Kerala is drowning in blood under CPM's savage leadership

Kerala has witnessed three gruesome political murders, a bomb attack on the meeting addressed by CPM state general secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and a number of VIP visits in the chief minister’s own Assembly constituency Dharmadom, in Kannur district in the last fortnight.

Elsewhere, in south Kerala's Kollam district, three persons were admitted to hospital in critical condition due to CPM attack on BJP workers. In the same period, two persons, including a 35-year-old woman Vimala were burnt to death, while two others, including her 11-year-old child, are fighting for life when CPM goondas set the BJP worker Janardan’s house on fire at midnight in Palghat.

The macabre nature of the political rivalry, their turf and clannish underbelly, brazen political indulgences by the ruling party have become so intriguing that they have given wings to many gripping film scripts, most of them by fellow-traveller filmmakers who try to romanticise the class war in the CPM killing fields of Kannur.

In the mid-1960s as a schoolgoing child I have undergone the agony of my house being surrounded by CPM goons. Back then, the fight was not between the RSS and CPM. It was between the Karshaka Sangam of the Kerala Congress representing the farmers, and the farm labourers under the CPM opposing modernisation of farming in the state.

My father, a senior Kerala Congress leader and Panchayat president, was facing murder threat for trying to replace plough with tractors. That was the time when the entire farmland in the state was undergoing transition and the comrades resisted it, spreading large-scale agrarian unrest.

As the ruling party, the labour unions enjoyed official patronage.

The father was in hiding along with other farmer leaders. One midnight they surrounded my house with torches, axes and heavy weapons. They entered the veranda, pulled the chairs and sat on them. I could hear the sound of metals being placed on the cement floor. They were waiting. thinking that the father was inside. After waiting for an hour they left after recieving a message that only the children and mother were inside the house.

They were kind enough to leave us unhurt.

In five decades, the CPM has only become more barbaric and brazen. The tectonic changes in political fortunes and technology have not refined their ideological war chest. They have only become more beastly.

It is with savage ferocity that these endemic political atrocities are schemed and executed by the Red brigade. The real culprits are never caught, the party plans and it decides how to commit the crime, who will execute it, and who will surrender to the police if it becomes inevitable. Because of this criminal-party nexus and their overarching sway on the prison inmates, the Kannur central jail has become notorious, becoming the subject of many salacious stories on jail breaks, drug peddling and rule violations with political sanction.

Killing political opponents has been a long time tactic of the CPM. Every party in Kerala, even its own ally, the CPI, has been on the receiving end.

In May 2016, when the Left Front gained power, it was expected that the CPM will turn a new leaf, and the declining graph of the party nationally will force it to modernise and democratise its cadres.

That did not happen.

Instead, it identified the Sangh and BJP as its chief adversaries, and as if in a well thought-out strategy went about annihilating and attacking them. Hundreds of workers of the Sangh were maimed in these attacks.

The BJP and RSS held a number of protests throughout the state.

On January 21, the women's wing of the outfit held dharnas at all district headquarters to protest against CPM violence. A delegation led by state chief Kummanam Rajesekharan and veteran lone BJP MLA O Rajagopal met the chief minister and pleaded with him to visit Kannur, hold an all-party peace meet and restore confidence.

Twice the BJP state leaders met the central leaders and pleaded for intervention and placing Kannur under central forces. A number of state leaders have been provided central security as they fear threat to their lives. But these leaders are saying that they want to surrender this cover as their party workers are anyway unsafe.

On January 24, the RSS-BJP workers along with a number of civil liberty organisations and eminent personalities held a protest rally at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi. Sonal Mansingh, Mukesh Khanna, Meenakshi Lekhi, Dr Anil Jain and other prominent leaders addressed the gathering. The BJP general secretary Ramlal was also present. Here, addressing the gathering, Dattatreya Hosabale, joint general secretary of the RSS, demanded the dismissal of Pinarayi government for state-sponsored murder politics.

Drawing national attention to the CPM atrocities has been the strategy of the parivar. The Sangh is also retaliating with full force. But two things stand out.

Firstly while the BJP is growing in the state, the CPM strategy is to project itself as the main Hindu party. For this, the CPM has made many tactical compromises like participating actively in Hindu festivals, celebration of Sri Krishna Jayanti, Vivekananda Jayanti and adoption of the teachings of Hindu icon Sree Narayana Guru.

Secondly, the fact that CPM is in power, it is using the administrative machinery to protect its own cadre and torment the Sangh. This is why the Parivar is looking for a national response. The BJP central leadership has sent two party teams to study the situation in the recent past.

Lumpenisation of Kerala polity is proving fatal for even the CPM, its onward march and its intellectual façade that it is trying to project at the national scene.

Also read: Why the killing fields of Kerala only draw collective silence (even from BJP)

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