The Kerala BJP on Wednesday hit out at the State’s cultural icons who had allegedly kept mum at crucial moments and are now attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi while senior party leader and Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu accused the ruling CPI(M) of practising murderous politics and warned the Marxists that they “will get it back politically”.
“The silence the cultural leaders and human rights movements are adopting when lives and honour of women are being torn apart in the streets and even tiny children are being hunted down (under the CPI(M)’s rule) is horrifying,” said the political resolution of the BJP’s State council meeting held at Kottayam.
“The BJP is asking cultural Kerala to evaluate the sense of justice of those who have mortgaged their humanism and moral values for awards and honours,” the resolution said. The theme of the resolution was directly linked to the attack by the so-called pro-left cultural leaders against the BJP and Modi over the ongoing nationalism debate and demonetisation.
BJP’s State general secretary MT Ramesh, who moved the resolution, termed a section of writers in Kerala as the tongue of the CPI(M). “Such cultural leaders who had remained silent at crucial moments when they should have spoken out are now baying for Modi’s blood. Keralites have the common sense to recognize whom they are trying to appease,” he said.
Enumerating the atrocities committed against BJP workers, women and children during the seven-month lDF rule, including the death of a Mahila Morcha worker in Palakkad on Monday following an arson triggered by CPI(M) activists, the paper said, “The State is witnessing a situation where even women and children are not safe.”
The resolution, which raised eight points including the collapse of the public distribution system under the leftist regime, accused the Government of Marxist Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan of failing to safeguard lives and property of the people and charged the Home Department with protecting the Marxists’ feudalistic attitude which was determined “not to allow others to live”.
Inaugurating the State council meeting, Venkaiah Naidu warned the Marxists against practising “murderous politics” saying that they would get it back politically. Condemning the killing of BJP workers in political violence in Kerala, he asked the CPI(M) to fight his party politically and ideologically, if it “has the guts”.
“Red and blood will never succeed,” Naidu said referring to the death of a woman BJP worker in Palakkad the other day following CPI(M)-perpetrated arson. “They are talking about intolerance (of the BJP). They are attacking my party people. It is condemnable. The entire country is watching what the CPI(M) is doing in Kerala,” he said.
Recalling the “impressive performance of the BJP in the last Assembly election in the State, Naidu said, “I want the CPI(M) to know that things are changing. The entire country is changing. lotus is blooming everywhere. It will bloom in Kerala also,” he said, adding that the Marxists and the Congress were the two sides of the same coin and were playing politics of adjustment.
Congratulating the people of the country for supporting demonetization which he said would be beneficial for India in the long run, the Minister described Narendra Modi as “a performer, reformer and transformer”. The Congress, whose policy was to talk for the poor and work for the rich, and the communists alone had opposed demonetization, he said.
The three-day leadership meet of the Kerala BJP had started at Kottayam on Monday amidst a war of words between it and its critics who included cultural icons like filmmaker Kamal and Jnanpith winner MT Vasudevan Nair over nationalism and demonetization. The debate had also seen a senior BJP leader calling Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara as a heartless killer and another glorifying him.