Former Supreme Court judge Justice Markandey Katju has hailed people of Kerala as “the real Indians”.
Justice Katju made this remark in a Facebook post that he put up on Thursday.
Explaining as to what makes him think so; Justice Katju said that the Malayalis deserve this title as they have in them "the quintessential qualities of Indians".
The qualities, according to Justice Katju, are based on the belief to "live united and in harmony" with one another.
Justice Katju further added that Kerala is one place where one can find people from different races, castes and lineage and that this state has "openness to external influence" which is something the rest of India must try "to emulate".
“I regard Kerala as the real India because it represents a microcosm of India. As I said, India is broadly a country of immigrants. the essential quality of Kerala is its openness to external influence--Dravidians, Aryans, Romans, Arabs, British, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Marxists, etc,” Justice Katju wrote in his Facebook post.
“Keralites are great travellers, and everywhere in the globe one will find Keralites. There is a joke that when the American astronaut Neil Armstrong landed on the moon on 1969 he found a Keralite there offering to sell him tea. There was never any tradition in Kerala against travelling abroad, nor of ritual defilement for crossing the 'kala pani ' as among many communities in North India,” he added.
