The Muslim Students Federation (MSF) is calling for a boycott of 'Kerala Story 2' and questioning the Students Federation of India's (SFI) planned beef fest as a form of protest against the film, citing concerns about hurting religious sentiments.
'It was very clear in the Parliament election that there was an erosion of Hindu votes in southern Kerala from the CPI-M to the BJP.'
The current situation in Kerala politics is perhaps best described as a case of the state's traditional two front politics now seeing a third front (the BJP) muscling in with the potential outcome being either a messy three front affair or a renewed endorsement of the two front pattern but with one of the old fronts compromised or quashed, observes Shyam G Menon.
'In his first speech in Parliament, Modi spoke about the slavery of 1,400 years, and though he didn't say in so many words, the meaning was that he had come to re-establish a Hindu Rashtra.'
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
'While the Congressmen were fighting, the LDF was quietly doing its job, perhaps bringing in results in the lives of the people.' 'Pinarayi Vijayan and several ministers in his cabinet believed that the government should do real business, which is not to fight with the UDF but govern.'
'What The Kerala Story is trying to do is take the fake hate propaganda which we saw earlier only on WhatsApp to the big screen now.'
'Bharat is a name that is 7000 years old.' 'We are not saying the name of the country should be changed from India to Bharat; we only recommended that the stress should be on Bharat.'
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
'They thought he can separate the Muslim votes and win, but the Kerala mind is completely different.' 'It is a secular mind because Hindus, Christians and Muslims live together.' 'We don't like somebody coming from outside, contesting in our state, winning and going and avoiding us.'
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
It seems the Congress just does not have the energy and vitality to break through even in the states where it has a ground presence and the wind of anti-incumbency on its back, says Aakar Patel.
It is to Vajpayee's credit that he told Dilip Kumar to ignore Thackeray and to follow his own conscience. But the episode -- as indeed, the manner in which Dilip Kumar has been made to pay for being a Muslim throughout his life -- shames us all as Indians, says Vir Sanghvi.
'The path of militant Hindutva that the BJP's national leadership chose as its main electoral plank literally dug the grave for the party in Kerala,' says M K Bhadrakumar.
'Why would the Communists do this? I have three possible answers: One, they are specifically opposed to the Global Education Meet that the ambassador organised. Two, they are beginning to realise their days are numbered in Kerala. Three, the standard modus operandi of leftists is anarchism because they are not constrained by any codes of ethics. Roughly, the bad, the good, and the ugly,' says Rajeev Srinivasan.