Kerala is 60 years old, so is CPM violence. Their stranglehold is palpable in every sphere. Their aim is to exterminate those who differ from them, by hacking or burning them to death, or by ostracising them.
On 18 October 2020, when I was preparing to write this prolusion, a highly interesting news piece scrolling on the TV screen caught my attention: a CPM worker from Thalassery, Sasi, resigning from the party, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party. The visual on the screen showed him arriving at Ramakrishna Mandir, the Thalassery Mandal office of the BJP, to receive the party membership—a symbolic event, indeed.
It is common knowledge that the CPM, bereft of any ideology worth its name, is a sinking boat. And although one may find leftist intellectuals even now working overtime to keep the party alive to serve their narrow, vested interests, the party has become redundant and an anathema to the common populace everywhere. So, it is quite natural for people like Sasi, totally disenchanted with the party and its policies, to quit the CPM and join the nationalist mainstream by becoming a member of nationalist organisations such as the BJP.
Now let me say something about the significance of the venue of the event, Ramakrishna Mandir, named after Vadikkal Ramakrishnan, a poor tailor from a Dalit family and the sole bread-winner of his family, who was heartlessly butchered in a gory fashion, to instil fear in others by a gang of CPM criminals 51 years ago, to be precise, on 21 April 1969. During those days, the first accused in the case, P. Vijayan of Pinarayi, a village on the outskirts of Thalassery Municipality, was the leader of the Kerala State Youth Federation, the predecessor of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the youth wing of the CPM. However, purely on technical grounds, P. Vijayan and his accomplices were acquitted for want of concrete evidence. But the judge had specifically pointed out the lapses on the part of the prosecution in proving the case conclusively.
It must be certainly because of a providential design that at the very place where an innocent man, whose only “guilt” was that he did not subscribe to the communist ideology, fell to the knife of the CPM criminals, became the venue of a former staunch CPM activist joining the RSS fraternity.
Another interesting dimension of this story is that Sasi is the elder brother of Pushpan, who is a totally paralysed person and bedridden for the last 26 years, and the living victim of the deceit, insensibility and opportunism that the CPM symbolises now.
On 25 November 1994, the DYFI had organised a violent protest against the educational policy of the then UDF government. The immediate provocation was the decision of the government to grant the government quota seats in the Pariyaram Medical College—the first ever medical college in the cooperative sector in India—to the management of the college. M.V. Raghavan, a former CPM Kerala state secretary and the founder of the Communist Marxist Party, was the spirit behind the Medical College. M.V. Raghavan, the Minster of Cooperation and Sports in the then UDF ministry, had reached Kuthuparamba, in Kannur district, that day to inaugurate an event. When the DYFI workers numbering 2,000 sought to block the minister, the police resorted to firing in which five DYFI workers died. And of the six people injured, Pushpan, hit by a bullet on his backbone, lost his mobility and became totally bedridden.
The cruel irony of fate is that, in 1997, the CPM forcibly grabbed the management of the Pariyaram Medical College, and its leader M.V. Jayarajan, who was the state secretary of the DYFI during the agitation in 1994, became its president.
To top it all, the CPM, which has been observing the martyrdom day of the five DYFI workers killed in police firing in 1994, every year, later on, warmed up to M.V. Raghavan, their bête noire ever since his expulsion from the party in 1986, without any inhibition or qualms.
Sasi’s joining the BJP is only the beginning. Like a river, which begins its journey as a trickle and gradually grows into a rivulet, and finally assumes a gigantic form, the outflow of cadre from the CPM will pick up momentum in no time, sounding the party’s death knell in Kerala.
“Narrative” is a word generally identified with the realm of literature. But for the last few years, “narrative” has become an increasingly common term in political discourse—as if the very term has completely moved out of the literary field to the political arena. In political parlance, a “narrative” could be an argument or a stance taken to explain a particular subject, issue or scenario. In India, like elsewhere, the leftist spin doctors have effectively used it to peddle lies in the political sphere, employing pretentious jargon and empty slogans. As a result, the reality or real narrative has been eclipsed by blatant lies and half-truths in the course of the late 20th century and the 21st century.
The history of political violence in Kerala could be a classic example of this leftist deception. The Communist intellectuals tried their best to suppress and sweep the stories of violence under the carpet until the advent of social media. When challenged, they built a narrative in defence of CPM with the help of their propaganda machinery, the mainstream media, dominated by leftists and “card-holding” trade unionist journalists of the CPM. How did they hide the reality from the general public? How can the stories of brutal murders in the killing fields of Kannur be kept concealed from the public eye? When the Communists accuse the RSS of the crime, it fits in their larger narrative of demonising the RSS as an “intolerant, anti-minority, aggressive” organisation. The Communists have devised their ideology and jargon in such a way to defend and justify every crime they commit. As a Christian writer and vehement critic of Hindutva, and, incidentally, a sympathiser of the CPM, Paul Zachariah, was forced to write when a CPM rebel, T.P. Chandrasekharan was brutally murdered in 2012: “Does the urbane world of the party’s leaders in Delhi, Marxists in the corridors of power like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechury, begin to look absurd when confronted with these killing fields? Who knows? A few drops of blood do not matter when the stakes are sky-high. Profound jargon washes all.”
Lessons of history suggest that no ideology has ever shed more blood than Communism has. Owing to the staggering number of deaths it caused, Communism pegs itself a notch above all other fascist ideologies. Hence, globally, it is synonymous with violence, brutality and totalitarianism. Hence, Sukumar Azhikode, a great literary personality of Malayalam and author of Tatvamasi, a book on Indian philosophy, the Vedas and the Upanishads, rightly said: “When a human-being degenerates, he becomes a brute, and when a brute degenerates, he becomes a communist.”
Unsurprisingly, the “Kannur Model” of CPM in Kerala, where swayamsevaks are perpetually targeted and murdered by communists, is also a natural corollary of the Stalinist USSR or Maoist China where the voice of dissent and opposition get ruthlessly crushed with the iron fist of the Party and the State apparatus.
The daunting situation prevailing in Kannur and other communist strongholds in Kerala, where CPM denies other political parties and nationalist organisations like RSS the right to work in the public sphere, is not a locally emerging scenario. Kerala, particularly Kannur district, has a long history of political violence and murders, where umpteen number of RSS swayamsevaks fell prey to communist terror. The cruel and abhorrent blood sport by CPM started with the killing of Vadikkal Ramakrishnan in 1969, about which I have already mentioned.
Later on, it has proved to be a “template” for the serial murders, and is now being projected with much élan as the “Kannur Model” in CPM circles. It is considered an effective way to silence the voice of dissent and assert the communist suzerainty and hegemony in the region. Since then, in Kerala, more than 270 swayamsevaks and RSS-BJP sympathisers have been murdered. There are many youngsters who have been maimed by their criminal gangs. For these youngsters, death would have been more of a boon than their present pitiable life, in which they have been forced to remain confined to their beds because of their pitiable physical condition. There are still others who are unable to do any work because of their permanent bodily injuries caused by the wanton violence of the communists. Most of those who were killed and maimed were the sole breadwinners of their families.
If there is a place anywhere where parents have to appear before the CPM district secretary and beg with folded hands for his permission to partake of the customary Onam-feast in the company of their own offspring, or to celebrate the birthday of their children, it is Kannur. If there is a place where people with their homes demolished and their wells irretrievably destroyed, lead a “ghostly” life, it is Kannur. If there is a place where teachers are butchered in front of their students and the killer of a teacher gets rewarded by becoming the PTA president, it is Kannur. If there is a place where the state Chief Minister honours the killers by draping shawls around their necks, it is Kannur. If there is a place where the killers, not satisfied with annihilating people, derive sadistic pleasure by derisively celebrating the death anniversary of their victims, by hanging carcases of puppies at their victims’ final resting places, it is Kannur; the land of brutes; the land where the most notorious terrorists have made the party villages their safest haven.
The story of Kannur is more devastating than what one might have read or heard about. A region paralysed by the CPM’s wanton violence, here the party is the police and the court, as claimed by the incumbent chairperson of the Kerala Women’s Commission, It is the party that decides whether one should live or die; it is the party that decides whether Hindu marriages, Hindu religious functions and even obsequies should be performed or not. Here the “fiat” of the party secretary is the last word. They would, through an orchestrated misinformation campaign, create an impression in the minds of the people that the party’s adversaries deserve nothing but death. They would even create unnecessary social tensions and set one section of the people against the other, spreading Goebbelsian lies.
The state of Kerala is sixty years old, and so is CPM violence. Their stranglehold is palpable in every sphere. Their aim is to exterminate those who differ from them, by hacking or burning them to death, or by ostracising them, or by conducting misinformation campaigns against them. Their approach to the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe people is no different. When people belonging to these sections, who once, because of their blind faith in the party, used to hold aloft the party flag and face the wrath of the police, are now trying to unshackle and free themselves from the clutches of the party, the party has no inhibitions in killing them in the goriest of manners. The party is challenging all democratic forces by baring its venomous fangs. All those who made an attempt to fight back the anti-democratic attitude of the party of enforcing its will by making the police its tool or by letting loose killer gangs, had to taste defeat. Political parties, like the Indian Union Muslim League, the Socialist Parties and the Congress Party, all have meekly surrendered before the ‘killer mania’ of the CPM.
It has been six decades since Kannur has become the “tear reservoir” of Kerala. Kannur has virtually become the captive of the CPM, who are hell bent on butchering innocent people because of their blind political animosity. Here nobody can live, work or believe in an ideology of their liking, freely and without fear. Enjoying the protection of the state machinery, the Marxist criminals are literally liquidating others. Almost all their strongholds in Kerala are forcefully kept under their strict stranglehold using all means. Especially Kannur, once the land of fervent patriotism, has been reduced to a killing field by the Marxists. Orphaned children, widowed women, hapless mothers, youths who have been denied the opportunity to eke out their livelihood by doing some work, a people who can do nothing but remain mute spectators when party criminals demolish their dream homes to the last brick, along with their belongings and earnings—this is the pathetic state to which Kannur has been reduced. Right from aged people to babies, everyone falls victim to the dagger of the blood-thirsty Marxists.
The people of Kerala are never tired of claiming with much élan that Kerala has a rich culture. But alas, in effect, we also see here the painful and blood-curdling spectacle of the philosophy of political intolerance and vendetta staging the most terrible death-dance spreading its hood wide, with full fury. “Only truth triumphs, not untruth,” says Mundaka Upanishad. Our cause is just; our means are just; and our path is just. And, in spite of every devilish attempt to annihilate the Sangh, misusing the police machinery, misappropriating the funds of the cooperative institutions over which the party has a vice-like grip, and butchering innocent and poor Sangh swayamsevaks, and other patriotic organisations drawing inspiration from the Sangh, not only the Sangh Sakhas are growing exponentially, but also in every other sphere, including the political field, there has been a marked progress. At the same time, going by the CPM own statistics, one can find a marked decline in the popularity and following of the party and its front organisations.
The tiny area of Kannur district has accounted for a disproportionately large number of casualties. The number of injured is almost six times as much as the number of those who were murdered. In addition to this, torture in police custody, foisting fake cases, etc., are quite common, especially when the LDF, led by CPM, comes to power.
The main reason behind the attacks on RSS and BJP workers in Kannur is the flow of cadres from the CPM to the RSS and BJP. Most of our swayamsevaks and karyakartas in north Kerala, especially in Kannur, have either come from CPM or belong to communist families. The RSS’ unwillingness to submit to the terror and hegemony of CPM, especially in their strongholds in Kannur, is intolerable to them. Another objective of this unabated terror on Hindu nationalists is to lure votes from the well-entrenched Islamists, as a tool of CPM’s perennial minority appeasement policy.
Besides the RSS, some of CPM’s own alliance partners, Congress and IUML have faced the wrath of CPM, culminating in the murder of many of their workers. So it is a unilateral attack in which CPM stands alone on one side and the rest on the other. In this long-standing CPM vs Rest struggle, CPM targets not only men and women, but even birds, flora and fauna.
They also damage, destroy or burn houses, household articles and utensils, render domestic wells unusable, demolish or burn down business establishments, workshops, school buildings, furniture and equipment, permanent structures used for public service activities, etc. They destroy with no prick to their conscience standing paddy crops and coconut and areca-nut groves of small-time farmers and cultivators.
The violence meted out to the swayamsevaks and other nationalists, time and again, is primarily meant to deter its rank and file from growing further. Like in any other Semitic religion, apostasy is an unpardonable sin in communism, and the wage of sin is nothing short of death. The rationale communists provide for the brutal murders is that a class enemy is to be eliminated. Another false-narrative they are propagating is that the RSS instigates communal violence in Kerala and the CPM has the bounden responsibility to save the minorities from the onslaughts of the RSS. In fact, RSS has never been accused of inciting any communal violence in the region, as also nowhere else in the country. It was indeed the CPM which often instigated communal violence in Thalassery and its surroundings, which was clearly mentioned in Justice Vithayathil Commission Report, the Commission appointed to enquire into the 1971 Thalassery riots. Justice Vithayatahil has explicitly put it his findings that it was a march taken out by CPM, led by its leader A.K. Gopalan, that panicked Muslims in the area. The role of the CPM in that riot is quite evident as it has been detailed in the report. The series of Communist attacks on Muslims in Nadapuram itself gives a clear picture as to who is the proponent of communalism. So, the allegations raised against the RSS are nothing but a futile attempt to cover up the terrorism unleashed by the communists in the district. In the event of a communal tension, that helps the communists to improve their tally.
It is the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which has started and carried forward violence in Kerala. In the West, Communism was exposed and the real narrative was rescued from leftist narratives by genuine thinkers and intellectuals. In India, we had to wait until the people’s media laid bare the reality before the public. Now the leftist controlled media has lost control over the discourse, and the space of public intellectuals has been taken over by common people with human qualities. Better late than never. Eventually, a section comprising independent journalists and media has picked up the real narrative and brought reality before the larger audience. Communists have systematically distorted fundamental facts and cultivated their false narratives in the spheres of art, academics, media, politics etc. At this critical juncture, we must aim to provide alternative narrative, supported by facts and evidence in place of the prevailing false narratives, built up on wrong perceptions, prejudices and lies.
Presently, in Bengal and Tripura, once their impregnable fortresses, the CPM has been totally decimated and Kerala is the only state where the party has at least a semblance of presence. So, engaged in its last ditch attempt for survival, the party has lost its mind and is in a state described by Lord Sri Krishna in the Srimad Bhavad Gita (Chapter 2, Verse 62), which reads: “From anger comes delusion; from delusion loss of memory; from loss of memory the destruction of discrimination; from destruction of discrimination, he perishes.”
In their former strongholds in Kerala, which the Marxist Party had to, even though grudgingly, yield to the Sangh, because of the Sangh’s increased activities and popularity, the party is unable to create any trouble. It is at new places where the Sangh work is comparatively new and has yet to gain strength, with an aim of terrorising people there so as to prevent them from deserting the party, they are indulging in wanton violence and killings. The swayamsevaks are fully aware of this reality. So, there is no question of their losing their heart. They are determined to move forward tirelessly without fear, till the ultimate victory is achieved, which, they are sure, is theirs. There is already the call for another liberation struggle in the air; the call for the final and totally democratic and non-violent fight, for the ultimate victory.
Those who were either killed or maimed in their struggle for survival had to meet with such a fate not for any personal reasons, but in the cause of our Dharma and for the protection of our nation and its interests. In other words, they were doing in the modern times what our patriots like Vikramaditya, Pushyamitra, Shivaji Maharaj, Rana Pratap Singh, Banda Bairagi, Guru Govind Singh, Rani Lakshmi Bai, Bhagat Singh, Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja, etc.
It is in this context, the book on martyrs, written by Prof A.K.M. Das, assumes significance. Through years perseverant, painstaking and selfless efforts, he has collected all the available details about almost all the Sangh swayamsevaks and sympathiser who killed by the Marxian criminals in the most brutal, merciless and wanton manner during the last six decades or more. Moreover, for him, it was a solemn mission, which he could accomplish in a commendable manner.
Nandakumar is an RSS ideologue and All India Convenor of Prajna Pravah.