Thiruvananthapuram, July 24: Trust the Ode to the Sea to kick up a storm. But the ripples have nothing to do with lord of the waves Poseidon. The poem, part of a literature textbook for undergraduate students in colleges under the University of Calicut, Kerala, has been written by Ibrahim al-Rubaish. Al-Rubaish, also known as Ibrahim Sulayman Mohammed Arbaysh, is a former inmate of Guantanamo Bay detention camp. That’s the detention and interrogation centre where the George Bush administration held suspected terrorists. According to a Guantanamo Docket on The New York Times website, al-Rubaish was assessed as an al Qaida member who travelled to Afghanistan intent on training for jihad in Chechnya, but stayed and joined the Taliban. He was seen as a “medium risk” and thought to pose a threat to the US, its interests and its allies. University authorities are at a loss to explain how the poem, included in the textbook Literature and Contemporary Issues for third-semester undergraduate students of the Kozhikode university, passed the scrutiny of the academic council. “It is a serious matter. The university should withdraw the book and apologise. Only a detailed probe will unravel the conspiracy behind this and expose terror sympathisers in the board of studies and academic council that drew up and approved the book,” said A. Vinod, state unit convener, Shiksha Bachao Andolan (Save Education Forum). Vice-chancellor M. Abdul Salam yesterday asked the dean of languages and visiting professor M.M. Basheer to look into the issue and report within a week. “It looks perfectly innocuous at first glance. But a deeper reading would convey that the author has used symbolisms that can be interpreted as quite dangerous. He uses words like faithless, which is the English equivalent of the Arabic word kafir. A check on the Internet has also revealed that he has even exhorted war against the US…. I’m of the view that our students won’t lose anything if they are not taught the poem,” Basheer said from Kozhikode. Basheer said he wouldn’t blame those who compiled the book. “The book was drawn up about two years earlier, I believe they too went only by its literary content.” The book was edited by T.Y. Aravindakshan and C.R. Murukan Babu, both members of the university board of studies. Varsity sources said the board had been formed when the Left was in power and has since been reconstituted. “At the time of preparing the book one and a half years ago, there was not much material available online about the author…. Now I find there is a lot of material on him on the web. We wouldn’t have gone ahead had we found anything to suggest hidden links or political overtones,” Babu, treasurer of a pro-CPM association of college teachers, said. Ode to the Sea is part of a compilation of 22 poems by Guantanamo detainees. It was brought out in 2007 under the title Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. A check on the Net shows that al-Rubaish was captured by Pakistani troops from near the Afghan border in 2001 and handed over to the US, which sent him to the Cuba detention centre where he was held till 2006. He was then transferred to Saudi Arabia, from where he is said to have escaped to Yemen in 2009. Other poets whose works have been included in the varsity textbook include Pablo Neruda, Sylvia Plath and Kamala Das.
Posted on: Thu, 25 Jul 2013 04:36:56 +0000
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