Is Kannur returning to the horrible days of politics of revenge murders once againIJ This is the question being asked now in every household in Kannur district, especially areas like Koothuparamba,Thalassery and Thalipparamba, after Monday’s brutal murder of RSS leader Manoj of Elanthottathil at Kathiroor allegedly by a Marxist killer gang.
Streets, market places and other public centres in almost the entire Kannur district, except the towns where Sangh Pariwar outfits held demonstrations protesting Manoj’s murder, remained deserted as people refused to go out of their homes due to fear of retaliatory attacks by the RSS and continued violence from the part of the CPI(M) to establish upper hand. Kannur, infamous as Kerala’s Marxist heartland which has seen hundreds of incidents of brutal political violence over the past four decades in which over 600 persons have lost their lives, has been enjoying a period of relative peace for the past three years but that peace has come to an end with Manoj’s murder.
The CPI(M)’s strongest district unit in entire India is in Kannur and that factor reflects in the violent history of the region, where it keeps impregnable Red fortresses called the party villages, as the Marxist party has always been on one side in all the incidents of violence. Most of its victims have been RSS-BJP leaders and workers.
“If the BJP and the RSS take a position similar to that of the CPI(M), the result will be catastrophic but we will not do that. We are responsible organizations unlike the Marxists. The BJP is the ruling party in India,” said Kerala BJP general secretary K Surendran on Tuesday at a meeting held to protest the murder of Manoj.
People of Kannur who observe the CPI(M) closely say that the reason behind the murder of Manoj could be the Marxists’ intolerance over the recent trend in the district of partymen choosing to leave the CPI(M) and join the BJP or some other party. More than 400 CPI(M) workers and sympathizers had joined the BJP at a programme in Kannur on August 24.
“This has created a feeling among the top district leadership of the CPI(M) that their tricks to keep workers’ loyalty intact are not working. Also, there are evidences to show that the party villages are no more impregnable fortresses. It is worrying the leadership a lot,” said Ramesh (name changed), a former CPI(M) activist in Panur, one of the most volatile areas in Kannur. That the CPI(M) is no more the formidable political force it used to be in Kannur has been obvious from the results of the 2010 local bodies polls and 2011 Assembly election. In 2010, it had suffered huge reversals in the panchayat elections in Kannur and in 2011 it had even lost Peravur and Azhikode seats, known to be Kannur’s Red forts. The Kannur CPI(M) has always been accused of trying to plug leaks in its organisational structure with violence. Several senior BJP leaders have become victims of this tactics and school teacher KT Jayakrishnan, State vice-president of Yuva Morcha, who was brutally killed in a classroom in front of his Class VI students on December 1, 1999 was just one of them.
“We had a feeling that those days of killings were over. Of course, there have been some incidents during the interlude but we had managed to keep our hope. But the murder of Manoj indicates that the Marxists are up to some nastier plans and that is what is troubling the people,” said a retired Government official from Kathiroor, where Manoj was murdered on Monday.