archive: Fundie, and proud of it
The dialectics of murder
T.V.R. Shenoy
The Indian Express
December 16, 1999
Title: The dialectics
of murder
Author: T.V.R. Shenoy
Publication: The Indian
Express
Date: December 16, 1999
These days I often see
college students occasionally even school students taking a day off from
classes. Amazingly, many of them do so with the full knowledge, perhaps
even approval, of their parents. This was almost unthinkable back in my
own student days in Kerala; any instance of bunking would have brought
the wrath of the entire family down on the erring student's head. It was
that fanatical commitment to schooling which made Kerala one of the most
literate states in India. And yet today mothers in the Ka-nnur district
of Kerala are reluctant to let their wards go to school.
I cannot blame them.
It was, after all, in a school in Kannur that a bunch of Ma-rxist goons
burst into a schoolroom and executed a young teacher called Jayakr-ishnan
in front of his terrified pupils. Two weeks after that bloody first of
Dece-mber, several of those youngsters are still suffering from nightmares.
But why did the media
wake up to the Communist reign of terror only after the murder of Jayakrishnan?
There have beenno less than one hundred and thirty-three political assassinations
in a single district in Kerala; there were as many as seven in a single
week. Just don't ask how many murderers have actually been cau-ght by a
police force emasculated by its political masters.
What led to this spurt
in violence in Kerala? I put it down to the intolerance, not unmingled
with fear, of the Left. Ple-ase note that political assassinations are
not unique to Kerala among Left Front-ruled states. In the calendar year
1998, th-ere were no less than one hundred and sixty-five deaths due to
political violence in Jyoti Basu's jagir. In 1999, there have been one
hundred and forty-nine such murders. (The figures I have are correct only
up to November; the toll could rise in December.)
To be honest, I am surprised
there are still people courageous enough to take on the might of the Left
Front in West Bengal. After all, the Communists have had a little more
than twenty two years to undermine every institution not just the police
buteven, say, the University of Calcutta.
Actually, capturing educational
institutions is a tried and tested Communist tactic. Don't take my word
for it, just ask any Congressman from Kerala such as, say, A.K. Antony
or Vayalar Ravi. Both those stalwarts rose through the ranks of the Congress
on the strength of their records in students' uni-on politics. Today, that
same union does not dare to put up a candidate for election in the premier
college in Ko-chi and this, please note, is in an area where the Congress
still wins both the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. So how is it that
Marxists capture the college uni-ons as a matter of routine? Simple, the
parents of potential candidates from other parties are 'persuaded' to ensure
that their wards don't contest.
This technique has proved
so successful that the Left Front has begun to use it even in elections
to the Lok Sabha. In Kan-nur and Alappuzha, agents from rival parties were
`persuaded' to stay away from the booths. The result was rigging on aHit-lerite
scale no less than 243 booths reported polling percentages around 90 per
cent or more. (In another constituency, Kasargode, Booth 126 reported a
voting percentage of 98.05 per cent!)
What happened if some
agents were too stubborn, too honest, or too foolish to understand hints
dropped by the Left? Well, let me give you another statistic there were
no less than one hundred and seventy-three reported instances of political
violence from Kerala during the last General Election. Just to put that
into perspective, the only state to suffer more incidents of this kind
was Bihar.
The police was helpless
to prevent these incidents from polluting the electoral process. Quite
the contrary if anything; it seems the police wireless network was used
at least thrice to order the Circle Ins-pector of Pulinkunnu Police Station
to contact the convenor of the Left Front, V.S. Achuthana-ndan. I leave
it to you to figure out why this sh-ould have been so!
Nor is this the only
instance of the Kerala Po-licecoming under pressure from its Leftist bo-
sses. M.V. Raghavan became the target of Marxist hatred when he committed
the ultimate sin of leaving the party; there have been at least seven reported
instances of attempts to murder him. In one such case, the police came
to his rescue when he was under attack from a murderous mob. The result
is that an enquiry was promptly ordered by the Nayanar government.
Raghavan was luckier
than some. It is a matter of record that Jayakrishnan, the teacher killed
by another such mob, had also been granted police protection. It availed
him nothing the murderers threw chilli-powder into his guardians' eyes.
In truth, that condiment wasn't required; the police was blind (or blinded)
even before the actual attack.
The intelligence wing
of the Kerala Police had received a tip-off about the proposed attack but
took no special precautions. Later, after Jayakrishnan's mu-rder, the police
was told that the murderers had been traced to Thiruvananthapuram. Need
I add that they werenot arrested? The brutal fact is that the Kerala Police
is totally impotent in the face of interference by the Left Front government.
There is an element of
irony in all this. Decades ago, it was the Commu-nists who were at the
receiving end when the Congress was in power. Any hint of flirting with
the Marxists was a bar to employment, occasionally even to admission into
college. But I cannot recall any open violence of the scale that we see
today.
The murder of Jayakrishnan
is merely the most visible symptom of a disease. And that disease is the
ugliness, the utter incapacity of the Marxist mind to tolerate any dissent.
I use the adjective `Marxist' advisedly; if it is the Congress that is
under attack in Kochi and the BJP in Kannur, it is the smaller parties
in the Left Front which are under attack in West Bengal.(Which is not to
say that Trinamool Cong-ress members escape!)
I know for a fact that
there are politicians even within the CPI(M) itself who are ashamed about
this sickening violence. Butare they willing to speak out in the light
of those seven murderous attempts on Raghavan's life? Or must the mothers
of Kannur continue encouraging their children to bunk school?
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