Does the earth only belongs to human beings? Write down your views based on the chapter 'The Rightful Inheritors Of The Earth'.
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No other writer in Malayalam made such rapport with the readers as Basheer did. His conversational style of writing, often used with the dialect commonly used by ordinary people, made his work popular. People could identify with the caricatures that he had made with his pen, and often those names such as Aanavari Raman Nair, Ponkurisu Thoma, Mandan Muthappa, Ettukaali Mammoonju, Ottakkannan Pokkar etc became household names.
“The Rightful Inheritors of the Earth” (Bhoomiyude Avakasikal) by Vaikom Muhammad Basheer is a short narrative in which the author talks about the need to consider the other animals also as part of this earth, as they are the rightful inheritors of the earth. The narrative progresses through a situation faced by the narrator and his wife after they started living in the newly bought house and surrounding land. The problem encountered by them was that their coconuts were eaten by some animals. Later they identified that bats are the real culprits. Narrator’s wife, with the help of her cousin, thought of killing the bats. They identified that the bats came from the nearby temple. They went to kill the bats using a gun. But they were chased by the local people as it is believed that bats are the souls of their forefathers.
The story concludes with the narrator saying that although bats cannot be considered as the reincarnation of our forefathers, they definitely have a right to reside on this earth. The words of the author may remind us of an age-old concept in ancient India, that of vasudhaiva kutumbakam, ‘vasudha’ being ‘the earth’, and ‘kutumbakam’ means family. In other words, the whole world is a family, including the animals.