People's Democracy

KERALA: THE TARGET OF COMMUNAL FORCES

  Prakash Karat

THE Antony government has just completed two years in office in Kerala.  This occurred at a time when the state had gone through a disturbing episode of communal violence. Nine people were brutally killed in Marad beach in Kozhikode district by a gang of raiders who came by boat. Marad was the scene of communal violence earlier in January 2002, when five people were killed and 90 houses destroyed.  Marad is a hamlet populated by people who earn their livelihood through fishing. Most of those killed belonged to a local community outfit run by the RSS. The attackers are suspected to belong to a Muslim fundamentalist organisation, the National Development Front (NDF). The attack is seen as an act of retaliation against those who perpetrated the violence last year. 

This premeditated violence has raised a number of questions about the activities of communal organisations and their efforts to foment tensions and create barriers between different communities. It has also sharply highlighted the role of the UDF government and the stance adopted by chief minister, A K Antony, in dealing with the ongoing efforts to communalise the Kerala society.

WAGES OF THE CONGRESS POLITICS

The Congress has a record of rallying the communal and caste-based organisations to fight the Left-led alliance in Kerala. This process, which has gone on for decades, has now assumed menacing proportions with the changes in the national and international situation. The rise of the Hindutva forces at the all-India plane has witnessed the RSS making concerted bids to establish its network and influence in the state. The use of temples and religious festivals to legitimise their ideology and efforts to penetrate social institutions were stepped up. Parallel to this, minority fundamentalism has also been making steady inroads and gaining new adherents. 

Kerala is unique in its social composition. It has a Muslim population of 22 per cent and a Christian population of 21 per cent. Because of the existence of a strong communist and Left movement and politics being polarised between the Left and the Congress-led alliances, it was not possible for the extremist communal forces to make much headway in the past. But this has been changing in the recent times. 

The promotion of all the caste and communal groupings by the Congress has been so persistent that it has resulted in a spurt in the aggressiveness of all the communal forces. The Congress-led United Democratic Front (UDF) contains parties which are organised on communal lines and, in their quest to dislodge the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) from power last time in 2001, they spared no effort to woo the extremist elements. Both the RSS and the People's Democratic Party (PDP) supported the UDF. The former did so tacitly while the latter did it openly. The UDF promised to get the PDP leader, Madani, jailed under the NSA, released if it came to power.  The UDF government's existence and the approach adopted by A K Antony are providing a congenial atmosphere for the flourishing of a wide variety of caste and communal politics. 

A K Antony, besieged by dissidents within his own party, has gone about wooing and promoting communal and caste lobbies to protect his position.  Antony has, time and again, made it clear that he considers the Marxists to be the main threat, not the RSS-BJP or the Muslim fundamentalists. At no time in the last two years, when RSS men targetted the Marxists, has Antony found it necessary to condemn their murderous politics. Rather, his consistent position has been to equate the Marxists and the RSS as twin evils. It is this approach which led the UDF to downplay the eruption of communal violence in Marad in January last year and not take firm measures to follow up and track down the culprits. Even the relief provided by the state for the victims of the violence was routed through communal organisations.

COMMUNAL THREAT UNDERPLAYED

The growing activities of the NDF and the danger posed by it were exposed by the previous LDF government. The Nayanar government had taken steps to arrest its activists who were provided training in weapons, and recovered some of the arms. But the vigilance against this organisation's activities was blunted by the fact that the Muslim League (IUML), which is an important partner in the UDF, is not willing to take a firm stand against this extremist organisation.

When the Vishwa Hindu Parishad announced its trishul distribution programme in Kerala, Antony rejected the demand to ban such activity.  When it was pointed out that the Congress government in Rajasthan had prohibited such programmes and arrested Togadia, Antony stated that the situation in Kerala was different. He justified this by stating that in the Kerala situation, activities of different communities have to be tolerated to maintain social peace. He went on further to state that the West Bengal government had not banned such trishul distribution in the state. This was a gratuitous and false point to make since the VHP has not, to date, announced any specific trishul distribution ceremony in West Bengal. Whenever such a programme is taken up by the VHP in West Bengal, the Left Front government would step in to prevent such an occurrence. Antony's benevolence to the VHP was reciprocated by Praveen Togadia who declared that Antony was fit to be the president of the All India Congress Committee (AICC)! 

On an earlier occasion, Antony had dismissed any threat from the BJP government's plan for communalisation of the education system. He opposed the use of terms like "saffronisation" saying that there is nothing objectionable about the saffron colour which has a religious connotation.   Antony knows very well that the real issue is the injection of communal ideology into the educational system and not the term "saffronisation" in itself. This was nothing but a cheap attempt to curry favour with the religious-minded while underplaying the assault on the secular values in education.

RSS COMBINE’S QUEST TO GET FOOTHOLD

The RSS-BJP combine, in its quest for a social base in Kerala, has latched on to the leadership of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP), the organisation which originated in the social reform movement of Sree Narayana Guru. Its present general secretary, Vellappalli Natesan, has come to an understanding with the BJP for  his own selfish interests. In the course of this month, Murli Manohar Joshi and L K Advani have graced the platform of the SNDP. At the meeting organised in Thiruvananthapuram to unveil the statue of the founder editor of Kerala Kaumudi newspaper, L K Advani hoped for saffronisation of the SNDP. He shared the platform with A K Antony, who obviously sees nothing wrong with such an effort. The brazen effort to utilise the SNDP for the BJP-RSS purposes is something which does not worry Antony and the UDF. Wearing caste spectacles, they see this as a way to erode the mass base of the CPI(M) among the Ezhava community. For Antony, the prospect of any social group getting communalised in Kerala is less dangerous than having the Marxists wield influence among the working people of that community.

The Marad killings, the VHP's trishul distribution and the BJP's appearance in SNDP platforms are not all unconnected.  They are part of the same chain of events which symbolise the concerted bid by Hindu and Muslim extremists to penetrate different state and communalise Kerala society.

Kerala is today the target of the Sangh combine and the minority extremist groups. The Congress-UDF attitude fosters their activities. This is dangerous as it will lead to the disruption of the secular and democratic fabric of the Kerala society. The fight against these forces on the ideological and political plane is important and essential. Further, their efforts to entrench themselves in society through a whole range of social and cultural activities have to be combated by vigorous intervention. This will involve promoting democratic and secular cultural values and the development of alternative institutions.  In the coming days, the CPI(M) and the Left forces will have to mobilise their considerable resources to meet the challenge of the reactionary communal forces and to defeat the cynical manoeuvres of A K Antony and the UDF leadership.