Generating fears that the political battle between the Congress-led ruling UDF and the CPI(M)-headed Opposition lDF could turn into a nasty law and order problem, unidentified criminals on early Thursday morning set ablaze the famous memorial of P Krishna Pillai, founder leader of the Communist movement in Kerala, in Alappuzha district.
The criminals also vandalized a statue of Pillai installed at the premises of the memorial at Kannarangatt near Kanjikkuzhy, known as a fortress of the CPI(M). Coming within four days after the attack on Congress CM Oommen Chandy in Kannur on Sunday, the incident has created apprehensions of the possibility of continued unrest in the State’s political field.
The memorial, a small house with palm frond-thatched roof where Pillai, a reformist and a Congress leader in his early life, lived in hiding during his last years and where he died at the age of 42, was torched. local residents said that they had heard commotion at about 2.00 am Thursday and had seen some people running away from the premises.
The fire was doused by the people living in the neighbourhood, most of whom were active workers or fellow-travelers of the CPI(M), and the Fire Force. The Home Department has constituted a special investigation team of the Kerala Police headed by Inspector General (Central Zone) K Padmakumar to probe the incident.
local CPI(M) leaders demanded effective police investigation and immediate arrest of the culprits failing which there could be huge troubles as the incident had created an emotional scar in the minds of the people. The CPI(M) and CPI have jointly called for a shutdown in Alappuzha district on Friday. Communist leaders asked their workers to keep self-restraint.
State Assembly’s Opposition leader and CPI(M)’s nonagenarian Central committee member VS Achuthanandan, who considers Pillai as his political Guru, and other communist leaders said that there was a conspiracy behind the torching of the memorial and the attack on the statue. “It is a conspiracy as there was no tension prevailing in that area,” Achuthanandan said.
Even before senior communist leaders had expressed any suspicion on who could have been responsible for the act of vandalism, AA Shukoor, Alappuzha District Congress president, tried to put the blame squarely on the shoulders of the CPI(M) by saying, “This was part of the rampant divisionism in the Kanjikkuzhy unit of the CPI(M).”
Shukoor’s words enraged State CPI(M) secretary Pinarayi Vijayan who said, “His statement smacks of the guilt of the Congress.” Vijayan said that only people with no sense of history would commit such a heinous crime as Krishna Pillai was not just a communist leader but he was also a respected Congress leader and Freedom fighter before he became a communist.