“As if the dead alone had mattered, And those who vanished nameless in the North. The evil he implanted in our hearts, Has it not done the damage? As long as poverty divides from wealth, As long as we don’t stop the lies, And don”t unlearn to fear, Stalin is not dead.”
— Boris Chichibabin (Russian Philosopher and Poet), 1967 quoted in Anne Applebaum’s Gulag (Penguin) on the impact of Stalinist Regime in the erstwhile USSR
The Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Amit Shah has decided to hit the ‘ground zero’ in Kerala to raise the issue of political violence under the Communist regime. The ‘Marxist Party’, the popular nomenclature for the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)], did not miss an opportunity to declare it as an anti-Kerala and communalising move. It was very typical to the CPM Kerala unit led by the Kannur lobby that has virtually taken over the entire Party.
The communist prodigies in Delhi veiled as eminent journalists and intellectuals started singing the old song that both, the RSS and the CPM, are responsible for political violence in Kerala, missing the root cause of this political culture. ‘Why now’ was more perplexing question for many as generally such Yatras are linked to elections. People who cannot see life beyond party politics may find it difficult to understand, but who really wants to stand by Democracy as a principle and peaceful mobilisation as a process have no option but to understand this anatomy of political violence.
While Communists all over the world are losing space and credibility, the violent ideology with its authoritarian party mechanism has shrunk to fewer corners and Kerala is one of them. Yes the CPM?is leading the democratically elected LDF Government there but if that Government is ready to perform the basic Constitutional duty of ensuring Right to Life to the people of Kerala, any organisation has every Right to speak again it.
The ploy to project any talk about political violence as anti-Kerala is another typical Communist strategy to play a victim card. The reality is, since 1930s, Communists in Kerala have tactically played a communal card in the Muslim majority areas in the North and have politicised the entire State machinery, administration, police, academic and even media. Naturally the democratic space for opposition got curtailed.
Whenever there was a migration of cadre to other point of view, especially after inability of the CPM to stand against the tyranny of Emergency, violence and oppression was an answer. Earlier the CPI, then the Congress and the Muslim League and now the RSS and the BJP cadres are on radar. The people, who waste no time blaming the RSS or Hindutva forces in any killing, turned a blind eye to this.
Earlier, the trend of murder politics was limited to the northern parts of Kerala where ‘Party Villages’, the localities controlled by the CPM on Stalinist lines, are in place. With the growing presence of the RSS and rise of the BJP in electoral terms, the same strategy is being employed in other parts of the State. On the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram when a local RSS Karyavah was hacked to death, the RSS took out a nationwide campaign against it. This completely exposed the ‘Party’ and the people who masked its violent politics with jargons.
The spiritual and peaceful land of Kerala is not just appropriated by the Communists, under their protection Islamists are spreading tentacles now. The CPM finds no problem in growing radicalisation, youth being recruited by ISIS and Love Jihad is being used to fraudulently convert the sisters. For them, party monopoly of the party is more important than the national security. This dangerous alliance of the Red and the Jihadi terror has made it necessary to hit the ground.
Interestingly, the same Stalin who is known for killings, deportations and arrests of millions, is a poster boy of the CPM and the present Chief Minister of Kerala P Vijayan is seen and projected as Stalinism personified. To expose this anatomy of the Marxists necessitated the nation-wide campaign and mass awareness campaign in their den. That is what the RSS and the BJP are doing democratically.
@PrafullaKetkar
