Malvika Sharma asked about beef in Kerala: How the state’s Islamised media ecosystem normalises provocations against Hindus and mocks their faith

· OpIndia

There is something deeply revealing about the question asked to actor Malvika Sharma during her first interaction with the Kerala media. She had travelled to the state to promote Khalifa, her Malayalam debut. Yet, barely minutes into the interaction, a reporter asked her: “Did you like beef?”

Malvika, visibly taken aback, replied that she was a vegetarian and therefore had not tried it. The exchange subsequently went viral. And the obvious question is: why was beef the question that a reporter thought was worth asking an actress who had come to Kerala to promote a film?

The question matters because it fits into a wider cultural pattern in Kerala: beef is not merely treated as food by sections of the political-media ecosystem; it is presented as a badge of secularism, progressivism and opposition to Hindu nationalism. The Malvika episode therefore looks less like an innocent food question and more like an attempt to normalise beef consumption as a cultural marker while putting a Hindu celebrity on the spot.

That is the real problem. The issue is not what another person chooses to eat. The issue is the deliberate cultural signalling involved in making beef the first question posed to a Maharashtra-born actress during a promotional interaction in Kerala, and then hoping her response could garner eyeballs and normalise the consumption of beef among Hindus.

When beef becomes an ideological performance

Modern digital media has discovered a simple formula: identify a cultural fault line, push a celebrity towards it, record the reaction and allow social media to do the rest. In Kerala, beef has long been weaponised in precisely this manner. It is portrayed not merely as cuisine but as a statement: eat beef, therefore you are progressive; object to it, therefore you are a “Sanghi”.

Perhaps the reporter wanted engagement. Perhaps the question was deliberately provocative. Either way, the outcome is the same: Hindu religious sentiment is converted into entertainment while beef consumption is presented as something that a Hindu celebrity ought to be asked to publicly account for.

Now reverse the question. Suppose a journalist had asked a celebrity in a public interaction whether he had eaten pork. Would the same people who are now silent have treated it as a harmless food question? Or would the familiar ecosystem of Left commentators, activists and social-media outrage merchants have descended upon the journalist, accusing him of communalism, bigotry and dehumanising Muslims?

The fact that there has been no comparable outrage over the Malvika episode tells us much about the selective standards of India’s self-styled secular ecosystem. When a Muslim’s religious sensitivities are perceived to have been touched, the outrage machinery can be immediate and ferocious. When the target is a Hindu, the same ecosystem often discovers the virtues of humour, free speech and “local culture”.

That is not principled secularism. It is a hierarchy of sensitivities in which Hindus are expected to keep their religious beliefs sacrosanct only in private, while public expressions of those beliefs are treated as obstacles to progressive politics.

Kerala’s media space is increasingly an ideological battlefield

There is a broader cultural phenomenon here that deserves discussion. Kerala’s media space is not ideologically neutral. Like the state’s politics, its media ecosystem contains strong ideological currents, including organisations and commentators influenced by Islamist politics. It would be intellectually dishonest to pretend that these currents have no influence on the way religion, identity and Hindu customs are discussed.

Beef has increasingly acquired a meaning far beyond food. It has become a political symbol used to mock Hindu reverence for the cow and to signal opposition to the BJP, the RSS and Hindutva. Beef-parotta is routinely presented in sections of the discourse as a badge of Kerala’s secular credentials, while Hindus who object to cow slaughter are caricatured as communal or backward.

This is precisely how cultural normalisation works. Repetition turns provocation into ordinary conversation. A Hindu’s discomfort is first mocked, then dismissed, then portrayed as proof of his alleged intolerance. Eventually, the very act of objecting to the mockery becomes the offence.

And the Malvika Sharma episode fits neatly into that pattern.

Kerala’s deeper problem with religious extremism

This discussion cannot be divorced from Kerala’s history of religious extremism. It is the same state where a Congress leader had slaughtered a cow to protest against the government’s notification to restrict the sale of cattle in the markets for slaughter purposes.

The most haunting example is Professor T.J. Joseph.

In 2010, Joseph, then a professor at Newman College in Thodupuzha, became the target of a brutal attack after a question he prepared for a college examination was interpreted by radical elements as insulting the Prophet Muhammad. On July 4, 2010, a group attacked him and chopped off his right hand. The subsequent investigation and prosecution established the involvement of members of the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI).

The case was not merely an assault on one individual. It represented an attempt to enforce a religious verdict through violence.

In 2023, a Special NIA Court convicted six people in the second phase of the trial. Three—Sajil, M.K. Nasar and K.A. Najeeb—were sentenced to life imprisonment, while three others received three-year prison terms. The court described the violence as a terrorist act and said it amounted to an attempt to establish a parallel religious judicial system.

That is an important distinction.

Religious extremism is not merely about someone holding conservative beliefs. It becomes a grave threat when individuals believe their religious interpretation gives them the authority to punish another citizen outside the constitutional and legal system.

Joseph’s story is especially powerful because the physical attack was only one part of his suffering.

His English-language memoir, A Thousand Cuts: An Innocent Question and Deadly Answers, documents the consequences of the controversy and the isolation he experienced afterwards. Penguin describes the book as an account of a man who survived the attack but was subsequently deprived of his livelihood and isolated by his own community.

His wife Salomi eventually died by suicide in 2014, after years of financial, emotional and social turmoil surrounding the controversy.

Joseph’s own conclusion is perhaps more important than any political interpretation imposed upon his story: religious fundamentalism itself is the problem.

That lesson should not be selectively applied.

The T.J. Joseph case shows where unchecked religious extremism can lead

If Kerala’s media is genuinely committed to pluralism, it must confront religious extremism wherever it originates. The T.J. Joseph case remains one of the most disturbing reminders of what unchecked religious fanaticism can produce.

The Kerala media slanders a Hindu activist defending himself against political killings as extremist while contextualising violence perpetrated by Islamists belonging to banned PFI and other such organisations.

The ideological label should follow the conduct, not the religion of the perpetrator.

This is where the media’s vocabulary becomes important.

There is a growing tendency in ideological discourse to describe violence against Hindu nationalist activists primarily through the vocabulary of “political rivalry”, “clashes”, “local disputes” or “hooliganism”. Yet when the ideological motivation is Islamic extremism, sanitising the description serves nobody.

A media ecosystem that selectively applies these standards is not protecting society from extremism. It is protecting an ideological narrative from scrutiny.

Malvika Sharma was asked a question. The silence that followed is the bigger story

The most revealing part of the Malvika Sharma episode is not merely that the question was asked. It is the silence afterwards.

If a journalist had asked a celebrity whether he had consumed pork, the Left ecosystem would almost certainly have discovered its outrage vocabulary. The journalist would be branded communal, hateful, Islamophobic and worse. Social-media campaigns would follow. Think-piece after think-piece would explain why such a question was “dehumanising”.

But ask a Hindu-origin actress about beef within minutes of meeting her for a film promotion, and there is silence.

That silence exposes the double standard.

The same ecosystem that lectures Hindus about tolerance rarely asks why Hindus alone are expected to tolerate repeated provocations to their faith. A Hindu is expected to laugh when his religious symbols are mocked, remain silent when his festivals are stripped of their religious character, and demonstrate his liberal credentials by showing indifference to practices that offend his beliefs.

Meanwhile, religious boundaries asserted by other communities are often treated as matters requiring accommodation.

Consider the recent Nilavilakku controversy. IUML MLA Fathima Thahiliya was criticised after lighting a traditional lamp at a restaurant inauguration, while Samastha’s Central Mushawara said Muslims should refrain from participating in practices associated with other faiths and described such participation as religiously problematic.

That episode is revealing for another reason. Religious communities are entitled to preserve their doctrinal boundaries. But if one community’s religious boundaries are treated as legitimate while the majority’s religious sentiments are routinely subjected to ridicule, the result is not harmony. It is asymmetry.

This is why the Malvika Sharma episode cannot be dismissed as merely a silly question. It is symptomatic of a culture in which provoking Hindu sentiment has become a form of ideological performance.

The objective is not necessarily to make every Malayali eat beef. It is to make beef consumption culturally unremarkable, politically fashionable and, eventually, a weapon with which to taunt Hindus who refuse to treat the cow as merely another animal.

That is the larger ideological project.

And the Left’s silence is part of the story.

India’s secularism cannot survive if it demands that only Hindus constantly prove their liberal credentials by surrendering their religious sensitivities. A civilisation in which one community is repeatedly told to accommodate while its own beliefs are mocked is not becoming more tolerant. It is merely teaching one side that its sentiments do not matter.

The Malvika Sharma episode should therefore be remembered not because a reporter asked an awkward question, but because it exposes the cultural climate in which such a question could be considered normal, amusing or newsworthy in the first place.

Kerala’s media has every right to question politicians, actors and public figures. It has every right to challenge religious beliefs. But if it wants to claim the moral high ground of journalism, it must abandon the habit of treating Hindu sentiment as uniquely disposable.

Professor T.J. Joseph’s story reminds us of the end of religious intolerance: when accusations of blasphemy become a justification for physical violence. The Malvika episode is obviously nowhere near that level. But between violent extremism and a harmless joke lies a vast cultural territory where religious contempt can be normalised, one provocation at a time.

That is precisely why such incidents deserve scrutiny.

When a Hindu’s faith is repeatedly made into a punchline, the problem is not that Hindus have suddenly become too sensitive. The problem is that a section of India’s ideological establishment has become far too comfortable with attacking the very idea that Hindus are entitled to take their own faith seriously.

And instead of calling out dangerous Islamist extremism for what it is, the state’s media ecosystem has repeatedly cosseted and legitimised Islamists. This indulgence has only emboldened them to continue their increasingly depraved provocations, gradually creating a culture in which mocking and denigrating Hindus and their religious beliefs is treated as acceptable.

That is not pluralism. It is selective contempt dressed up as progressivism.

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