If there is a victim in the recent bloodshed in Kannur, other than the slain Congress activist Shuhaib, it is the ruling CPI(M).
The incident has put the party on a tight spot even as it has been trying to erase the "killer" stamp attributed to it by the RSS machinery desperately. The fact that the incident has happened at a time when the party has been taking out torch-light marches across the state paying tributes to its “martyrs” as part of its state conference has added to the woes of the CPI(M).
The incident happened on February 12 when a four-member gang hacked Shuhaib to death. The attack was so gruesome that there were as many as 37 wounds on his body. Two CPI(M) activists have been arrested in the case.
Many video clips, where the CPM flag-bearing activists are seen airing death threats against Shuhaib, have surfaced, putting the blame squarely on the ruling party even as its Kannur district secretary P. Jayarajan has declared that they have nothing to do with the murder.
On the other hand, the incident has given a new lease of life to the Congress party. Its Kannur face K. Sudhakaran has begun a 48-hour fast from Monday and has warned of converting it into an indefinite hunger strike.
Shuhaib was an active worker of Sunni Students' Federation (SSF), the youth wing of AP Sunni faction which leans more to the left. It has also created more than a head ache to the party.
The gruesomeness of the murder brought the memories of the killing of T.P. Chandrasekharan, former CPI(M) leader who had quit the party, back to the collective psyche of the state. This was an episode the party would always love to forget. Adding more woes to the CPI(M), K.K. Rema, the wife of Chanrasekharan, has announced her decision to hold satyagraha in front of AKG Bhavan, the headquarters of the CPI(M), in Delhi on Wednesday to highlight the “anti-democratic and fascist regime” of the LDF in Kerala. The CPI(M) is alleging that it is the RSS which is sponsoring Rema's sit in in Delhi.
Naturally, nothing could be more pleasing to the BJP than this as it has been making quite a hue and cry about the political killings in the state putting the blame squarely on the CPI(M). Though the RSS-BJP is an equal, if not more, of a culprit in this killing spree, the party has been successful in painting the CPI(M) in the killer hue, thanks to its well oiled public machinery.
The CPI(M) is planning to counter this campaign through its torch light marches representing each one of its martyrs. “The truth is that we have lost the maximum number of lives, though the RSS machinery has been trying to portray us as the killers. We are trying to correct that perception,” a state committee member told THE WEEK.
But he also admitted that the recent killing has only made that perception about CPI(M) worse.
“Extreme aggression is part of the collective CPI(M) psyche. Its enemies know it well and they do everything possible to drag the party towards violence. And the CPI(M) falls into that trap easily,'' said Ramakrishnan K., a political observer.
This incident, according to him, has put the CPI(M) on one side and all other parties including the BJP, Congress and the SDPI, on the other.
The period between 1970 and 1980 was known for the conflicts between the CPI(M) and the Congress in Kannur. But with the beginning of 1980s, Congress was replaced by RSS while the CPI(M) continued to be at the other side. That CPI(M) is always there—either as a killer or as a victim—has never gone unnoticed.
Another take on the killing is that it was done without the know of the top leadership. “More than half of the political killings happen as a local reaction to an incident. It is not that every killing is planned at the top level. There have been occasions when the local cadre went and killed someone even when the senior leadership had asked them not to resort to violence,'' said K. Vasu, a one-time active party member.
The recent murder, however, has stuck the “political killer” tag once again on the face of the CPI(M) in bold letters. And the party will have to wriggle quite a lot to get that tag out of its system.