Speech of Kerala Chief Minister and CPI(M) Polit Bureau Member, Pinarayi Vijayan at the Inauguration of the Exhibition on RSS Terror in Kerala
November 16, 2016, New Delhi
One should never ignore the fact that the so called political violence in Kerala, particularly that of Kannur is being sought to be made a subject of discussion all over the country with a political motive. The political motive is to create an impression that law and order is in dire straits in the state of Kerala.
This is not the first time that law and order in Kerala is sought to be made an issue with an ulterior motive. Right from the beginning, that is in 1957 onwards itself, efforts were on to make it a ground to topple Kerala’s democratically elected Left Government. I need not have to go in to the details of the past as all those things are in everybody’s knowledge. It goes without saying that the government of 1957 was toppled by the centre following a combined campaign of both the communalists and the imperialists. The present happenings are to be seen against the backdrop of that past.
Now, let’s take a look at the recent facts. On the one hand, since the LDF has come to power, 6 CPI (M) activists have been killed by the RSS in the state. Over 200 have been attacked and seriously injured as well. Apart from that, more than 80 houses and 35 party offices have also been attacked and destroyed. These have been organised attacks. On the other, the Congress and UDF have been endorsing these attacks, with their betraying silence.
The CPI (M) has made it amply clear that it is ready for talks with the BJP leadership to put an end to the violence in Kannur. The party is committed to ensure that peace prevails. It is with this in mind that the government took the initiative to put an end to the existing tensions in Kannur. The RSS Chief Mohan Bhagawat, on his visit to Kochi during the elections, had expressed his interest in ensuring a permanent peace in Kannur through talks to sort out the issues. But the fact remains that both the RSS and the BJP are reluctant to send any one in person to participate reconciliatory talks. All through, this has been their stand. Earlier also all party conferences were convened many a time. But, generally they abstain. It was because of their attitude that all party conferences fail to deliver any good. While this is the attitude of the BJP, the fact remains that the CPI (M) supporters have the experience of rushing to the all party meetings, even when the body of their comrade was on the pyre. I am detailing all this to set the record straight.
Deccan Chronicle reported last year that of the 31 political murders that had taken place in the previous 5 years in Kerala, 60% of the victims were from the LDF. All those who cry foul about violence in Kerala should realise that Gujarat leads in the rate of murders, according to the data provided under the Digital India Initiative of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The census 2001 figures of population was used to calculate the number of murders per million. According to that data, in every single year from 2001 to 2010, Gujarat witnessed far too many murders than Kerala did. Yet Kerala is sought to be depicted as a State that is marred by law and order problem.
It is to be noted that 198 activists of CPI (M) have been killed by the RSS in a span of 46 years. In Kannur district alone, 65 CPI (M) workers had been annihilated since 1970. Those who are on a spree of gruesome murder in Kerala are trying to portray Kerala as a state marked by violence. It is true, violence is there. It is there because the BJP-RSS combine is there.
The first martyr who fell to RSS terror was U.K. Kunhiraman, who was killed by the RSS for having defended the lives of the minority community during the Tellichery communal riot of 1970’s. He lost his life not in a confrontation. There was no confrontation at all. The only thing that provoked the RSS was that he chose to protect the minority, against whom an onslaught was unleashed by the RSS. It was against this backdrop that Vithayathil Commission complimented CPI (M), and its intervention in defense of secularism.
The present series of killings began with the murder of Com. C.V. Raveendran, who happened to be in a victory celebration procession of the LDF, following the announcement of the results of the assembly election; at Dharmadam. Not only that he was killed, his children too were attacked. A bomb was thrown towards them and they survived miraculously, even though with serious injuries all over their body. After the elections I had to leave my constituency for Trivandrum, seeing that gory scene, which cannot be wiped out even as time passes by. Since the assumption of power by LDF in May this year, six CPI (M) workers have been killed by the RSS. The last one who fell victim to this series of atrocious attacks was Com. Mohanan who was a worker at a local toddy shop. He happened to be the branch secretary of the CPI (M). Hence the murder.
The design behind these attacks is to terrorize people and drive them away from CPI (M). But what happens in Kannur is the opposite of it. While the vote share of the left registered a meteoric rise, in the assembly election, in comparison to that of the local body election, the share of BJP votes took a nose dive. BJP is getting alienated from the people day by day. Fed up with the gruesome murder and violence on the part of the BJP, many of its leaders and workers have quit that party and expressed their desire to get associated with the CPI (M). Why does this happen? It happens only because of the fact that even the rank and file of the BJP have started realizing that CPI(M) is the party that stands wholeheartedly for peace and development. When a claim was there to the effect that Modi wave was sweeping across the country, dozens of BJP activists led by their National Council Member and their District Secretary left the party and moved towards the CPI (M).
People are increasingly realizing the real facts that are buried underneath the BJP campaign of falsehood. Payyannur is a citadel of the CPI (M) where BJP’s presence, if at all there is any, is microscopic. Even in such places, where there cannot be any confrontation worth the name, Dhanraj, a CPI (M) activist was brutally murdered by the RSS, without any provocation.
Cheruvanchery is an area where the CPI (M) does not have much influence. There, some workers of the Sangh Parivar led by a prominent leader of the BJP chose to cooperate with the CPI (M). Following that one of their leaders became the Block Panchayat President of Koothuparamba. Provoked by this, the CPI (M) office at Cheruvanchery was attacked more than thirty times, by the RSS-BJP forces. The CPI (M) had to start building up its office on another spot, following this.
The indiscriminate killing is aimed at scoring points, it seems. An armed gang of the RSS rushed to the house of Sivaprasad, an SFI activist, and as he was away from home, his father, one Mr. Narayanan Nair, an office bearer of a temple committee was brutally killed.
Recently the national conference of the BJP was held at Calicut in Kerala and the focused call made there was to `react’ to the Marxists. Before that, a special ‘Baitak’ of the RSS, in which Mohan Bhagawath, the RSS Sar Sangh Chalak had attended, also called upon their followers to `react’. It is to be noted that the BJP intensified its politics of violence, after that conference. It was after that conference that five comrades of the CPI (M) were killed in quick succession.
Recently, A K Balan, Minister for Social Welfare convened a reconciliatory conference and it was agreed that there should not be any kind of provocation from any quarters. Within hours of its conclusion, a bombed was hurled against a DYFI demonstration, and two DYFI workers sustained serious injuries. This is the way in which they disrupt the conciliatory efforts.
It is everybody’s knowledge that Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation was assassinated by a hindu fanatic. Nathuram Godsa is not a person, but an ideology. The forces that are driven by that venomous ideology has on the one hand started demanding that a shrine needs to be built in his name, and on the other, started disrupting the secular social fabric of the country with an ulterior objective of setting up a theocratic state. It is with this larger concept in mind that the party wedded to communalism and racism is trying to do away with the secular democratic parties that hold the national values close to their heart. The CPI (M) is made a target as it stands apart with the high ideals ranging from humanism to secularism, which are anathema to the Sangh Parivar.
The only guarantee for secularism in the present day India is the vigil and alertness on the part of the left. That is why, the left is the declared foe of the Sangh Parivar forces. History gives us ample evidence to prove that the character of the Sangh Parivar is in no way different from that of the Nazi-Fascist forces. Dr. B.S. Munje, who was the mentor of Dr. Hedgewar, who founded the RSS had been to Italy to meet Mussolini, the fascist dictator, before establishing the Central Hindu Military education society in Nasik. The founding father of the Hindutva forces have gone on record that racist pride is at its zenith in Germany and we in India have to emulate it and reap the benefit of it, by purging the Muslims, Communists, Christians, Parsis etc.
Golwalkar wrote that the “hostile elements within the country pose a far greater menace to national security than aggressors from outside”. He identified three major “Internal Threats: 1: The Muslims; 2: The Christians; 3: The Communists”.
He also went on to write “To keep up the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic Races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by’’.
What Golwalkar proclaimed in 1939 was that “If we have to make gains in Hindustan, we should emulate this lesson’’. What lesson? Fascist lesson; or Nazist lesson or both!
The terror unleashed by the Sangh Parivar forces in Kerala is part and parcel of their grand design to establish fascist hegemony by imposing communal frenzy by disrupting the secular fabric of the society and then by converting India into a theological state that wipes away the minorities marginalized sections and the dispossessed.
It is against this backdrop that this exhibition in Delhi depicting the gruesome scenes created by the RSS assumes greater significance. It puts the record straight, removes the misgivings, corrects the misunderstandings and above all exposes the gory face and the true nature of the blood thirsty Sangh Parivar once again.
The RSS is an organisation that has grown on lies and deceit. Golwalkar, it’s ideologue had claimed that the Communists were an internal threat to their design for India, along with the minorities, in his book, ‘Bunch of Thoughts’. The Sangh Parivar refuses to accept the Indian Constitution and the Indian National Flag and their brazen disrespect to both on multiple occasions are there for all of us to see. It is necessary to go into the history of political murders in Kerala, particularly North Kerala and read it alongside the politics of RSS that excludes and discriminates against people. Muslims, Dalits, Tribals, North Easterners, Women, Sexual Minorities and so on are always portrayed as `the other’ by the RSS, fostering a politics of hate. That is combined with the false nationalism that worships Savarkar. It conveniently forgets the fact that he was not part of the Indian freedom struggle.
We need to be critical of the communal riots that seeped in across the country under the aegis of the Sangh Parivar and their growth on the back of violent assaults on the communists in Maharashtra and so on. Their efforts to create riots in Thalassery was thwarted by the CPI (M) in 1971. The Vithayathil Commission which probed the riot was on record that the only political party which came in defence of the minorities there was CPI (M). It is to be noted that this remark was made even though the CPI (M) had not deposed before the commission. Later the menacing influx of heavily armed Sanghi elements from across the states border was resisted by the communists. Particularly the agricultural workers, beedi workers, youth and students were in the forefront of the fight against communalists. This resistance has resulted in about 200 comrades of ours falling to the blades of the Sangh Parivar over the years that followed.
In Kerala, the CPI (M) is the biggest enemy of the RSS because the CPI (M) has a mammoth support among the masses, unlike the RSS. Despite their efforts to make inroads in to the state, they have not been able to win over the minds of the masses which strongly stand by the left. It is precisely because of the popular support, the CPI (M) and the left enjoys among the vast majority of the people in the state and Kannur in particular, that the RSS does not have any option but to resort to arms. This is the social factor that prompts the RSS to physically terminate the communists who steadfastly stand in defence of secularism which they seek to do away with.
What strikes me is the fact that there are no reports worth the name on the brutal murder of Communists by the RSS in Kannur. On the afternoon of October 10th, ‘Harthal in Kannur Tomorrow’ was the news, television media had been scrolling for quite some time. What was hushed up behind those lines was the brutal killing of a widely accepted communist leader.
I would request you to recall that there was a march by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the CPI (M) Central Committee Office here in New Delhi. While the protest was being held here, their own fellows were murdering one of our comrades in Kannur. The slogan they raised here was that the LDF Government in Kerala is aiding violence against them in the state.
Though the CPI(M) has been reiterating that it is at the receiving end of the violence in Kerala, and even in West Bengal, over the last few years, the national media hardly takes notice of it. It is imperative for us to take this message to the masses now. Hence, the Kerala State Committee of the CPI (M) deemed it fit to conduct this exhibition and to make materials of the RSS violence available in English. I hope that this exhibition would touch the hearts of the viewers and make them aware of what really happens in Kerala.
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