Political violence shatters peace in Kerala
The CPI(M)'s politics of violence has returned to Kannur, a district infamous as Kerala's Marxist killing fields, after a fairly long interval, with the brutal murder of a 28-year-old BJP activist, Vinod Kumar, in Payyannur on Sunday. The Marxists' choice of Sunday, December 1, for committing the horrible act has to be seen as part of an attempt to send a message to opponents, as it was on this day in 1999 when a Marxist gang had hacked to death then State Yuva Morcha vice-president KT Jayakrishnan, a teacher, in a classroom in front of his Class VI students.
The victim of Sunday's Marxist violence was one among the thousands of BJP-RSS workers going to pay homage to Jayakrishnan at a memorial meeting organised in Kannur town on the anniversary of the killing. The incident, in which two other BJP workers were seriously injured, has plunged Kannur once again into panic as the people of the district, familiar with the cruel pattern of such incidents, fear that this could mark the start of yet another phase of bloody clashes between the CPI(M) and its opponents.
The law enforcement machinery of the State's Congress-led UDF Government failed in bringing any hope of peace to the panic-stricken people as its first attempt was to provide security to CPI(M)'s offices across the district, instead of to nab the culprits. However, the fact is that nothing anymore surprises the people of Kannur as they have seen on many occasions in the past the police allowing CPI(M) elements go scot-free after violent incidents and making arrests as per lists provided by party bosses.
Hundreds of lives have been lost in violent incidents in Kannur in the past four decades, and the CPI(M) has invariably been on one side in all those clashes. The party has through systematic operations created many impregnable fortresses in the district in the form of the so-called party villages where, as per a saying in Kannur, ‘not even a fly will fly without the party leadership's knowledge’. These party villages form safe havens for the killer gangs after each ‘wet operation’. Kannur has been having a relatively peaceful period for over the past three years as no incident of serious violence — except for the murder of a Muslim league worker in February, 2012 — had taken place during that period. The people were also sitting relieved as there had not been any major attack from the side of the Marxists against the BJP in the past three years; such attacks had invariably sparked bloody clashes.
But Sunday's development has disrupted the confidence. Also, every detail of the latest violence indicates that it was pre-planned, which is all the more reason for added worries. What is even more troublesome is the glaring incapability of the State Home Department in dealing with such situations, mainly because of the infighting in the Congress, the feud in the ruling Congress-led coalition and an alleged understanding between the CPI(M) leadership and a section in the Congress. What is obvious is that Kannur can return to its old days of turbulence if political parties including the CPI(M), the Government, the police and the people do not show the required collective will to stop the possibility of deterioration in the situation arising out of the Payyannur incident.