By Express News Service

KOCHI: Urging Kerala society to deliberate over the brutal murder of a tribal youth during his struggle to sate his hunger, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said writers should promote a culture of love and affection towards humanity.

“Can a society that kills a man struggling to get a square meal be called culturally literate? All Keralites should ask this question to their inner mind and debate this. Such questions will help remove the darkness and bring the light of wisdom to the mind,” he said, while inaugurating the Krithi International Book Festival organised by the Sahitya Pravarthaka Cooperative Society (SPCS) at Marine Drive here on Thursday.“There are attempts to lead the society backwards,” he said.

“Cultural programmes like book fairs should try to oppose the efforts to lead the state to darkness. We should promote the culture of love and affection towards humanity. We should think of society. If we lose that concern towards society, the world will not consider us culturally literate.”

“We are living in times where writers and artists are attacked and murdered for expressing their opinions. The attacks on M F Hussain, Anand Patwardhan, Kancha Ilaiah, A K Ramanujan, Wendy Doniger, Govind Pansare, Narendra Dabholkar, Gauri Lankesh and M M Kalburgi demand vigilant intervention by the society to protect the freedom of expression. This makes the book fair more relevant,” he said.

Book fairs should help develop the culture of reading and reasoning among society and nurture compassion, said Pinarayi.

“Kerala stands apart from other states due to high literacy, education standards and healthcare facility,” he said.“The reformation movement has helped bring cultural awakening and we should strive to protect this heritage. We should oppose the move bring back superstitions and bizarre rituals of the bygone era.”

Minister for Cooperation, Tourism and Devaswom Kadakampally Surendran presided over the inaugural function. Minister for Ports Kadannappally Ramachandran, Kerala Sahitya Akademi president Vaisakhan, MLAs Hibi Eden, John Fernandez, K V Thomas MP, Mayor Soumini Jain, former ministers M A Baby, S Sarma, former MP M P Veerendra Kumar, GCDA chairman C N Mohanan, Lulu Group managing director M A Yousuf Ali, Philip Mathew, SPCS president Ezhacheri Ramachandran and others participated.