh where a girl belonging to a Scheduled Caste was gang-raped by four upper caste men and her body was burnt.

The police stopped the car in which Kappan was hitchhiking and he was arrested. I could have understood if he was arrested for revealing state secrets or for inciting his readers to turn against the government. The fact is that he could not even reach Hathras, let alone write a word about the gang-rape.

He became the first journalist to be arrested for not writing a report. Do you know what the difference is between you and these two persons? They did not cause any religious hurt whereas you caused it and you are not even remorseful.

I know you made amends for your statement on Lulu Mall proprietor M. A. Yusuff Ali. You claimed that he had set up malls in Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram as he wanted money from Christians and Hindus whereas he wanted Muslim establishments in Muslim-majority areas like Malappuram to prosper.

You had no clue that Yusuff Ali has better connections with Prime Minister Narendra Modi than you can ever have. He is also investing heavily in Yogi Adityanath’s Uttar Pradesh. He is a businessman who believes that customers are king. He can never be choosy when it comes to business.

Yusuff Ali also has the resources to sue you in a court of law and seek millions of rupees as compensation. That is why you ate your own words. Your latter-day BJP friends would also have advised you that your comments on Yusuff Ali would not have been taken kindly by the ruling establishment.

In your controversial speech, you claimed that Muslim restauranteurs would put a drop of some liquid in the tea served to non-Muslims which would sterilise them. Did you ever taste such tea laced with that drop? What is the name of the medicine used? What are the chemicals used to make that dose? Who makes it and distributes it? As a former MLA, don’t you have the duty to inform the Modi government about the Muslims’ sterilisation programme?

Did you say those things based on hearsay? Don’t you know that spreading rumours is a crime? If you are sure about the facts, you should start a crusade against the sterilisation of Hindus and Christians. Otherwise, you should shut your mouth.

Muslims are one of the poorest communities in India. If you have any doubt, you can read the Sachar Committee report, drafted mostly by Prof TK Oommen, and you will know that their condition is worse than that of Scheduled Castes. In Kerala, there are islands of Muslim progress. That is because they are enterprising and have taken to modern education.

You lament the fact that Muslim restaurants attract customers in large numbers whereas Hindu restaurants do not attract many. People choose restaurants to have the best food at the most affordable prices. Yes, there are people like me who prefer restaurants with names like Arya Bhavan, Saravana Bhavan etc because my favourite dish is masala dosa.

In my childhood, my favourite restaurant was Evergreen at Pathanamthitta. Occasionally, my father would give me some money to have two porotta, a mutton curry and a cup of tea for 102 paise. It was started by a Muslim from northern Kerala. The restaurant became a huge success because the food was tasty.

In Delhi’s Saravana Bhavan, you have to stand in a queue to enter. The customers won’t even know that its owner had an eye on a young girl and he got her husband, a Christian, murdered. All his money could not save him from death in jail. Even I go to the restaurant because I like the vegetarian food there.

I never in my life went to a restaurant because it is a Christian-owned one. One of the few places in Delhi where beef, which is buffalo meat, was available was Kerala House restaurant. Your latter-day friends vandalised the restaurant based on hearsay that cow meat was sold there.

You were given bail on the condition that you would not make such objectionable comments thereafter. However, I heard you telling a television channel that you stood by your statements. Ordinarily, your bail should have been cancelled and you should have been arrested. 

You are just an ex-MLA whereas Jignesh Mevani is a sitting MLA in Gujarat. Unlike you who claim to be a Syrian Christian, he belongs to a Scheduled Caste. He tweeted something about the Prime Minister and on the basis of a complaint filed in Assam, he was arrested by the Assam Police and spirited away to Assam.

Was he shown any courtesy by the Assam Police? When the magistrate found that it was a bailable offence and he was released, a fabricated case was lodged against him by a police woman, who alleged that he misbehaved with her while he was in police custody. Fortunately, the magistrate saw through the game and he was given bail in this case also.

In contrast, how did the police treat you? As per your own admission, the police arrived at your house and they waited till you had your ablutions and breakfast. Was any such courtesy shown to Mevani, who only criticised the Prime Minister, whereas you tried to cause enormous damage to a whole community?

The record of your speech is sufficient to punish you. Yet, you were allowed to travel in your own limousine and that, too, in the company of your son. You travelled as if you were the Governor of Kerala with police accompanying you. Worse, you were allowed to receive greetings and blessings from Sangh Parivar cadres on the way as if you were the lyncher in Jharkhand who lynched to death a Muslim trader.

In Jharkhand, among those who garlanded the lyncher after he obtained bail was a minister in Modi’s government, whose father was once Union finance minister. I saw how agitated a Union minister was when he was not allowed to meet you while you were in police custody.

You always utter the word “terrorists” in the context of Muslims. Do you know which was the greatest terrorist incident in independent India? It was the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. There are MPs and MLAs who speak in praise of his assassin and there are people who build temples for the killer. 

Terrorism has no religion but you equate it with Islam. I heard you supporting a bishop who said love jihad was a reality. The BJP-appointed Minorities Commission chairman has repudiated such claims and said there was no evidence of love jihad. Will you make amends? No, you will not because Love Jihad is a BJP-construct!

I heard you claim that you made the speech in an auditorium where only Hindus were invited. And only Hindus could have objected to your speech. It is sheer hypocrisy. A person should have the courage to speak the truth everywhere. Do you think you can say any nonsense when you are in the company of certain people?

If you read newspapers you would have read about the Dharam Sansad (Hindu Parliament) held at Haridwar where some Sanyasis exhorted the assembled to kill Muslims. One of them specifically suggested that Muslims should be treated like the way the Rohingyas were treated by the Myanmarese.

The argument in their defence was the same argument that you made. That they made the speeches in a closed room where only Hindus were present. If some of them, encouraged by the speeches, started implementing the strategy, how would the situation be? Exhortation to violence is condemnable and punishable whether it is made in a closed room or in a maidan. As a politician you should have known this.

I know how uncomfortable you are without the trappings of a legislator. Now that neither the UDF nor the LDF wants to touch you even with a barge pole, you want to be in the good books of the BJP and get some post.

You have no understanding of the ideology that spurs the Sangh Parivar. You should read MS Golwalkar’s book “We, or our Nationhood Defined”. He was one of the founders of the RSS and its greatest theoretician. 

This is what he said, “The non-Hindu peoples in Hindusthan must either adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no idea but those of glorification of the Hindu race and culture — in one word they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country, wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation, claiming nothing, deserving no privileges, far less preferential treatment—not even citizen’s rights.”

You are not the only one suffering from Islamophobia. All such persons should realise that a country where Muslims are in danger is not safe for Christians either. Why Christians only? It will be dangerous for many others too. You were seen praising the Union minister because he tried to meet you while you were in police custody.

I do not know whether he met you after you were released on bail. Actually, I want you to join the BJP. Then you will know how different the party is from the Kerala Congress where you had your political baptism. I have heard you attacking KM Mani. 

Try doing that to Modi or even state party chief Surendran. Then you will know whether you will be treated differently from the Gujarat MLA. You will also see how Central agencies like the ED come knocking on your doors. 

They will not be like Pinarayi Vijayan’s police who will wait outside your drawing room as you have a leisurely bath. 

One of the Christian virtues is atonement. You have hurt a whole community for your petty political reasons. You can find out how KJ Alphons is treated in the BJP. Your fate will also be the same. If you think otherwise, you are sadly mistaken. No flower will ever bloom in Akeldama. Judas did not know that a betrayer will always be a betrayer. If there is some decency left in you, you should withdraw your statements against the Muslim community.

Yours etc

ajphilip@gmail.com