My Travelogue -Singapore - Part 5

Don’t Mistake This Tea Carrier for Anything Else
In the Malabar mosque my friends were waiting for me with the tea to discuss the day’s plan. It was interesting to see that the tea meant for me was kept suspended on the wall in a plastic bag, of course, but sorry to say, you will mistake it for a urine bag in hospital, and while seeing it for the first time suspended on the mosque wall, I wondered why this people have attached it in the mosque. Later I noticed that carrying tea or coffee, both hot and cold, in plastic bags and drinking it using straws is a common thing in Southeast.

A Walk through Singapore Muslims’ History
We set out for a morning walk through the Kampong Glam Muslim quarters. Starting from the busy Victoria Street and Jalan Kubur, we passed through Bugis to cross over and reach the story-telling streets named after Muslim cities - Arab Street, Basra Street, Baghdad Street, Muscat Street and Kandahar Street - ending at the imposing Sultan mosque and the Jalan Sultan where my first morning walk, which was exactly a journey to the Muslim past of the Singapore, ended with a delicious cuisine at a Malabari’s hotel.

Along with Imam Shafeeq Hudawi


Jalan Kubur is a small road with a grand and spacious cemetery of mainly Sultans and their relatives at one side and a public Muslim cemetery that is no longer in use on the other. Kampong means Village or settlement in Malay, while Glam is in reference to the Gelam tree, a variety of eucalyptus that was abundant in the area and the bark of which was used by Bugis sailors and boat builders in the Kampong to seal gaps in their bots, while its leaves have the medicinal value. The Malay aristocracy lived in the area before the British East India Company signed a treaty with Sultan Hussein Shah of Johor and Temenggong Abdul Rahman to set up a trading post in 1819. In 1822, when Raffles drew the city’s sketch, he divided the settlement among different ethnic groups like European Town, Chinese, Chulia, Arab and Bugis kampongs. He designated Kampong Glam for the Sultan and his household, in addition to the Malay and Arab communities.

Basra street leading to Sultan mosque


As a result of government’s policy interventions aimed at abolishing village settlements and eliminating ethnic congregation in certain areas, the Kampong Glam is now left with historical symbols as well as heritage shopping and eating, to tell the tale of its past. However, the government is extra conscious to preserve the buildings and streets in its true colours. Since the 1980s, several large portions of the area have been declared National Heritage sites and have been protected for conservation. In 1989, the Urban Redevelopment Authority gazetted Kampong Glam, including the Sultan Mosque, the Hajjah Fatimah Mosque and the Istana Kampong Glam, the palace of the former Sultan, as a conservation area. Moreover, the area is still a key landmark and gathering point for Singapore Muslims and it is for them, especially the Malays, what Chinatown for Chinese and Little India for Indians. The palace of Sulatan (Istana Kampong Glam ) is a heritage museum, the Malay heritage Centre, now showcasing the rich history and culture of Singapore’s Malay community.



Arab street










Sultan Mosque
Imam Shafeeq and Imam Rafeeq took me to the historic Sultan mosque, a key building and tourist attraction at the end of Bussorah Street. Largest mosque in Singapore with a 5,000 capacity for congregational prayers, the golden domed mosque has many laurels in its credit. It is the only mosque that can use a megaphone outside the mosque for the ceremonial call to the prayers and other programs. Other mosques too use the megaphone, but the sounds should be limited to the compound.

The mosque was materialized when Sultan Hussein, while signing the treaty with Raffles, negotiated to build a mosque near his palace, and the later even contributed $3000 Spanish dollars to its construction. Early in the last century the initial building underwent a reconstruction, thanks to the new design of British planner Dennis Santry who shaped the mosque in the Islamic Saracenic style with domes, minarets and balustrades. According to the information provided by tourist guides at the mosque, designs from Taj Mahal, style from Persian, Moorish, Turkish and a classical theme have been incorporated in the new structure that was completed in 1928.
Along with Imam Rafeeq Hudawi in front of Sultan Mosque

I returned to a kind of spiritual and traditional fragrance of these streets many times alone during my stay in Singapore in order to get socked in the feeling of being there a hundred or some years ago bargaining with the traders and merchants from all over the world, exchanging great cultures. What an enchanting mood was it while walking through the beautifully restored outlets selling traditional clothes and Malays medicines, artefacts, handicraft, furniture, jewelry, restaurants in addition to an extremely fitting bookshop that sells mostly sufi-oriented classic books and CDs. Muslims generally buy their headgear (or songkok), the holy Quran, prayer mats and manuals from here.

Murtabak At Zamzam
Now both the imams take me into Zamzam restaurant, one of the major destinations for tasty Halal foods, along with Victory and others. Started in the early 20th century, Zamzam is owned by a Malayali family from Kannur district of North Keala, and most of its workers are also from Kerala. As I entered the restaurant accompanying the Imams of the mosque, to whom the hotel sends packed foods many times a month, I got a privileged treatment. Makan ah? . (makan is food and the suffices like ah, lah and leh is a part of Singlish which is a mix of Malay, Mandarin, Tamil and all) They decided to let me have the taste of the special Murtabak, a must-try item in Southeast Asia, of course with all its regional varieties.

The delicious murtbak placed aesthetically

I wonder hearing the claims that Murtabak is a Malabari cuisine. For Malayalis it is easy to understand that the initial ingredient is the big ball of our Poratta, that egg-sized lump which becomes a large and smooth sheet in about the spade of a minute in the hands of an expert poratta maker. Now without cutting it, unlike what we do to make our poratta, the smooth sheet is stuffed with ground or minced mutton or chicken, chopped coriander leaves, sliced onions and beaten egg along with some other ingredients. The draped stuff will be then put in an oven to serve hot after a short time alone or along with a sauce and gravy.

tourists at Sultan mosque

In Indonesia I was served with multiple varieties of Murtaba bearing different tastes, and they have special murtaba belonging to various regions and islands, like murtaba Bandung, and they have the sweat variation of Murtaba as well. ‘Food historians’ debate the Malayali origin of Murtaba, and a googling traces its ancestry into Arabia, especially the Higaz region of Saudi Arabia. Friends there should verify this. It says Murtabak is Mutabbaq in Arabic (مطبق‎) or mutabbag meaning ‘folded’. There is also an opinion that Martabak originated in India, during the Delhi Sultanate and traders took it with them to Southeast Asia. However, to those who still value the oral history, many of my hosts wondered, whenever they served me with Murtabak, saying that how come I don’t know a food with Malabari origin.
Now I could put a full stop thinking that as neo Malayalis carried away the bugs while migrating, the old migrants carried Murtaba away and left no trace of it back in Kerala. Moreover, I got a point for my research, a historic common Arabian or Persian origin for our porotta and their Murtaba.
Inside Sultan Mosque

My Travelogue: Singapore: Part 4

After a nice and deep sleep I woke up at 4.30am to see Abdullah Haji performing the voluntary night prayer, tahajjud (the Arabic word means the struggle to get rid oneself of sleep). As we bumped in to a man in Indian blue-lined Dhoti while getting out of the lift on our way to the nearby Masjid Hajjah Fatima for Subah (early morning) prayer, Haji told me he is a Chulian. I eagerly asked what Chulia is as he repeatedly used the term. He said it is the name used in Southeast Asia for Hanafi Muslims with Indian origin.
Singapore is home to a notable number of Chulia Muslims, who came mostly as traders and money changers. The name is after the famous Chola Kingdom of Tamil Nadu along the Coromandel Coast. There is a historically important monument called Jamae Chulia Mosque, ironically established in the heart of the amusement hub of Chinatown. Built in 1826, this is the first of three Islamic heritage buildings in Chinatown. The other two are Al-Abrar Mosque and another building in the memory of Seikh Shahul Hamid, the famous Sufi scholar buried in the famous South Indian pilgrim city of Nagore. The mosque is a national monument since 1974, thanks to its typically south Indian entry gate and remarkable architectural style which is a mix of sorts.
The morning prayer at Masjid Hajjah Fatimah was the first experience on the life and culture of the ethnically mixed Muslim community of Singapore. There I met people from various backgrounds and multiple origins, Tamil, Malay, Malayali and even Chinese and Arab origin. The Imam was from Java, a clean-shaved man wearing the typical half-sleeved cream Malay shirt and colored line dhoti. His recitation of Quran was attractive, but he was doing the extra movement back and forth while reciting, a widespread habit generally picked up while memorizing the holy book, but frowned upon during the prayer which is considered nullified by deliberate extra moves according all schools of law. Almost all of the Muslims in Southeast belong to Shafi legal thought, and it is evident especially through prayer rites and rituals observed at the mosque. After the namaz, they sit longer and collectively murmur various invocations and litanies before an emotional group prayer in Arabic led by Imam, like as majority of us do in Kerala, a typical Yemeni-Hadrami tradition spread throughout South India and Southeast Asia, the major point of departure in my research project. The imam asked me to come another day when I introduced myself as a researcher on the way to his native place.
Masjid Hajjah Fatimah is a heritage mosque built by a woman on the Beach Road in the Malay enclave of Kampong Glam district. Built in 1845, the mosque was designed by British architect, John Turnbull Thomson, a fact that explains its European elements along with Islamic ones. It was named after an astute businesswoman from Malacca who married a Bugis prince from Celebes (Sulawesi), and who donated the land, on which her house formerly stood, for the mosque. Undaunted by an early widowhood, Fatima single-handedly managed a huge business through numerous vessels and prows that helped her amass a large fortune. Her only daughter Raja Siti was married by Syed Ahmad Alsagoff, son of an influential Arab trader, Syed Abdul Rahman Alsagoff. The compound of the Mosque includes the graves of Hajjah Fatimah, her daughter and son-in-law. Since 1973, Hajjah Fatimah Mosque is one of the national monuments. Today the mosque is under the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS).
The morning scenes on the way back were interesting as usual. Life was already on showing its multi colors. Various types of people were out on the pathways lined here and there amidst the housing and business complexes, cleaning workers toiling along footpaths, office and school goers, night-duty returners, brisk walkers, dog walkers, couples enjoying the breeze and shadowy climate immersed in their own world, and wrinkled elders - singles , couples and groups - out for pastime.
We walked to a nearby hawker centre passing a Chinese restaurant and a fruit-vegetable market. The smell from the Chinese food court was penchant and unbearable for me. It has always been like that only, when many of my friends go ga-ga over Chinese cuisines, I have yet to cope even with its smell. They were eating all kind of things, including meat and fish, right from the early morning. Abdullah Haji took me to his regular vendor, a devout Bangladeshi, and we had a delightful tasty tea in a big cup along with a bun. The pulled tea 'teh tarik', sold at 80cets, is made with sweetened condensed milk. While having the tea as well as getting new and new information from Haji, I looked around the hawker centre, one of the popular food courts meant generally for ordinary people. The concept of the hawker centre is open-air complexes housing many stalls selling a variety of inexpensive food. Found near public housing estates or transport hubs, hawker centers are another display of the multi-ethnicity of Singapore. Stalls representing all from global and cultural colors and run by people from various backgrounds are available under one roof. Some stalls are exclusive for some items. Jointly owned by the National Environment Agency (NEA), Housing and Development Board (HDB) and JTC Corporation, and managed by NEA, the public hawker centre system is the best way to maintain hygiene in cheap-eat centers, a best idea countries like India can learn a lesson from. In almost all Indian cities cheap public eating is always risky and dangerous, but hugely popular. We are always used to neglect the filthy and dirty situations at our roadside Dhabas, not to mention the problem of unhygienic food preparation by unlicensed street hawkers.

Love for Jihad Or Jihad for Love

Heartily congratulations to the proud JNU Students Community who sternly rejected another heinous attempt by the regressive, hopeless and divisive forces in the campus, with an apparent support from outside, to malign the healthy, pluralistic, cordial and accommodative atmosphere of this prestigious campus through a couple of ill-intended, venomous and vitriolic pamphlets.

Accustomed to fish in the dirty water, self-assured or misguided that a call for flesh and blood of minorities are the best way to practice cultural nationalism and an eventual establishment of a Hindutva state, these desperadoes never deserve even a response to their heinous acts.

We have seen more of these in the past, witnessed its culminating orgasm in the post-Babri 90s, and have got assured that the majority Hindu brothers and minorities stand united to uphold a secular and democratic country, more concerned with its inclusive development.

However, as the entire target of this well-planned character assassination were a particular community, we, some concerned students thought to clear the air and do our part sincerely to avert any potential negative consequences of such dastardly efforts in vitiating the existing unity in diversity of our beloved campus.

In the immediate backdrop of such a sadistic ‘Sanghi Daharma’ exposure we see many things from the Sangh Parivar’s calamitous debacle in this year's election that indicated to a frightening desertion of the party by its general vote base of urban middle class as well as to the unending problems of the Sangh party due to an ageing and week leadership and vicious back-stabbings and in-fights, to a Remarkable erosion in the interest of parents to see their wards in the awkward and pre-modern kakki-knickers.

More importantly, the relentless attempts of Sangh mafia to paint the minority community black and to establish the ‘all-terrorists-are-Muslims’ theory through fake encounters and a number of dubious and mystery-shrouded attacks and explosions, obviously exploiting all the government machineries, were well exposed by the powerful secular forces of the country to the utter disappointment of these people. Now the Sangh is once again going back to its basis – evoke communal frenzy, spread hatred, divide the society through victimization and vilification of a particular community and seek the way to power.

The entire ‘Love-Jihad’ episode has underlined the ability of Sangh Parivar to spread a lie as truth and utilize it for fomenting communal violence. On first March, 2002, Gujarat’s Sandesh newspaper reported that a group of Godhra Muslims have abducted two young Hindu girls, raped them in turns, sliced their breasts and threw them in a nearby canal. The police force made an extensive search, investigated in detail, found that the entire story was cooked up to maximize the destructive effect of the ongoing post-Godra violence.

The newspaper later pretended apologizing through a three-line report, but all the intended damages were over by that time. The Sangh Pariwar spread the story all over Gujarat fanning the revenge and inducing their activists to employ the most heinous methods of killings, widespread rape, immolations of children and women and even taking out of fetus from the womb of a pregnant woman. Now we see the same people spreading some imagined stories sexed-up by their counterparts in Kerala.

Love inside and outside the campus irrespective of religion, and subsequent inter-religious marriages are nothing new, especially in Kerala, where there is more mingling between communities and less or no ghettoisation of particular religious groups. In most cases, there have been initial tensions in the families, obviously due to inability of the parents to cope with the fact, given the social and religious realities. Conversion is in fact a painful experience for the families involved.

However, there are thousands of mixed families in Kerala and elsewhere who have survived these initial obstacles and keep living, in some cases even in the same villages as of their families. Amazingly, there was no big hue and cry in Kerala when a Muslim girl, whose historic first rank in SSLC public exam was highly celebrated by each and every Muslim organization in the state, decided to live a marital life with her Christian boyfriend she met while studying MBBS. Generally, when such issues reach to police stations and courts, the will of the adult girl is asked and she is allowed to go accordingly.

However, in the controversial case involving two MBA students of Pathanamthitta Pokkanam St. Jones College, who fell in love with their Muslim boyfriends, they were compelled to go with their parents, without considering their repeated requests to go with their lovers. One of them had even called a press meet in Kottayam to clarify that she married her Muslim lover on her own will, and no one had converted her forcefully.

The reported change in the tones of the girls came only later, after the family got enough time to brainwash them. The picture and drama behind the ‘Love-Jihad’ episode becomes clearer when one knows that the Hindu girl belonged to the family of a top state BJP leader, while the Christian girl hails form the family of a high ranking police officer. More interestingly, Shahansha, the other boy involved, was the district president of MSF, the student wing of State Muslim League, which is well-known in the state for its strong stances and measures against all extremist forces among Muslims. The handsome boy was also a hero in the campus.

A state BJP leader traded blind allegations and distributed spicy stories of “love-jihad’ in a press conference. Suddenly everybody from the court and police to Christian leaders started speaking in the tongue of Sang Parivar. The Catholic Church in Kerala alerted parents and teachers about an ‘extremist Islamic strategy to convert young women through marriage’, adding that ‘movement is a network of organized young and handsome Muslim youths to lure girls, make them pregnant and dump them’. Shamelessly, it even announced a plan to organize defensive and corrective measures in co-operation with VHP against the actors in of this imagined tales.

Let’s look why anybody fail to believe these cooked stories. All from Sangh Parivar, the Catholic Bishops Council and the police now say that there are zonal offices under a chairman for the ‘Love-Jihad’ or ‘Romeo Jihad’ outfit in all the 14 districts of the state, and it has been working for long with the help of ‘terror funding’ by many international terrorist organizations. The outfit has already converted around 4,000 hindu and Christian girls. However, one wonders that then how come the entire security apparatus, which had extensively scrutinized each and every Muslim family in the state in the wake of recent controversy regarding ‘terror recruitment to Kashmir’, could not get any tip on the existence of this ‘highly active Love-jihad’ force before this incident.

There are many boys and girls who fall in love and marry non-Muslims, and it is well-known that generally these people happen to be less performing, willing to get out of the religious rituals and mores, interested in living a cool, happy and loose life. They usually get the wrath of religious authority for being ‘irreligious and lax’. It is the last thing to imagine about them that they are jihadis doing love to increase the number of Muslims. So far those practicing Muslims with caps and beards were the main terror suspects, now one of the immediate consequences of this propaganda will be targeting of these pleasure-loving, happy-going less or no religious Muslim youths, who generally happen to be the main link among communities.

Lastly and more importantly, the term love-jihad itself is self contradictory and abusive of its true religious meaning. ‘Jihad’ is striving hard in the struggle against one's own self, controlling of ill deeds, ill-words, and even ill thoughts and intentions. A true Muslim’s entire life should be an unending endevour to succeed in this ‘jihad’ so that he can be a shining light for all others.

Romantic Love in the eye of Islam is both prescriptive and proscriptive. Prescriptive and highly rewarded when it is intensely shared between the husband and wife. Proscriptive when is shared between two opposite sexes out of the marital bliss. The real relation between a male and his non-related girl should be that of mutual respect, and any kind of sexual overtones are discouraged in such a relation.

“Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty; that will make for greater purity for them” “And say to the believing women that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty” (Quran: Nur: 30-31). ‘So a brazen stare by a man at women (or even at a man) is a breach of refined manners’. One has to strive hard to get this value, and Islam says it is the true jihad. How far and contradictory is this and using the same word to lure girls, abuse. Love does happen among Muslims also, but there is no way for any kind of religious interpretation to endorse it, let alone to use it as a weapon for conversion.

My Travelogue: Singapore – Part 3

It was late night on my first day in Singapore, and Shafeeq had given me a lot of friendly advises in order to avoid all possible disturbances to my aged host. Actually we cut short our interesting chats through memory lines only to help Abdullah Haji reach his room in time and get his sleep. But I was impatient and couldn’t really sleep over this ‘mine of information in front of me’. His initial answer ‘it is a great and long story’ to my question ‘how you reached Singapore from a North Kerala village’ suddenly washed off my sleepy mood. He also sat cross-legged on his string cot apparently happy to narrate me his story, and the history of Singapore, which I had tried to understand little bit through books and websites beforehand.

Abdullah Haji can be counted among the third group of Malayali Diaspora immigrated to Singapore. For Indians, especially Mallus and Tamils, it is easy to understand the origin of word Singapore, meaning the ‘City of Lion’ (Singam or Simham). A Malay legend is that a Sumatran prince spotted a lion while visiting the island of Temasek, and based on this good omen he founded a city there naming it ‘Singapura’.

The first group of migrants from South India is assumed to have reached in this Lion’s City when Sir Stamford Raffles, with the tacit support of Lord Hastings, Governor-General of India, established a trading station at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula in 1819, concluding a treaty with Temenggong Abdu'r Rahman and Sultan Hussein of Johor, who were in control of Singapore and who were compelled to let British consolidate their power in exchange for increased cash payments and pensions.

The trading station of Singapore was aimed at securing a safe and strategic base for the British Empire in the Straits in order to help expand its trade with China from its dominant bases in India. The British also established a trading post in Penang (1786) and captured Malacca from the Dutch (1795) in order to protect their merchant fleet in this region. Stamford transformed the sparsely populated, swampy island into a free-trade port and brought in unprecedented prosperity, attracting immigrants from nearby areas in large scale, especially from Kerala and Tamil Nadu. The layout of Central Singapore is still as Rafflews drew it.

In the second half of 19^th century many of the immigrants reached as 'indentured servants', a term used for ‘laborers under contract to an employer for a fixed period of time, typically three to seven years, in exchange for their transportation, food, clothing, lodging and other necessities’. This kind of contracts was a boon and something like a safety valve to the growing number of poverty-stricken tenants of agricultural labourers of Malabar and Cochin because of the fast-deteriorating socio-economic conditions in those regions.

The immigration to the Sugar and coffee plantations of the region was essentially a south Indian phenomenon. Almost 90% of Indian migrant labour in the region was from Tamil Nadu since the main recruitment was based in Chennai, the erstwhile Madras. However, most of migrants from Malabar and the Coromandel Coast were non-labour migrants such as professionals, teachers, salesmen, peddlers, petty entrepreneurs, traders, shopkeepers and street vendors.

The third group of migrants reached after the tragic days Singapore experienced following ‘torturous’ Japanese occupation during the World War 2 in 1942, which brought the days of the Empire to an abrupt end. For three and a half years Singapore was under ‘cruel’ Japanese occupation, until the British Military Administration recaptured Singapore in 1945, leading to the dissolution of the Straits Settlements and making Singapore a Crown Colony in 1946.

During this period, the British had started providing a large number of work permit /employment pass, and many from Kerala arrived on this. Abdullah Haji, a young job-hunter, desperate in the extreme poverty and starvation at home and around, was one among those who secured a permit (it was nice to hear him pronounce the word permit in real Mappila style ‘permeett’) and boarded a not-that-much-safe launch sailing South East.

(photo: Me and Abdullah Haji at Singapore's famous Darga of Sayyid Habeeb Nuh, along with the Mausoleum caretaker. I will narrate the interesting story of Habeeb Nuh later)

He came as a rubber estate laborer in a Singapore that was totally different from today - Small huts scattered everywhere, two-storied buildings at some places, Arab, English, Bugis (an ethnic community from Sulawesi island of Indonesia) Chinese and Malay quarters and Kampongs (villages), small-scale peddlers and vendors doing most of the business all over the island, and a busy port. He changed from a laborer to a little tea vendor after Singapore attained full internal self-government in 1959, and an imposing authoritarian Lee Kwan Yew, who took the helm as prime minister, issued citizenship for all those stayed back during the crippling period, urging them to be part of the city-state’s struggle to survive and prosper on its own.

In 1961, Singapore's merger with Malaya as part of a larger federation was agreed between Malayan Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman and Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew in view of closer political and economic co-operation between the Federation of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and Brunei. After a short-lived merger, Singapore became a sovereign, democratic and independent nation on 9 August 1965. Though angry at the dominating Chinese people and culture and their sometimes arrogant ways, Abdullah Haji is in full praise of Lee Kwan Yew, an economic visionary, for developing Singapore into one of the cleanest, safest, and most economically prosperous cities in Asia.

Despite possessing the Singapore citizenship and its prestigious passport, which ensures hustle-free traveling to almost all rich countries in the world, Abdullah Haji never brought his family from Kerala to settle in Singapore, nor did he marry one in the adopted country as many migrants do. He visits his family or twice every year and keeps the nostalgic bond with his native place alive. He brought his family to Singapore only once last year to show them the pomp and splendor of the city-state. Now, as he has given out the tea-shop to run and leading a kind of retirement life, he gets more time with his family back home, and keeps traveling between Kerala and Singapore, a typical Malayali who has emotionally trapped between the love to his adopted world and the nostalgia to the birth place. Anyway, he wants the final sleep to inside the home soil.

While asked why he didn’t settle his family in Singapore, where they would have better education and employment opportunities, Abdullah Haji hinted at the darker sides of Singapore and acknowledged me why he was right in his decision. I remembered the words of Rajan Srinivasan I met on board Air India.Tuning his old radio for the 12am Tamil news locally broadcast, Abdullah Haji told me that I will realize why he kept the family safe back home. Before going to sleep he taught me a tip on how to deal with the bugs. Taking out a piece of sellotape, he showed me how the cellulose-based, pressure sensitive adhesive tape is effectively used to net the bug. He asked me to keep myself one piece near the pillow and use it whenever needed in the night.

Note: Reading about bug in the last part, close friend Hafiz Ismael called from Doha telling me the bug phenomena is not limited to Singapore, but it is found in Qatar and other GCC states as well, especially in the densely populated pravasi (migrant) quarters. His wife Taju first saw a bug from the Qatari metropolis. Migrates took away the bugs also with them, and left nothing of the species in Kerala.