Ever since the release of the film The Kerala Story, social media has been abuzz with stories of communal harmony and unity from the state of Kerala. This is our initiative to highlight some of these stories.
Sreedharan was less than a year old when he was adopted by Thennadan Subaida, a pious Muslim woman from Nilambur’s Kalikavu village in Malappuram. She raised him as her own, even as she refused to bring him into the fold of Islam. On Monday, May 8, he shared a Facebook post alongside a photo of Subaida, who passed away in June 2019, calling her “an irreplaceable gift from god”.
What is this sacred bond between a Hindu man and a Muslim woman from two different generations, one may wonder. The answer lies in a heartwarming tale of motherly love and kindness, and a firm understanding that religion does not define a person.
After the sudden death of Sreedharan’s mother Chakki, who was more of a friend to Subaida than a domestic worker at her house, Subaida couldn’t bear to see baby Sreedharan and his sisters Ramani and Leela grow up without a mother. Thus, secure in the knowledge that her husband Abdul Aziz Haji would not find fault with her decision, she brought the three children home, where she began to foster them.
Subaida and Aziz Haji already had two biological sons at this point – Shanavas, and Jafer – and she would go on to give birth to a daughter in the years to come. But that did not deter the couple from raising Sreedharan and his sisters as their own children, who still refer to them as umma and uppa ( terms for mother and father respectively, in Malayalam, commonly used by Muslims).
“When I shared the news of my umma’s passing, some of you had doubts. Even when I posted a picture of me wearing a taqiyah, there were doubts if a Muslim man could be named Sreedharan. My mother died when I was about a year old. I have two sisters. I had a father too. The very day my mother died, this umma and uppa brought us to their house. They gave us an education, just like they did for their own children. When my sisters reached a marriageable age, it was uppa and umma who married them off. Having kids of their own did not stop them from taking us in. They had three kids. Even though they adopted us at a young age, they did not try to convert us to their religion. People say that an adoptive mother can never match up with one’s biological mother. But she was never an ‘adoptive mother’ to us, she was truly our mother,” Sreedharan once wrote on Facebook when faced with questions about his identity and intentions after he shared the news of Subaida’s demise on the social media platform.
Sreedharan with his uppa Abdul Aziz Haji
Sreedharan later told TNM that he had once asked his adoptive parents why they didn’t bring him into the fold of Islam. “Their first response was concern. They asked me if someone had said something bad to me. After I reassured them, they explained to me that we should not let religion define anyone. They said that all religions are essentially preaching the same thing — to love and help people and that it is human beings who interpret these teachings wrongly,” he recalled.
This family’s heartwarming story was recently adapted into a film by the name Ennu Swantham Sreedharan (With Love Sreedharan). Director Siddik Paravoor told TNM that he made the film to bring more people’s attention to her story, and to let them know that there are people who value love and kindness above religion and prejudices. “People are inherently good. But sometimes we need stories like these to remind them of that goodness. Subaida deserves to be remembered, and her story, repeatedly told,” he said.