Like most Malayalis, I too grew up hearing a few lines from Vallathol Narayana Menon's celebrated poetic work Sahityamanjari. Let me quote: "Bharatham enna per kettal abhimana pooritam akanam antarangam,/ Keralam ennu kettal tilaykkanam chora namukku njarambukalil."

Loosely translated, the lines mean: "On hearing the word 'Bharat,' our hearts should swell with pride; on hearing 'Keralam,' the very blood in our veins should surge with passion." By the way, these lines were tweeted by the President of India, Draupadi Murmu, on January 29, 2021.

Now, my readers can imagine why I was upset by a speech made by Nitesh Narayan Rane, Maharashtra's Minister for Port Development. The occasion was the anniversary of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj killing Afzal Khan. The Shiv Pratap Din celebration was once banned by the Maharashtra government as it had become a forum for demonising Muslims, but it was revived in 2022 by Eknath Shinde, the then Chief Minister.

Rane was in the news early last year when he threatened Muslims to send them packing. He does not know what to say or what not to say. His hatred for minorities, especially Muslims, comes out whenever he opens his mouth. When cases were filed against him, his father, former Chief Minister Narayan Rane, advised him to be more careful with his words. He also told him that not all Muslims were bad.

This time, too, he jumped the gun and said that Kerala has become a "Mini Pakistan" and Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra won from Wayanad with terrorist votes. When criticised for his remarks, he came out with an explanation reiterating his stand.

For the record, Rahul Gandhi won the 2024 Lok Sabha elections from Wayanad with a margin of 3.6 lakh votes. In the by-election held in November, the seat was retained by the Congress, with its candidate Priyanka Gandhi Vadra winning with a higher margin of 4.1 lakh votes. On both occasions, the BJP came a distant third. How could Rane even imagine that "terrorists" had such strength in Wayanad to get their "candidates" elected with such huge margins?

By the way, in the 2024 elections, Rahul Gandhi also won from Rae Bareli in Uttar Pradesh, where Yogi Adityanath, the Bulldozer Maharaja, is Chief Minister. He won the seat by a huge margin of 3.9 lakh votes. Will Rane attribute this victory to the terrorists?

In contrast, Prime Minister Narendra Modi won by a margin of 1.51 lakh votes, defeating Congress' Ajay Rai. In 2019, he defeated the same candidate by a margin of 4.79 lakh votes. In fact, Modi trailed behind Rai at one point during the counting. If the Congress had fielded Priyanka Gandhi against him, the result could have been quite different.

Rane is unmindful of facts as he believes more in fiction. He says he was accompanied by a "gentleman" who saved 12,000 Hindu Malayali women from "terrorists." He is certainly worthy of eulogising. The whole world would like to know how he achieved this feat. How did he come to know these women were becoming victims of Love Jihad? And what exactly did he do?

Alas, Rane is not ready to disclose the name while quoting this character to claim that Kerala is indeed a Mini Pakistan. That is one problem Goebbels-like characters face. They make fantastic claims without an iota of truth. But then, this is how lies are spread in the world.

A few years ago, a film titled The Kerala Story was released. The Central government did everything to promote the film as if it were Battleship Potemkin, which turns 100 this year. The film features Fatima Ba, a Hindu Malayali nurse who converted to Islam and joined the Islamic State (IS) before ending up in an Afghan jail. She claimed to be one of 32,000 girls from Hindu and Christian communities who are missing from Kerala and have been recruited into the Islamic State after being converted to Islam.

The figure was alarming. When director Sudipto Sen could not avoid confronting the truth in a court of law, he admitted the figures were imaginary. Kerala society knew of only one Hindu woman and two Christian women joining the Islamic State after their marriages.

In fact, the Islamic State (IS) could not attract more than 100 people from all over India. That is from a population of 1.3 billion. Yet, in the hands of the BJP propagandists, three became 32,000 to slam the state.

In 2024, Wayanad was not the only constituency that went to polls. Among the 20, Thrissur was snatched by the BJP. Was it because the "terrorists" in Thrissur voted en masse for Suresh Gopi? Forget Thrissur—in November, by-elections were held for two parliamentary constituencies: Wayanad in Kerala and Nanded in Maharashtra.

I do not have to mention that the BJP-Shiv Sena-NCP alliance, called Mahayuti, swept the polls in Maharashtra. Nobody expected the alliance to do so well. There are many explanations for the result. It was then Chief Minister Eknath Shinde's plan to introduce a monthly financial dole to poor women voters, with a promise to increase the amount to ?2,100, that hugely tilted the balance.

My point is that when a pro-Mahayuti wave swept the state, the voters of Nanded chose the Congress. I wish Rane had explained it as the victory of the "terrorists." Additionally, would he agree to call Nanded a Mini Pakistan?

In his explanation, Rane claimed he was not the first to link "terrorists" with the election of Rahul and Priyanka in Wayanad. Vijayaraghavan, one of the CPM's top leaders and a member of the Politburo was the first to assert that Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi won only because of the support of forces like the Jamaat Islami.

I watched a video clipping of him making fun of the Leader of Opposition. I thought Vijayaraghavan was a sensible person until he attributed Priyanka's victory to Muslim extremist groups.

I can understand why the CPM is upset. It could not win a single seat in the state. Of course, its manoeuvrings helped the BJP open its account in the Lok Sabha from the state. As for the Muslim League, the first time the party got representation in the government was when CPM leader EMS Namboothiripad gave ministerial berths to CH Mohammed Koya and MPM Ahammad Kurickal in his government in 1967.

Does Vijayaraghavan remember that when Kozhikode University was set up by the EMS ministry, it was portrayed as an attempt to Islamise university education? On January 1, while I was driving in Delhi, I heard the news on the radio that a new district, Vav-Tharad, had been carved out of Banaskantha district in Gujarat.

Hundreds of districts have been formed in India during the 75 years of Independence. Does Vijayaraghavan remember how the Sangh Parivar reacted to the formation of the Malappuram district in 1969? No less a person than K. Kelappan protested against EMS' decision, saying it would become a "Mini Pakistan."

One young leader from Delhi courted arrest while participating in protests against the formation of Malappuram. He was Madan Lal Khurana, who later became Chief Minister of Delhi. He would surely recall how Parivar organs like the Organiser claimed Malappuram, with its vast coastline, would have maritime links with Pakistan and that Kerala would soon become part of Pakistan.

Malappuram is still maligned for communal reasons. For instance, when an elephant was killed, Maneka Gandhi rose to the occasion and slammed Malappuram. I wrote an open letter to her pointing out that the elephant was not killed in Malappuram, though the report was datelined Malappuram.

Do such critics know that Malappuram is known for many other things? When it comes to football, no other district is as crazy as Malappuram. For every supporter of Lionel Messi, there is a supporter of Cristiano Ronaldo.

The district holds a record in India: it has more trained volunteers in palliative care than the entire country. Recently, I read about a Muslim girl from the district who topped the CA examination in the state. Women from Malappuram have shattered many myths. What transformed the people was the spread of education.

As I worried about the slur Rane made against Wayanad, where I have many friends and relatives, a friend and former Vice-Chancellor of my alma mater, Kerala University, Dr. Jayakrishnan, sent me a video clipping. It was from an episode titled Joe-Metric View, telecast on YouTube. It dealt with India's first-ever multidimensional poverty index report.

It mentioned that the district of Kottayam in Kerala achieved a feat even the US could not have: the multidimensional poverty index in the district was Zero. The best performers were Kerala (0.71), Puducherry (1.72), and Goa (3.76). The worst performers were Madhya Pradesh (36.65), Uttar Pradesh (37.79), Jharkhand (42.16), and Bihar (51.91). The national average was 25.01. In other words, every fourth Indian is multidimensionally poor.

This is not the finding of an NGO. The index was prepared by NITI Aayog, set up by Narendra Modi after he came to power in 2014 to replace the Nehruvian Planning Commission. Joe A. Scaria, who did the story, explains why Kottayam has zero poverty, whereas Shravasti, a district in UP bordering Nepal, has 74.38 per cent poverty.

Shravasti was said to be the capital of the Kingdom of Kosala in the sixth century BCE. Why is it so poor, and why is Kottayam different? Kottayam had the first college, CMS College, in 1817, fifteen years before Wilson College came up in Bombay. Small wonder it produced a President in KR Narayanan, a Chief Justice of India in KG Balakrishnan, a physicist who narrowly missed the Nobel in ECG Sudarshan, and a Booker Prize winner in Arundhati Roy—all of whom I have met or interviewed. My friend Omchery also studied at CMS.

In 1989, Kottayam became the first district in India to achieve full literacy. Joe Scaria believes it is the compassion quotient, along with education, that ended poverty in Kottayam. For instance, there is one PU Thomas, a person of modest means, who has been giving free food to nearly 5,000 people daily at Kottayam Medical College. It costs him ?1.1 lakh per day, for which those who can afford it chip in. That is how Kottayam achieved its success.

The other day, a 104-year-old woman named Kuttiyamma passed a competitive exam, scoring 89 marks out of 100.

Rane may call Kerala a Mini Pakistan, but nowhere else in the country are daily wage earners paid as much as in Kerala. In India's capital, where I live, the minimum wage is ?695. It is a different matter that workers are not always paid this amount. In Gujarat, from where the Prime Minister and Home Minister hail, the minimum wage is only ?452. It is in this state that Ambani hosted a wedding reception featuring 1,000 dishes. In contrast, the minimum wage in Kerala is around ?1,000.

It is not just money that attracts people from states like Bihar, Assam, West Bengal, and Odisha to Kerala. There, they won't face discrimination based on caste or religion. There may be aberrations, but for many, Kerala is truly God's Own Country. Narendra Modi stopped comparing Kerala to sub-Saharan Africa because he knows, in his heart of hearts, that Gujarat will take several decades to match Kerala's progress.

Rane's baseless rhetoric and communal jibes reflect the desperation of those who cannot match Kerala's social and economic achievements. Branding a state that leads in literacy, healthcare, and inclusivity as "Mini Pakistan" only exposes the hollowness of such propaganda.

Kerala's progress is built on education, compassion, and equality—values that challenge divisive politics. Instead of peddling hate, leaders like Rane should strive to replicate Kerala's success in their own states. As for the Vijayaraghavans, they should avoid spitting venom, lest it fall back on their own faces. Truth, after all, outlasts lies.