J Nandakumar the RSS pracharak who is heading the Praviar organisation Pragnja Pravah could be the first national leader to tweet about the gruesome killing of T H Shuhaib, a young Youth Congress local leader from the Kannur district in Kerala. In his tweet, he corners the arch-rival CPI (M) with a thought-provoking comparison.
After 12 hours the Congress president Rahul Gandhi condemned the incident with a tweet, which was less impressive, and politically null in nature in which, neither had he accused the CPI (M) nor he made any effort to address the political significance of the murder.
The National, as well as the Kerala leadership of RSS, thinks that their prolonged campaign over CPI (M) atrocities have paid the dividend. While the BJP president Amit Shah raised the issue vigorously while campaigning in October last year, the Congress playe
d a safe role that apparently protected the CPI (M) sponsored atrocities in the notorious district. They joined with the CPI (M) and the leader of the opposition made fun of Amit Shah and said, “By walking he will shed weight, but will have no political gain”.
But the last week’s atmosphere made a drastic turn in Kerala’s politics. In TV studios the Congress spokespersons literally congratulated the RSS for the defence they put forth against CPI (M) in Kannur District. The factionalism in the party is all out as the Congress strongman of Kannur K Sudhakaran started a hunger strike to deliver justice to the family of Shuhaib against an allegedly biased police investigation. The ground level workers of the Congress party are in deep disappointment as they draw a comparison of the responses by the BJP central leaders and their own leaders in cases like this – the killing of their cadres.
“When an RSS/BJP man gets killed, right from the prime minister to the BJP president and their total campaign machinery involves in it and lifts the morale of the cadre, and see what happens here. The national president shies away from naming the CPI (M) who is responsible,” says a youth congress block president who doesn’t want to be named.
The political wave doesn’t stop here. The killing became a grave issue in the Left Democratic Front as well as in the CPI (M) itself. The CPI with which the relation is already on a rough path categorically condemned the incident and indirectly made a jibe at the home ministry, which is managed by the CM Pinarayi Vijayan. CPI (M) always justified the Kannur killings by citing the challenges posed by the RSS, and now they have no way out as the victim now is a Congress worker.
Two men were arrested by the police and the Congress and the BJP cried foul citing that the arrested men were only dummies. The North zone DGP categorically stated that the CPI (M) workers were behind the incident and the arrested are real accused. But K Sudhakaran pointed out that allegations have also arisen as the convicts of the TP Chandrasekharan murder case were on parole when Shuhaib was murdered and the modus operandi seems to be the same.
More than 16 people have died after the LDF Government took office after May 2016, a majority of them were from RSS, and an effort was made by the Chief Minister to reach out to RSS for a peace settlement mediated by Sri M, a spiritual leader who draws mutual respect from both RSS and CPI (M). Various meetings were held at the local level, as well as state level and confidence-building measures were exchanged. However, even when the peace talks were prevailing there were murders in Kannur as well as in Thiruvananthapuram and two RSS workers lost their lives.
The age-old factionalism within the CPI (M) was suppressed by the then state secretary Pinrayi Vijayan with the help of the ever-strong Kannur lobby and he literally moved forward the party from withering away. But as soon as he became the Chief Minister, the Kannur lobby became the unofficial decision-making body of the party-related activities. P Jayarajan, the district secretary of CPI (M) in Kannur, who is also a survivor of a near-death attack from the RSS – during the killing spree of 1998 after the K T Jayakrishnan the State Vice-President of the Yuva Morcha was butchered in front of his students at the LP school near Kannur – had to face severe criticism from the state committee for his role as a mediator for peace in the district.
P Jayarajan, successfully brought senior BJP men to the CPI (M) thus, idealization of his personality gathered momentum in the district, where posters portray him as Krishna while Pinarayi Vijayan as Arjuna appeared in local junctions, which became popular trolls in social media.
In a nutshell, the Shuhaib murder case is a double-sided sword for both the Congress and CPI (M) in Kerala, as they lost the argument to RSS. Congress president is keeping mum on this issue to woo the CPI (M) led left in Delhi. Meanwhile, CPI (M) runs for justification for the murder of a Congressman from a minority community at a time when the party is trying to intensify the so-called fascist campaign throughout the country.
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