The Students’ Federation of India (SFI), the students’ wing of the CPI(M), has the history of bringing out some of the best annual campus magazines Kerala has ever seen but such magazines which are to be the chronicles of students’ creativity are now showing a tendency of spreading left-sponsored political and cultural intolerance under college unions ruled by the same SFI.
The recent incidents of the magazines of two colleges in Thrissur district defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi and ridiculing him and other political and spiritual personalities with obscene references are said to be proof of this intolerance toward anything that is outside the leftist scheme of things.
That Modi has been the main target of attack in the magazines of two colleges situated in adjoining localities showed that some external political forces could have been using the students' unions to carry out their anti-Modi political agenda, according to sources in the police. They said investigations were on to find out such possible connections.
Those booked in these incidents included college principals, lecturers, staff in charge of overseeing preparation of campus magazines and student editors who were part of the college students’ unions. Sources said that more college magazines could have been indulging in such wrongful practices and efforts were on to examine this.
“I won't hold the college authorities responsible for such acts because I know that the sources of these perverse ideas are the student leaders themselves who are controlled by their political masters outside. The staff editors and principals in colleges with leftist students' unions do not even get a chance to vet the contents,” says a former SFI students' editor.
The first incident involved litsokniga, the annual campus magazine of the Government Polytechnic College in Kunnamkulam, in which Modi’s picture was published along with those of Adolf Hitler, Osama bin laden, Veerappan, Veluppillai Prabhakaran and others in an inside page under the title, ‘Negative Faces’.
The second incident invol-ved Name, the magazine of the Sree Krishna College at nearby Ariyannur, whose management is associated with the administrative body of the famous Sree Krishna Temple of Guruvayur. The magazine contained material which featured Modi, spiritual leader Mata Amritanan-damayi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in obscene ways.
Even pro-left cultural leaders are of the opinion that the obscenity-laden puzzle page in Name cannot be considered as an example of editorial freedom. According to them, the obscene puzzles concerning political and spiritual leaders are expressions of the political perversity of a section in the CPI(M).
In both cases, the students’ editors belonged to the SFI. In the first case, the students' editor, Praveen Kumar claimed that the magazine was for the academic year 2012-13 and the contentious page was set much before Modi had become the NDA’s prime ministerial candidate and that it was published before he became the Prime Minister.
“That is a hollow justification,” says the former students’ editor. “Even if what he says is true, there was no reason or occasion for the making of such a page. It is absolutely clear that this particular page was conceived and made for putting the Modi picture in it. That is a perverse editorial trick and it should not be allowed,” he adds.
While the ABVP has demanded an investigation by a central agency into the two incidents by alleging that there has been a conspiracy behind the anti-Modi contents, the Thrissur district committee of the SFI is claiming that the move against the magazines and those who worked for them should be seen as an attack on the freedom of expression.