Protests are taking centrestage in Kerala but the reactions to them range from the absurd to the hypocritical. Governor Arif Mohammed Khan defied Left student protestors who, describing him as an agent of the Sangh Parivar packing varsity senates with those with BJP-RSS leanings, declared that they would not allow him to enter any university in Kerala. A defiant Khan announced that he would spend three days in the Calicut University guest house. He has been taking on the SFI and DYFI protestors head-on, stepping out of his vehicle to confront them.
He accused the police of treating these agitators with kid gloves and said the student protestors were attacking him at the behest of the chief minister. He said banners against him were indicative of the breakdown of constitutional machinery. CM Pinarayi Vijayan, on the other hand, has accused the governor of making wilful attempts to destroy the peace of the state and provoking the agitators. He said Khan was acting against the democratic right to protest by branding the agitators as criminals and goondas.
Ironically, the police are tackling with a heavy hand those protesting against the month-long statewide yatra led by Vijayan, accompanied by 21 ministers, ostensibly to listen to people’s grievances. Waving black flags and, absurdly, even carrying black umbrellas is being branded as an uprising against the state. Ordinary citizens wearing black and passing along the yatra route are being rounded up with alarming regularity. Opposition youth and student wing protestors are being detained or put under house arrest. Those who dare to protest against the CM’s yatra are being badly beaten up by CPM youth activists, while the police just look on. Social media posts against the yatra are also being dealt with harshly as the initiators are being booked under section 153 of the IPC for inciting violence.
The chief minister and the CPM leadership, who speak so eloquently about free speech and the right to dissent, have branded the opposition protests as attempts to discredit the Left Front government and its achievements of the past seven-and-a-half-years. The shrinking space for dissent in Kerala has alarmed civil society. If the BJP government at the Centre has been branded as an autocratic regime, the Vijayan government in the southern state is no less intolerant. In fact the action taken by both governments is eerily similar. There is no room for democratic protest as anyone raising issues is branded anti-national. Locking up dissenters is par for the course. Criticism, constructive or otherwise, is not being brooked. Left or right, authoritarianism is on the rise, indeed a cause for immense worry.
