Billed as God’s own country, Kerala is, in recent times, far from it. Violent clashes between cadres of the CPI-M and the RSS have marred the tranquillity in this southern state which is going through a political transition, with the Congress-led United Democratic Front facing an existential crisis, the Left struggling to hold on to its new-found dominant position through hook or crook and the RSS-BJP slowly but steadily growing in influence and not averse to showing its muscle power to match the Left. The Pinarayi Vijayan government which is at the helm since May 2016 tends to look the other way when its cadres settle scores with the RSS.
In the assembly elections last year, the BJP’s vote share rose to 10.5 per cent as compared to 6 per cent in the 2011 Assembly elections, but it has remained flat when compared with the 10.2 per cent it scored in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Seen together with its ambitious ally, the Bhartiya Dharma Jana Sena (BDJS), the vote share is about 14 per cent compared with the 16 per cent the alliance clocked in local body polls last year. The BDJS contested in 37 seats and garnered 3.9 per cent total vote share while BJP finished with 10.5 per cent.
The beginning of political killings in the state dates back to 1970s, when Hindu-Muslim clashes used to occur in Malabar. This gradually turned to RSS-Left conflicts on behalf of both communities and the spirit of retaliatory action on both sides escalated matters. Be it on roads, party offices, campuses and even within homes right in front of family members, killings took on a macabre touch. There is no accurate official estimate of how many political killings have happened in Kerala. Often, too trivial issues such as placing one party’s hoarding on a spot previously used by the other, triggered conflicts that resulted in killings. Or, sometimes, there was a race to equal the tally. All political parties keep goons to use when needed. The rise of RSS-BJP clout in Kerala post May 2014, when the Narendra Modi government came to power, is bolstering the local BJP-RSS units to take on the rivals. This was subsequently boosted by the BJP’s improved performance in vote share in 2015 local body polls and 2016 May state assembly polls. Withstanding the strong Left wave that swept through the state, the BJP notched up its first victory in the last Kerala Assembly elections.
The Left and the RSS-BJP both need to rein in their workers if peace is to prevail but at present there are no takers for pacifism. The RSS has taken a wise step in sacking a Madhya Pradesh RSS worker Kundan Chandrawat for publicly declaring a bounty of Rs 1 crore on the head of the Kerala chief minister. Chandrawat had held Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan responsible for the alleged killing of over 300 RSS workers and had offered to hand over his property worth over Rs 1 crore to “whoever beheads Vijayan and brings his head.” There should be zero tolerance for such despicable men who fuel an atmosphere of hate and intolerance.
