Balbir Punj writes
The good news from Kerala is that the political wind in the state, which has for decades alternated the Marxist-led front LDF and the Congress-led UDF in government, is now in the process of choosing a new path. An HT report from Thiruvananthapuram read: “A bandh called by Sangh Parivar outfits on Tuesday in protest against the hacking of an RSS leader crippled normal life in Kerala.”
The intensity of the protest reflects the depth of sympathy of Keralites to the victim and his party in the changing political pattern there.
E Manoj of the RSS was hacked to death in the Malabar region where the Marxists have been running riot and the RSS-BJP was the only force resisting the communist diktat.
The pattern of the killing carried in every respect the signature of the Marxists. They don’t shoot their political opponents. They hit them hard and then hack them part by part using sharp local sickles or butcher knives. They do it in daylight and often in public places. The barbarism is meant to convey a message—crossing the Marxist line is inviting such medieval “punishment”. The Marxist ideology, like the Islamist one, authorises its followers to be prosecutor, judge and executor rolled into one. As in the badlands of Syria-Iraq or Nigeria, here too they would make a public show of their barbarism.
In fact, the Marxists followed the same procedure when they waylaid and cut to pieces one of their own, T P Chandrashekharan, two years ago after the man had left the CPM and floated a rival political outfit. Several leaders of the Marxist party have been convicted for the murder lately.
That was not the only murder that the Marxists committed in the state. We are not talking of the murders of RSS workers and leaders. The Marxists had put their own dissenters’ neck on the block. In the wake of “TP’s” hacking, another Marxist leader, one Mani, boasted that the party had drawn up a list and one by one the people in the list would be eliminated.
The boast led to his being booked for promoting hatred but interestingly, the party did not distance itself from the claim of one of its leaders even after the intellectuals of Kerala expressed horror at such boasting.
For several decades now, the RSS-BJP had emerged as the only force that came forward to stop the Marxists from imposing their diktat on the hapless people. The political rivals of CPM technically is the Congress party. But the party leaders sought safety in avoiding direct confrontation with the Marxists.
In the last 20 years, the Marxist party was getting cosy with the jihadi elements of Malabar. In the 2009 general elections, Marxist boss Pinarayi Vijayan publicly allied with the Islamic extremist party, PDP, and its leader Abdul Nasser Madani, an accused in the jihadi conspiracy to target L K Advani in 1999 by planting bombs in Coimbatore on the path the BJP leader would take to address a public meeting.
It was a case of brothers in arms using violence to seize power, embracing each other. The Marxists’ rout in that election was later attributed to the public disgust at the alliance.
The pusillanimity of the Congress in facing up to this combine of Islamist secessionism and Marxist violence was exposed before the people of Kerala when instead of opposing Madani, it competed with the Marxists in making a hero out of him through open sympathy for his person and fending off all attempts of national security establishment to nab him and his partymen.
Several incidents in Kerala where the jihadists were accused of murder and violence, procuring arms and conspiring against the state like the massacre at Marad, saw the Marxists and the Congress closing their eyes at the growth of the jihadi underground.
For the local Congress, the appeasement of minorities was part of its national policy and the Muslim vote bank, especially in Malabar, was needed to balance the Marxist grass roots in the region. The electoral alliance between the Congress and the Muslim League was decades old.
Malabar, with its Muslim population, was the only place in India where the political Islam that demanded the country’s Partition survived after Independence and had strong links with Pakistan through many families that had its members in both countries. Much water has flowed down the Pampa river since then. The major Hindu organisations like the SNDP and the NSS have publicly expressed concern over the growing clout of the Muslim League, the continued rise of jihadi outfits and the threat to Hindus in many incidents of “love jihad”.
The Christian parties, like the two factions of the Kerala Congress, are also watching with concern the rise of the League and its economic as well as political clout from the large number of Muslim workers in the Gulf and the money earned they are sending to the state.
The rise of the Sangh Parivar’s support base isn’t confined to caste Hindus. Many sections of Christians are also gravitating towards it. Cardinal Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, has openly praised prime minister Narendra Modi. An influential Dalit outfit, Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha has invited Modi to address the 151st birth anniversary celebrations of their legendary leader Ayyankali during Onam.
This organisation was for long with the Congress. Its shift in support to the BJP must have disturbed the Congress. Obviously, the Congress claim of being the saviour of SCs (the elevation of K R Narayanan as the president of India, the rise of K J Balakrishnan as the CJI, for instance) is now dented. Early this year, the SNDP invited Modi before the general election to address their meeting and visit the retreat of social reformer Narayana Guru at Varkala.
So, the events leading to the Marxist murder of RSS leader Manoj clearly indicate that a good section of the people in Kerala is getting tired of the two fronts and considering other options. The Marxists have sought to send a warning message to the people through the murder. And the Congress has a vested interest in not pushing the Marxists to the wall by unleashing the police against the CPM’s practised violence.
The Centre has to read the signs in this context as the state could expect both the Marxists and jihadi outfits to plan more strikes to scare the people against the shift of allegiance to the BJP and to claw into the state in the wave of Islamist movements in the Gulf and Pakistan.
The good news from Kerala is that the political wind in the state, which has for decades alternated the Marxist-led front LDF and the Congress-led UDF in government, is now in the process of choosing a new path. An HT report from Thiruvananthapuram read: “A bandh called by Sangh Parivar outfits on Tuesday in protest against the hacking of an RSS leader crippled normal life in Kerala.”
The intensity of the protest reflects the depth of sympathy of Keralites to the victim and his party in the changing political pattern there.
E Manoj of the RSS was hacked to death in the Malabar region where the Marxists have been running riot and the RSS-BJP was the only force resisting the communist diktat.
The pattern of the killing carried in every respect the signature of the Marxists. They don’t shoot their political opponents. They hit them hard and then hack them part by part using sharp local sickles or butcher knives. They do it in daylight and often in public places. The barbarism is meant to convey a message—crossing the Marxist line is inviting such medieval “punishment”. The Marxist ideology, like the Islamist one, authorises its followers to be prosecutor, judge and executor rolled into one. As in the badlands of Syria-Iraq or Nigeria, here too they would make a public show of their barbarism.
In fact, the Marxists followed the same procedure when they waylaid and cut to pieces one of their own, T P Chandrashekharan, two years ago after the man had left the CPM and floated a rival political outfit. Several leaders of the Marxist party have been convicted for the murder lately.
That was not the only murder that the Marxists committed in the state. We are not talking of the murders of RSS workers and leaders. The Marxists had put their own dissenters’ neck on the block. In the wake of “TP’s” hacking, another Marxist leader, one Mani, boasted that the party had drawn up a list and one by one the people in the list would be eliminated.
The boast led to his being booked for promoting hatred but interestingly, the party did not distance itself from the claim of one of its leaders even after the intellectuals of Kerala expressed horror at such boasting.
For several decades now, the RSS-BJP had emerged as the only force that came forward to stop the Marxists from imposing their diktat on the hapless people. The political rivals of CPM technically is the Congress party. But the party leaders sought safety in avoiding direct confrontation with the Marxists.
In the last 20 years, the Marxist party was getting cosy with the jihadi elements of Malabar. In the 2009 general elections, Marxist boss Pinarayi Vijayan publicly allied with the Islamic extremist party, PDP, and its leader Abdul Nasser Madani, an accused in the jihadi conspiracy to target L K Advani in 1999 by planting bombs in Coimbatore on the path the BJP leader would take to address a public meeting.
It was a case of brothers in arms using violence to seize power, embracing each other. The Marxists’ rout in that election was later attributed to the public disgust at the alliance.
The pusillanimity of the Congress in facing up to this combine of Islamist secessionism and Marxist violence was exposed before the people of Kerala when instead of opposing Madani, it competed with the Marxists in making a hero out of him through open sympathy for his person and fending off all attempts of national security establishment to nab him and his partymen.
Several incidents in Kerala where the jihadists were accused of murder and violence, procuring arms and conspiring against the state like the massacre at Marad, saw the Marxists and the Congress closing their eyes at the growth of the jihadi underground.
For the local Congress, the appeasement of minorities was part of its national policy and the Muslim vote bank, especially in Malabar, was needed to balance the Marxist grass roots in the region. The electoral alliance between the Congress and the Muslim League was decades old.
Malabar, with its Muslim population, was the only place in India where the political Islam that demanded the country’s Partition survived after Independence and had strong links with Pakistan through many families that had its members in both countries. Much water has flowed down the Pampa river since then. The major Hindu organisations like the SNDP and the NSS have publicly expressed concern over the growing clout of the Muslim League, the continued rise of jihadi outfits and the threat to Hindus in many incidents of “love jihad”.
The Christian parties, like the two factions of the Kerala Congress, are also watching with concern the rise of the League and its economic as well as political clout from the large number of Muslim workers in the Gulf and the money earned they are sending to the state.
The rise of the Sangh Parivar’s support base isn’t confined to caste Hindus. Many sections of Christians are also gravitating towards it. Cardinal Cleemis, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of India, has openly praised prime minister Narendra Modi. An influential Dalit outfit, Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha has invited Modi to address the 151st birth anniversary celebrations of their legendary leader Ayyankali during Onam.
This organisation was for long with the Congress. Its shift in support to the BJP must have disturbed the Congress. Obviously, the Congress claim of being the saviour of SCs (the elevation of K R Narayanan as the president of India, the rise of K J Balakrishnan as the CJI, for instance) is now dented. Early this year, the SNDP invited Modi before the general election to address their meeting and visit the retreat of social reformer Narayana Guru at Varkala.
So, the events leading to the Marxist murder of RSS leader Manoj clearly indicate that a good section of the people in Kerala is getting tired of the two fronts and considering other options. The Marxists have sought to send a warning message to the people through the murder. And the Congress has a vested interest in not pushing the Marxists to the wall by unleashing the police against the CPM’s practised violence.
The Centre has to read the signs in this context as the state could expect both the Marxists and jihadi outfits to plan more strikes to scare the people against the shift of allegiance to the BJP and to claw into the state in the wave of Islamist movements in the Gulf and Pakistan.
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