Bid to control higher education

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Narendra Modi government has come up with a measure which seeks to strengthen the Centre’s control over institutions of higher education in the name of regulation.

Currently regulatory functions in respect of universities are vested in the University Grants Commission, which has academic and financial powers. It lays down standards of teaching, examination and research, provides for their needs and ensures maintenance of standards.

A draft bill the government has put in the public domain provides for abolition of UGC and creation of a new body called Higher Education Commission of India in its place. The HECI’s powers will be limited to academic matters. It will have no financial powers. The stakeholders, including the academic community, have been given just 10 days to convey their views on the draft bill.

In the remote past there were institutions of higher learning in the subcontinent at Takshashila (near Rawalpindi in Pakistan) and Nalanda and Vikramshila (both in Bihar) which reputedly attracted scholars from far and near.

The first modern universities were established by the British at Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) in 1858.  More universities came up later, some, like the Aligarh Muslim University and the Banaras Hindu University, due to private initiative, and some under patronage of rulers of princely states.        

The UGC was created by an Act of Parliament by Jawaharlal Nehru’s government in the 1950s on the lines of the recommendations of a commission headed by John Sergeant, who was Educational Adviser to the Government in the closing stages of colonial rule.

Nehru believed science and technology can help better the lot of the poor.  Outside the university system, his government fostered the Indian Institute of Sciences, a brain-child of industry pioneer JN Tata which was brought to fruition by the colonial government in 1909. 

It also established a number of institutions of higher learning like the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The IISc and a couple of older IITs are the only Indian institutions that have found their way into any global or Asian rankings. The great measure of autonomy these institutions enjoy in academic matters has enabled them to function without undue governmental interference and maintain high standards. The regular universities have seen a decline in standards under political control. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtreeya Swayamsevak Sangh, have not been well-disposed towards the new-generation institutions of higher learning which they view as centres of liberal thought.

Reform of higher education was mentioned in the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. Although it is only now that the Modi government has come up with a legislative measure in this regard, efforts to control institutions of higher learning have been on from the very beginning.

The RSS set the stage for the assault on these institutions with its journal, Organiser, launching an attack on the IITs and the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, dubbing them centres of “anti-India, anti-Hindu” activities.

The RSS’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, fomented trouble in several campuses, including those of JNU in New Delhi, IIT in Chennai and Central University in Hyderabad. It specifically targeted Muslim, Dalit and left-wing student leaders.

Rohit Vemula, a Dalit scholar of the Central University, was driven to suicide.  Sedition charges were slapped on several JNU students. Two students reported missing from the JNU campus still remain untraced.

RSS-affiliated groups were fighting liberal thought at various levels even before the BJP came to power. Five years ago a leading publisher, Penguin Books, bought peace with one group by agreeing to pulp all copies of US Indologist Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”.

More recently another group proposed to the Centre the removal of all foreign languages from the curriculum of institutions of higher education in the national interest. It also wanted stoppage of UGC funding for all research not connected with national requirements.

The move to replace the UGC with the HECI can be seen as the first step in that direction. The Centre’s decision to keep the power to allot grants in its own hands is undesirable for more than one reason.

In the first place, it will leave the HECI with no means to enforce its directives with regard to academic matters other than the extreme step of ordering closure of the institution. More importantly, as the one who pays the piper, the Centre will be in a position to call the tune even in academic matters. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 3, 2018,

Hindutva’s divisive preoccupations

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

As the Narendra Modi government heads for the fourth of its term of five years, its popularity is largely intact. However, the methods it employs to gain and retain electoral support remain problematical in view of the use of highly divisive tactics.

For a quarter century the Bharatiya Janata Party has been contesting parliamentary elections under the banner of National Democratic Alliance. Most of the NDA constituents share its Hindutva agenda but it also includes some which are committed to broader ideals but find it beneficial to be a BJP ally.

In the 2014 elections, the BJP secured an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha on its own, with only 31 per cent of the total votes polled. Thanks to the fragmented polity and the ‘first past the post’ principle that governs the electoral system, political parties have often secured a majority in the house with a minority of votes but never before did a party win enough seats to form the government with so small a vote share.

The credit for the BJP’s unprecedented electoral performance belongs to Modi, who vigorously campaigned all over the country and to the cadres of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the prime mover of the Hindutva ideology, who were deployed extensively at the booth level in several states.

Although the BJP had majority, Modi and the party decided to keep the NDA intact and continue to work under its banner. One partner, Shiv Sena, which was Hindutva’s chief instrument in the western state of Maharashtra for decades, has been needling the BJP from time to time but Modi and party president Amit Shah have ignored the pinpricks.

The RSS has brought the Central and state administrations under its influence since Modi took office. The central universities which enjoyed a reputation as centres of excellence and liberal thought were among the first to come under its radar. The RSS-affiliated student organisation queered the pitch for central intervention by provoking conflicts with the leaders of the elected students unions and progressive elements like Ambedkarite groups.

When the attempt invited strong criticism, Modi gave Smriti Irani, who was presiding over the Ministry of Human Resources, to a less important charge. However, efforts to effect changes have continued in a less obtrusive manner.

In states like Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, where the BJP gained power after 2014, breaking with the tradition the party followed in the past, hard core RSS leaders were chosen to head the government. This indicated that the RSS was no longer content to remain in the background.

Emboldened by the emergence of the RSS as a major power centre, shadowy Hindutva outfits resorted to violent activities in many states, including those under non-BJP governments, during the last three years. People were lynched to death in the name of eating beef or killing cows. The police have not been able to restrain the unruly elements or pursue the cases against them vigorously.

In a situation like the one in which the BJP is now placed, a leadership with qualities of statesmanship would have striven to strengthen its credentials as the ruling party in a democracy by reaching out to people outside its fold, especially the minorities and the marginalised sections, and enhance its appeal to them. But the Hindutva mindset is too narrow to permit the party to move in that direction.

Instead, it appears, the RSS-BJP combine is working on a strategy which aims at enhancing its vote share by mobilising more support from the Hindu fold. There is, of course, room for the BJP to raise its share of Hindu votes as the Hindus constitute close to 80 per cent of the population. But this will require intensification of communal polarisation, which can have disastrous consequences.

Reports indicate that the Central government has plans to push the use of Hindi in the south as part of an attempt at promoting national integration. The move will strengthen the BJP’s position in the Hindi-speaking states but it may produce a backlash elsewhere, particularly in the Tamil Nadu state.

The Dravidian movement of Tamil Nadu has a history of defeating attempts to impose Hindi. In the 1930s its followers foiled the move by a pre-Independence government to promote Hindi by invoking the spirit of nationalism fostered by the freedom movement. They rose against the imposition of Hindi again in the 1960s and the 1980s and are sure to do so again, if necessary.

Modi needs to recognise that Hindutva’s divisive preoccupations pose a threat to his development agenda.  -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 2, 2017

Conflicting pulls and pressures

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi is trying to fast-forward Indian society into the digital era, scattered groups across the country are striving to hold it back, if not drive it back to the medieval ages.

Ironically, in the forefront of the onward-to-the-past movement are numerous shadowy outfits set up by followers of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, fountainhead of the Hindutva ideology of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

After Modi led the BJP to power following a sensational victory in the 2014 elections, these groups unleashed a wave of violence across the country raising divisive religious and cultural issues in a bid to recreate an imagined homogenous Hindu India. Arson and lynching have been part of their campaign, and most often Dalits, Adivasis and minorities were the victims.

Their activities adversely affected Modi’s developmental plans for the country. Yet he made no public condemnation of the acts of violence for fear of offending his supporters.

But misguided Hindutva foot soldiers are not the only ones trying to drag the country backward in the name of religious or cultural practices. Those who were most actively engaged in that effort last week were political parties of Tamil Nadu who have no affinity with the Hindutva school.

Under the leadership of these parties people in many parts of the state organised the ancient game of “jallikattu” in which able-bodied men strive to bring under control trained bulls, defying court decisions banning it. In some places the police intervened and foiled their plans.

References to jallikattu in ancient Tamil literature show that the game is at least 2,000 years old. Some scholars push its history back to 5,000 years ago on the strength of some images in the Indus Valley seals. There is increasing evidence that the Indus Valley civilisation was the work of the Dravidians who inhabited the northern region before the arrival of the Vedic Aryans.

However, the term jallikattu is only a few hundred years old. It is said to have originated during the time of the Madurai Nayak dynasty (16th to 18th century) when a small bag with gold coins (jalli) was tied (kattu) to the bull’s horn and the villager seeking the prize had to untie it even as he held on to the animal’s hump.

During the colonial period, some British officials tried to discourage the sport because of the danger involved but in keeping with the policy of not antagonising the people they avoided a formal ban.

Villagers organised jallikattu with great enthusiasm during the harvest festival of Pongal until 10 years ago when a woman judge of the Madras high court, R. Banumathi, who heard a petition seeking permission to hold the traditional “rekla” (bullock cart) race, banned oxen races and jallikattu, holding them violations of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

An NGO, People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) took the issue to the Supreme Court and it upheld the ban in 2014.

Both the Central and state governments framed rules to ensure safety in jallikattu, hoping they would help overcome opposition to the sport. But the critics were not mollified. PETA and the Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations challenged the rules before the apex court.

Ahead of last week’s Pongal celebrations, supporters of jallikattu made a vain bid to secure an interim ruling from the court but it refused to oblige. Even as political parties mounted campaigns in support of jallikattu in the name of tradition, the state government urged the Centre to promulgate an ordinance.

Reports from New Delhi said an ordinance was ready but it did not see the light of the day. Credit is due to Modi for resisting the temptation to go ahead with the ordinance which may have earned some political support for his party, which is extremely weak in Tamil Nadu.

Protests against the ban on jallikattu raged all over the state. The police arrested scores of people and used force in some places to disperse law-breakers.

All supporters of jallikattu do not base their arguments on tradition. According to some, the sport sustained people’s interest in livestock and its disappearance may lead to extinction of indigenous breeds. It is for the state to evolve scientific methods to protect local breeds and not fall back on archaic practices.

The role played by political parties in fanning the flames over this issue for electoral gains suggests that Indian society must witness many intense struggles before feudal-era practices become things of the past. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 18, 2017

Perilous polarisation

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Sixty-six years ago the fathers of the Constitution brought forth upon this subcontinent a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are equal. Now we are engaged in a great battle, testing whether a nation so conceived and dedicated can long endure in a land which has experienced centuries of graded inequality, established and sustained through violence by a minority which arrogated to itself the authority of the dominant religion.

The echoes of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address in the above lines are intentional. For, although the battle is fought mainly on the political plane and in constitutional forums, the nation stands polarised perilously and the calculated use of force by one side, which also makes strident calls to arms, has created an air of civil strife.

As of now the outcome of the campaign launched by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh through its students’ organisation, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, remains open. Even before the backlash of the tragic end of Rohith Vemula, Dalit research scholar of the Hyderabad University, subsided, the Sangh Parivar opened a new front in the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Judicial intervention has checkmated it there.

Some worrisome flip-flops preceded the Delhi High Court’s grant of conditional bail to JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar, whom the police arrested on sedition charges following complaints filed by ruling Bharatiya Janata Party MP Maheish Girri and ABVP members. His arrest had angered and united the political opposition at home and invited sharp criticism from academics in different lands.

On February 15, pro-Parivar lawyers assaulted Kanhaiya Kumar and JNU students and teachers who had turned up to demonstrate solidarity with him and media persons in the trial court premises, dubbing them anti-nationals. The police merely looked on.

Two days later, the lawyers did it again, contemptuously ignoring the presence of the Registrar of the High Court, who was deputed by the Supreme Court to watch the situation, they also stoned and chased away senior lawyers who too were sent by the apex court.

In view of the unprecedented developments on the lower court premises, Kanhaiya Kumar’s lawyers moved the Supreme Court directly for bail, and his application was scheduled for consideration the next day. However, when the matter came up, the bench headed by Justice GS Khehar backed off. It asked him to go to the High Court, saying its entertaining the bail application directly would create a new precedent.

The High Court took 12 days to grant the student leader bail. In her judgment, Justice Pratibha Rani went beyond the requirements of law and virtually endorsed the prosecution case against him, using terms lifted from the vocabulary of the current political Establishment which dubs its critics anti-national.

In a channel debate, former Supreme Court judge AK Ganguly said Justice Pratibha Rani’s comments were “an act of judicial cowardice.” Alluding to her directive to Kanhaiya Kumar not to actively or passively participate in anti-national activities, former Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaising said, “There can be no anticipatory restraint on free speech.”

Three weeks after pro-Parivar lawyers created mayhem on the court premises there has been no sign of effective action against them by either the police or the judiciary, although there is in the public dominion a video in which some of them brag about their criminal act.

The Bar Council of India, which initially said it would take strong action against erring lawyers, is now providing them cover by describing their conduct as a response to provocative slogans by JNU teachers and students.

There are other disquieting developments too. The Delhi High Court has permitted a Parivar-affiliated lawyers’ organisation to hold an International Women’s Day function on its premises and Chief Justice G. Rohini is to be the chief guest. Indira Jaising criticised the move as indicative of the court throwing its weight behind the Parivar body.

Meanwhile, Hindutva elements continue to exacerbate the situation with hate speeches. One organisation offered a cash award for harming Kanhaiya Kumar. One leader exhorted his followers to prepare for a last battle against Muslims.

Sixteen eminent citizens, in a letter to Chief Justice TH Thakur and other judges of the Supreme Court drew their attention to the alarming and threatening statements of persons in power. They said these statements, which seemed to be part of a pattern, had caused fear and insecurity among the citizens, particularly minorities, Dalits and Adivasis and solicited suo motu constitutional action.

Along with it, they sent with recordings and press reports of a score of hate speeches by different leaders, including RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and members of the government.

The signatories to the letter included former judges PB Sawant, Rajinder Sachar, BG Kolse Patil and Hosbet Suresh, former police officers Julio Ribeiro and SM Mushrif and well-known scientist PM Bhargava. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, March 8, 2016.

Echoes of ancient battles

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s attempt to silence alternative voices and establish a single Hindutva narrative has unwittingly revived memories of battles fought in the distant past which have remained buried in myths and folk tales.

One of the events cited by Human Resources Development Minister Smriti Irani as evidence of anti-national activity in the Jawaharlal Nehru University was the observance of Mahishasura’s martyrdom anniversary on the campus by the All India Backward Students Forum.

In Hindu mythology, Mahishasura is an asura (demon) whom Goddess Durga killed in a nine-day battle. In tribal lore, he is a hero who died valiantly resisting enslavement of his people.

Durga is a very popular and powerful goddess. Smriti Irani, who described herself as an ardent Durga devotee, read out in Parliament extracts from what she said was an AIBSF pamphlet eulogising Mahishasura.

AIBSF said those passages were taken not from its pamphlet but from one produced by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s student body, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, to malign it.

Mahishasura is a revered icon of many marginalised communities, including the Santhal tribes spread across the states of West Bengal, Odisha and Jharkhand. There is a small tribal community known as Asur, whose members worship Mahishasura.

A newspaper quoted the head of the Santhals, 80-year-old Nityananda Hembram, who, incidentally, is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a retired Chief Architect of the Defence Ministry, as saying Mahishasura was not a mythical character but an historical figure who had repeatedly beaten back the Aryans before a woman sent by them defeated him through deception.

According to local tradition, the southern city of Mysuru got its name from Mahishasura, who once ruled over the region. He provided a good administration but was killed by Goddess Chamundi at the instance of those who were envious of his popularity.

Both Durga and Chamundi are equated with Shiva’s consort, Parvati.

In his book “Riddles of Hinduism,” BR Ambedkar observes “the Brahmins do not seem to have realised that by making Durga the heroine who alone was capable of destroying the Asuras, they were making their own gods a set of miserable cowards.”

Functions to commemorate Mahishasura’s martyrdom have been taking place in different parts of the country without facing any serious hostility from the Hindu mainstream until the RSS launched its nationalism project.

Near the Chamundeswari temple on the Chamundi Hills outside Mysuru city stands a statue of Mahishasura. Speaking at a function held there last year to honour the slain ruler’s memory, Mahesh Chandra Guru, Professor of Journalism at the University of Mysore, said Mahisha was a Buddhist king, who respected human values but was depicted by the priestly class as a demon.

Like Mahishasura, Ravana, the demon king of Lanka, whom Rama kills in the epic Ramayana, and Duryodhana and his brother and sister, who are on the losing side in the other great epic, the Mahabharata, too have many devotees.

Five Ravana temples exist, four of them in the Hindi heartland. One of them, located in Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh, was constructed only about 125 years ago. It opens only once in a year.

There are Duryodhana temples in Uttarakhand in the north and Kerala in the south.     

Unlike in other parts of the world, where the gods of victorious tribes ousted those of the vanquished, in India the gods of both winners and losers were accommodated in the pantheon.

An interesting fact that emerges from a study of the ancient texts is that the Vedic community gave up most of the gods to whom they had paid homage in their early days and adopted the gods of the other communities. They readily accepted all gods in exchange for the right to officiate as their priests.

As the process of assimilation of the belief systems of the different communities progressed, a host of religious texts like the Puranas were produced to integrate all of them into what came to be known as Hinduism.

Many scholars now interpret the battles and killings described in the Puranas as records of the conflicts between the Aryan and non-Aryan communities. However, there is reason to believe that some of the events happened before the arrival of the Aryans.

Mrinal Pande, author and journalist, has pointed out that Durga’s historical origins, like Mahishasura’s, are embedded firmly among the pre-Aryan cultures of India.

However, it needs to be noted that in the process of gathering and retelling the tales, the authors of the Puranas fashioned them in such a manner as to serve the needs of the casteist society that was established in India after the decline of Buddhism. -- Gulf Today, March 1, 2016.

Bihar rolls back Hindutva

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

By registering a convincing victory in the Assembly elections in the Hindi heartland state of Bihar, a “mahagatbandhan” (grand alliance) led by Chief Minister and Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar has shown that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindutva bandwagon is not unstoppable.

In the hard-fought elections, the alliance, which includes former Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav’s Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress party, bagged a total of 178 seats in the 243-member Assembly. The Bharatiya Janata Party ended up with only 53 seats, which was less than its pre-Modi tally.

As is his wont, Modi had personally led the BJP’s election campaigns, with his lieutenant and party president Amit Shah by his side. He made several trips to the state and addressed more than 30 rallies. Divisive and communally sensitive issues like cow slaughter and reservations, which Hindutva elements raked up, resonated in the state. Shah added grist to the communal mill by declaring crackers would go up in Pakistan if the BJP lost. 

The grand alliance was the result of the decision of the JD (U) and the RJD, traditional rivals in the state’s politics, to form a secular front to check the advancing Hindutva forces. The Congress joined it as a junior partner. 

The alliance partners readily accepted Nitish Kumar, who acquired a good image as an administrator over the past 10 years, as their chief ministerial candidate.

Lalu Prasad Yadav, who is a man of ambition, was in no position to offer himself as a candidate as he is currently disqualified from contesting elections, following his conviction in a corruption case.

The voting figures reveal there was a consolidation of secular forces behind the grand alliance. The Communist Party of India, the CPI (Marxist) and the Samajwadi Party, which formed a separate secular front, failed to make an impact.

The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen of Asaduddin Owaisi, a three-time Member of Parliament from Hyderabad, set up a few candidates in the Muslim strongholds in pursuance of its plan to extend its activities across the country. It came a cropper as the bulk of the Muslim voters rallied behind the secular parties.

Modi had come to power at the Centre last year in circumstances which created an impression that his Hindutva bandwagon was unstoppable. That feeling strengthened as he led his party to success in one state after another until Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Admi Party stopped the victorious march in the Delhi state elections. No firm conclusions could be drawn from the Delhi experience since it is a small, almost entirely urban state, unlike any other. 

The rolling back of Hindutva forces in one of the backward Hindi states is significant for more than one reason. It shows that Modi is not the invincible hero that his admirers imagine him to be. It shows that secular forces have the inherent strength to roll back the Hindutva forces he is riding.

The Hindutva forces had been kept at bay by the administration and the Congress party which led it during the communal riots of the Partition period. They made headway in the recent past primarily due to a weakening of the secular forces’ resolve to check them on account of mistaken electoral considerations.

A question that naturally now is whether Bihar can be repeated elsewhere. Ground conditions differ from state to state. Conditions in Assam, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, where Assembly elections are due next year, offer a variegated scenario. It may, therefore, be necessary to evolve suitable alternative strategies.

The BJP had no significant presence in these states at the time of the last Assembly elections. However, it was able to bag seven of Assam’s 12 Lok Sabha seats, capitalising on the issue of illegal immigration from Bangladesh.

The political traditions of West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu had blocked the BJP’s efforts to build a Hindu vote bank until now. However, in the recent elections to local bodies, the party was able to make inroads at the cost of the Congress in several parts of Kerala, including the state capital.

The BJP secured a parliamentary majority on its own last year with its impressive victories in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, which together account for 120 Lok Sabha seats. Assembly elections are due in UP in 2017. Ground conditions there are comparable to those of Bihar. However, the Bihar experience can be repeated only if Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati, leaders of the Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party respectively, sink their differences and work together as Nitish Kumar and Lalu Yadav did. --Gulf Todayy, Sharjah, November 10, 2015.

Nepal ties under strain

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Ten mnths ago, visiting Nepal, Prime Minister Narendra Modi signed more than 10 bilateral agreements, demonstrating his government’s readiness to go the extra mile for this small neighbour. Alluding to the efforts to frame a new Constitution, he warned that if the statute failed to reflect the aspirations of all communities, including Madhesis, Pahadis and Maoists, Nepal could face difficulties.

Nepal is facing those difficulties now.

On September 20, President Ram Baran Yadav promulgated the new Constitution, rejecting India’s plea to postpone it to provide time to make it acceptable to the largest number of people.

Madheshis, Tharus and Janjatis living in the Teria region, who have close ties with the people of the bordering Indian state of Bihar, were up in arms even before the Constitution was promulgated. They say it denies them a legitimate share in the political system. About 50 persons have died in the violence and repression in the region so far.

Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar, who visited Nepal as Modi’s special envoy, conveyed India’s concern to leaders of all parties. He argued that the Constitution was not acceptable to nearly 40 per cent of the population and it should not be introduced while there was widespread unrest.

Nepal took up the task of making a republican constitution following abolition of the monarchy in 2008. As the fractious constituent assembly could not complete the task in the allotted time it was dissolved and a new one elected. Acute differences among the parties hampered its working too.

Early this month, the mainstream parties agreed on a Constitution which proclaims Nepal a secular democracy.

Many Nepalese leaders told Jaishankar they were aware that the document was imperfect but they wanted to move forward, and were ready to make suitable amendments later on.

Officially, India’s objections to the new Constitution are based on the discontent among the Madhesis and others who have familial links with India. The Modi administration’s hostile position may also be related to unhappiness over Nepal becoming a secular republic.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the fountainhead of the Hindutva ideology of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, has long been of the view that India is a Hindu nation. Its top leaders have publicly demanded scrapping of the reference to secularism in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution.

Nepal is the only other Hindu-majority country in the world, and the RSS views its endorsement of the secular ideal as an act of betrayal.

Nepal, with a population of 27 million, is a land-locked country. It has borders with India on three sides and with China on the fourth. It gets most of its requirements of essential supplies from or through India. It relies exclusively on the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation for petroleum products.

The violent agitation in areas close to the Indian borders has brought vehicular traffic between the two countries to a halt. Hundreds of trucks carrying supplies to Nepal are reportedly stranded at Indian border checkposts.

Nepalese media allege that India has imposed an unofficial blockade to force the country to accept its demand. The Indian government refutes the suggestion and claims the goods movement has stopped because of the violence on the Nepalese side.

It is in India’s interest to delink the issue of goods movement from the political problem. Some elements in the Madhesi community may want to hold up movement of goods as a strategy to put pressure on Nepal’s mainstream parties to pay attention to their grievance. India should not play into their hands.

There are reports that the Nepalese authorities are turning to China to tide over the difficulties arising from the tense situation in the areas close to the Indian border.

“Nepal has never bowed down to anyone and will not bow down even now,” Deputy Prime Minister Bamdev Gautam told an Indian newspaper. “We will establish contact with China through land and with other countries through air to get essential supplies.”

Nepal has urged China to restore immediately the road links which were snapped by a devastating earthquake earlier this year.

Meanwhile a chink has appeared in the solid phalanx the mainstream parties presented so far with former Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, who is supportive of Madhesi sentiments, quitting the United Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) and resigning from Parliament, amid speculation of an Indian hand in the development.

As the Indian government has pointed out, the problem Nepal faces is a political one. Essentially, it is an internal problem of Nepal, and its political system must be able to resolve the outstanding issues without meddling by powerful neighbours. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 29, 2015.

The Hardik Patel phenomenon

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

An estimated half a million members of Gujarat’s powerful Patel community turned up at a rally in the city of Ahmedabad last week to cheer a young leader who has been in public life for just a few months. Sections of the media hailed him as the new Sardar, an allusion to Vallabhbhai Patel, the tallest Gujarati freedom-fighter after Gandhi and the most powerful minister after Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in free India’s first government.

Vallabhbhai Patel was not an instant hero. A barrister at law, he organised successful non-violent agitations by peasants of Gujarat before Gandhi conferred on him the title of Sardar.

Thanks to the social media and the vast resources he commands as the champion of the interests of a community whose members have made good in business at home and abroad, Hardik Patel, 22, who comes from a family of Bharatiya Janata Party loyalists, got to the top in a jiffy.

His sole demand is reservation for the Patels in educational institutions and government jobs. Under the Constitution, the government can make special provisions for “socially and educationally backward classes”. It is not easy to squeeze into that term the Patels who reportedly own 70 per cent of the state’s small and medium enterprises.

Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, herself a member of the community, said the demand could not be conceded as the Supreme Court had set a 50 per cent cap on reservations. As much as 49.5 per cent has been dished out to various communities already.

The Patel community was solidly behind the BJP when its student wing launched a violent agitation against the Central government’s 1990 decision to accept the Mandal Commission recommendation and extend reservation, which until then was limited to the Scheduled Castes (Dalits) and the Scheduled Tribes (Adivasis), to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) as well.

The Mandal Commission was appointed by the Janata Party government, of which the BJP’s earlier avatar, Jana Sangh, was a part. It estimated that the OBCs constitute 52 per cent of the population.

The Patel agitation turned violent following a wholly unwarranted police intervention, which resulted in nine deaths. The state imposed curfew on some towns and deployed paramilitary forces to restore order.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a televised appeal for calm. He said violence could not solve any problem and offered to find a solution through talks.

Political pundits are now trying to find answers to questions thrown up by the Hardik Patel phenomenon. How could he suddenly emerge from nowhere and hold the state to ransom? Has he been set up by unseen forces with an agenda of their own? Does he really want reservation for his community or is he queering the pitch for abolition of reservation?

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue MG Vaidya and Vishwa Hindu Parishad President Pravin Togadia took the opportunity provided by the Patel revolt to call for an end to reservation.

Some powerful communities in other states were able to pressure governments into granting them reservation but the courts have blocked it.

The previous Central government classified the Jats, who are a big force in the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Delhi, as an OBC. The Supreme Court scrapped the order.

The Maharashtra government sanctioned 16 per cent reservation to the Maratha community, which owns much of the land in the state and has provided 12 of the last 17 chief ministers. The High Court has stayed the order, pending detailed examination.

The Gujjars of Rajasthan, who have one per cent OBC reservation, are on an agitation seeking five per cent reservation as a Scheduled Tribe.

One explanation for the demand for reservation from castes with political clout is that they find that children belonging to castes which enjoy the benefit of reservation are gaining a lead over their own children in the job market by acquiring professional education.

Hardik Patel went to Delhi on Sunday to meet Jat and Gujjar leaders. His reference to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu as “our people” indicates that a broad national coalition of middle castes may be on his mind.

There are several regional and small national parties which draw support from such social groups. By and large, they are secular in outlook. They are unlikely to come under the spell of a wayward child of Hindutva like Hardik Patel. -- Gulf Today, September 1, 2015.

Opposition set to take on BJP

BRP Bhaskar

Gulf Today

India’s Opposition parties are gradually recovering from the impact of their stunning defeat at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in last year’s Lok Sabha poll and trying to put their act together.

The BJP won an absolute majority in the lower house of Parliament on its own in the elections, thanks to the vigorous campaign run by its prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. In the later Assembly elections too he personally led the party’s campaign, chalking up a series of victories.

The party seized power for the first time in Haryana. Its spectacular performance in the Hindu-majority region of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir compelled the largest party, the People’s Democratic Party, to accommodate it in the coalition government, also for the first time.

Only in Delhi state did the Modi magic fail. An unprecedented consolidation of non-BJP votes in favour of the Aam Aadmi Party there broke the party’s run of successes.

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which played a key role in the BJP’s election campaign, has since strengthened its hold by inducting some of its leaders into important position in the party and the government. Flush with power, some RSS-affiliated outfits have been making efforts to convert poor people belonging to the minority communities to Hinduism under a ghar wapasi (homecoming) programme, offering allurements.

Desecration of churches has been reported from several places, including Delhi. Government spokesmen have claimed that the attackers were thieves and that there was no religious motive. 

BJP members of Parliament have called upon Hindu women to produce more children. A leader of the Shiv Sena, the BJP’s partner in the Central as well as Maharashtra governments, recently called for sterilisation of members of the minority communities. Following criticism, he withdrew the statement.

While opposition parties have formally condemned such statements, there has been no organised resistance to Hindutva activists’ attempt to polarise society on communal lines. By and large the secular parties have been unwilling to confront the the BJP and its affiliates.

Last week, for the first time, the Opposition showed signs that it is ready to take them on.

The party that has suffered the most damage as a result of the BJP’s rise under Modi is the Congress, which had led the United Progressive Alliance government at the Centre for 10 years. It did not win enough seats in the new Lok Sabha for its leader to be recognised as the Leader of the Opposition.

In the Assembly elections that followed, the Congress lost power in Haryana, in Maharashtra, where it headed a coalition with the National Congress Party, and in Jammu and Kashmir, where it was a partner in the government headed by the J and K National Conference.

For long the country’s largest party, the Congress has now been pushed to the second position. Modi makes no secret of his dream of a Congress-free India.

Congress President Sonia Gandhi had made her son Rahul the party’s Vice-President in 2013 amid speculation that she would soon hand over the reins to him. As the party’s main campaigner, he earned the most criticism for the electoral reverses from inside as well as outside. With the party in a state of paralysis, the expected transition did not take place.

Last week Rahul Gandhi returned home after an eight-week sabbatical abroad. On Sunday he appeared with his mother at a farmers’ rally in Delhi to protest against the Modi government’s plan to turn over agricultural land to industries. This may well be the issue on which the Modi government faces the biggest challenge.

Also on Sunday the Communist Party of India-Marxist picked Sitaram Yechury as its General Secretary in place of Prakash Karat whose tenure saw a sharp decline in its fortunes. Yechury vowed to mobilise resistance to the BJP’s neoliberal policies and communal agenda.

Earlier this month six breakaway factions of the Janata Party, which was put together by eminent freedom-fighter Jayaprakash Narayan to challenge Indira Gandhi’s Emergency regime, announced their decision to reunite to take on the BJP. They include the Samajwadi Party, the ruling party of Uttar Pradesh, the Janata Dal (United), the ruling party of Bihar, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Indian National Lok Dal and the Janata Dal (Secular), former ruling parties of Bihar, Haryana and Karnataka respectively.

In the Lok Sabha poll the BJP had established supremacy over these parties in their strongholds. They have come together to protect their turf.

The BJP recently conducted a membership campaign and claims it is now the world’s largest political party. The strength of a party cannot be measured only in terms of number of members. The opposition parties need to improve their working from the grassroots level upwards to pose an effective challenge to the resurgent BJP. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, April 21, 2015.

Gandhi assassin as Hindutva icon

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

It was this month 100 years ago that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi returned to India after two decades in South Africa and went on to become the foremost leader of the country’s freedom movement.

It was this month 68 years ago that Nathuram Vinayak Godse, editor of a little known Marathi language daily, shot Gandhi dead, having been goaded, in his own words, “by the accumulating provocation of 32 years to the conclusion that his existence should be brought to an end immediately.”

In 2003, the first Bharatiya Janata Party-led government, headed by Atal Behari Vajpayee, designated January 9, the day on which Gandhi landed in Mumbai harbour in 1915, as Pravasi Bharatiya Divas (Indian Expatriates Day). It also started the tradition of holding a Pravasi Bharatiya convention each year to underscore Overseas Indians’ contributions to the country’s development. India, which received $70 billion from expatriates in 2013, tops the global chart of foreign remittances by migratory workforce.

As delegates from across the world gathered in Gandhinagar, capital of Gujarat, last weekend for this year’s convention, Godse, whom ascendant Hindutva elements have resurrected and are seeking to enshrine as a national icon, was once again challenging Gandhi, the putative Father of the Nation.

Godse was associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, whose president, VD Savarkar, was the author of the Hindutva ideology, as well as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which is the biggest exponent of that ideology today. Members of both organisations had reportedly celebrated Gandhi’s assassination by distributing sweets.

Nathuram Godse, and his associate, Narayan Apte, were sentenced to death in the Gandhi murder case, and both were executed on November 15, 1949. Savarkar, too, was an accused in the case but was acquitted for want of evidence. He led a quiet life thereafter and courted death in 1966 by giving up food and medicine.

Efforts at glorification of Godse began when his younger brother, Gopal, another accused in the case, emerged from jail in 1964 after serving a prison term and was given a hero’s welcome. He wrote a book on the Gandhi assassination in Marathi in which he included the text of a long court statement in which Nathuram Godse explained why he killed Gandhi. It was translated into English and several Indian languages.

In the court statement, a strong indictment of Gandhi’s politics, Godse accused him of appeasing the Muslims and held him responsible for the partition of India. He said he had fired the shots as there was no legal machinery to bring such an offender to book.

While the statement is couched in terms that sound reasonable, the hatred that vitiated his thinking found expression occasionally, as when he said, “I felt that this man should not be allowed to meet a natural death so that the world may know that he had to pay the penalty of his life for his unjust, anti-national favouritism towards a fanatical section of the country.”

GD Khosla, one of the three judges before whom Godse read out the statement, wrote later that if it had been made before a jury it might have returned a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

When Vajpayee was prime minister, a portrait of Savarkar was installed in Parliament House, opposite Gandhi’s, and the airport at Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, where he was imprisoned during the freedom struggle, was named after him. There was, however, no attempt to rescue Godse from political villainy.

The Hindu Mahasabha has now announced plans to make Godse a national hero. It proposes to build a temple dedicated to him at Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, unveil his statues at several places across the country and release a documentary on him, all on January 30, the anniversary of the assassination.

Last week the UP government foiled the Mahasabha’s bid to take out a rally in Lucknow in support of its Godse projects. Residents of the village where the organisation has acquired land for the proposed temple have said they would not allow it. A Pune court is looking into a petition against the release of the Godse documentary.

The Hindu Mahasabha is rickety today and cannot carry out the proposed projects without the support of the BJP and the RSS. So far neither of them has reacted publicly to the Mahasabha’s plans. However, the ambivalent statements of Sakshi Maharaj, who is a BJP MP and RSS activist, suggest that there are pro-Godse elements in both. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, January 13, 2915.

Denigration of Nehru

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru, officially designated as Children’s Day a half-century ago in recognition of his love for kids and theirs for him, passed without the customary celebrations last week. It indicated the Narendra Modi government’s determination to downgrade the first prime minister, who now ranks next only to Mahatma Gandhi in the national political pantheon.

A year ago the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government set up a committee with prime minister Manmohan Singh as the chairman to organise year-long celebrations to mark Nehru’s 125th birth anniversary from November 14, 2014 to November 14, 2015. Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who is a grand-daughter-in-law of Nehru, resigned from the committee after the change of government.

Modi reconstituted the committee with himself as the chairman. He dropped most of the members considered close to the Nehru-Gandhi family and inducted in their place persons belonging to or acceptable to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.

On November 14 the government launched a National Bal Swachchata (Children’s Cleanliness) Mission, an extension of the cleanliness programme Modi had launched on October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary.

Modi, who was on a 10-day three-nation tour, limited his tribute to Nehru to a tweet, just as he had done on May 27, his death anniversary.

The national pantheon consists of heroes of the freedom movement. Across the country there are many institutions which bear their names. The Congress, while in power, enlarged it to include Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, and grandson Rajiv Gandhi, who too are former prime ministers.

The BJP, while listing the leaders of the freedom struggle in its 2014 election manifesto, omitted Nehru’s name and impliedly accused him of abandoning the spirit and vision of the movement. Modi, in public speeches, repudiates Nehru’s contributions with demagogic declarations that in 60 years of freedom the Congress had given nothing but misrule.

Denigration of Nehru is only one part of Modi’s scheme. Another part involves boosting the image of Vallabhbhai Patel, the first deputy prime minister, to make him look greater than the first prime minister. Last year, as chief minister of Gujarat, Modi sanctioned the construction of a 182-metre Statue of Unity near Vadodara at a cost of Rs29.89 billion as a memorial to Patel, who, as Home Minister, oversaw the merger of about 600 princely states in the Indian Union after the British withdrawal.

The Modi scheme is rooted in the thinking of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which has reasons to love Patel and hate Nehru. In 1947 Patel praised the RSS for its patriotism, while Nehru criticised it for its communal outlook. It was Nehru’s strong pitch for secularism that prevented the RSS from reaping the benefits of the communally charged post-partition atmosphere.

Patel lifted the ban imposed on the RSS following Gandhi’s assassination after securing an assurance that it would stay out of politics. He was reportedly planning to draw RSS cadres into the Congress but died before this could be done.

Modi’s approach is in sharp contrast with that of the first BJP prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, who, in a lyrical tribute to Nehru on his death, said, “Mother India is mourning for her beloved prince”. On becoming External Affairs Minister in the Janata government, he ordered reinstallation of Nehru’s portrait which bureaucrats had removed following the fall of the Congress government. As prime minister, he drove to Shanti Van, Nehru’s last resting place, on his birth anniversary and offered flowers.

Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who inaugurated the scaled-down official commemoration of the 125th birth anniversary, said Nehru’s integrity, his love for the country and his contributions as a maker of modern India were unquestionable. RSS loyalists, fed on Modi’s anti-Nehru rhetoric, swarmed Twitter, pouring scorn on him.

Realising that Modi is seeking to either destroy or appropriate Nehru’s legacy, the Congress party quickly drew up an alternative commemoration programme under its own auspices. Its highlight is a two-day international seminar on Nehru’s worldview, which opened on Monday.

Caught between the declining Congress, to which Nehru is an electoral mascot, and the rising BJP, which views him as a continuing obstacle in the way of a Hindu India, his place in history is under challenge. But his record cannot be wished away. When the clouds of partisan warfare dissipate, the nation is sure to recognise his contributions as one who laid a firm foundation for the country’s orderly development within the framework of democracy. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, November 25, 2014.

Will India get Modified?

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today
 
The question who rules India having been answered conclusively, another crops up: what kind of prime minister will Bharatiya Janata Party’s Narendra Modi be?

When pollsters forecast a majority for the National Democratic Alliance, led by the BJP, in the new Lok Sabha the Congress thought they would be proved wrong, as on previous occasions. As it happened, the NDA and the BJP did better than the pollsters said they would.

Since the BJP secured a comfortable majority on its own, it does not need the support of even its pre-poll allies to form the government. But Modi has said they would be associated with the administration. He has gone one step further and said he wants to carry everyone with him on the development journey.

The BJP registered its spectacular victory by trouncing the Congress in the states where the two parties are in direct confrontation. In some of them it made a clean sweep of all seats. In the largest state, Uttar Pradesh, where the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party had earlier pushed it down to the third place, it made a remarkable recovery and picked up 71 of the 80 seats, as against a mere 10 it held in the outgoing house. In the large southern and eastern states, regional parties checkmated it but they could not deny it a small presence.

The BJP’s unprecedented performance dashed the plans of leaders like Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee who were hoping to be kingmakers or even claim the crown for themselves.

Development was the main text of Modi’s election campaign. It also had sub-texts such as uniform civil code, ending the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and building a Ram temple at the Babri Masjid site. The text aimed at consensus building. The sub-texts sought to keep the Hindutva flame alive.

The best part of the election outcome is that Modi is in a position to provide a stable administration. The worst part is that there is no strong opposition. Since the Congress strength is less than one-tenth of the membership of the house, its leader does not qualify for recognition as the Leader of the Opposition. Jayalalithaa and Mamata Banerjee are planning to join forces to claim that post.

Modi still bears the stigma of the anti-Muslim riots that Gujarat witnessed in 2002, although a Supreme Court appointed investigation team said there was no prosecutable evidence against him. Last Friday, while the votes were being counted and he was racing to victory, the Supreme Court acquitted six persons who had been charged by the Gujarat police and convicted by a lower court in connection with a terror attack. It observed that Modi, as Home Minister, had sanctioned their prosecution without application of mind.

Some riot and fake encounter cases are yet to reach the concluding stage. Even if they cause some embarrassment, the prime minister is likely to emerge unscathed.

Two vastly different images of Modi, based on different narratives, are available. Admirers look upon him as a visionary who can lead India to its destiny as a world power. Detractors regard him as an exponent of the Hindutva ideology which divides the society on religious lines. The two give rise to diferent possibilities, which are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Hero or villain, Modi holds a valid mandate to govern. Early indications of how he uses it hold out hope. In sharp contrast to the harsh attacks on the Congress, especially its President, Sonia Gandhi, and Vice-president, Rahul Gandhi, during the campaign, after the election he has spoken of the need for healing and for revival of the spirit of bipartisanship.

He will soon have before him IOUs from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, which played a critical part in the BJP’s choice of him as its prime ministerial nominee, and from the captains of industry who financed his expensive election campaign. How he deals with them will decide the nature of his administration.

Impressive as Modi’s mandate is, it has been won with a minority of 31 per cent votes. If he wishes to carry everyone with him, he has to be mindful of the sentiments of those who did not vote for the BJP or its NDA allies.

The Lok Sabha majority has its limits. The Hindutva agenda cannot be pushed through without amending the Constitution, and the BJP does not have the two-thirds majority required for the purpose. Even to pass an ordinary law the BJP will need the support of other parties as it lacks a simple majority in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of Parliament. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, May 20, 2014.

From romance of revolution to politics of murder

B.R.P.Bhaskar

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) routinely claims it is a party of the people built by cadres who willingly gave their blood. In Kerala, it has also a history of extracting the blood of opponents. For decades, the state’s killing fields have been littered with the bodies of those who came forward to give the party blood and those from whom the party extracted blood.

Unofficial estimates put the number of persons killed in political warfare since the 1960s at around 300: on an average six persons were killed in a year for political reasons. Most of them were done to death in planned operations.

The CPI (M) claims it has lost more people than any other party. The claim is true but that does not mean the party is more a victim than a perpetrator of violence. It has suffered more casualties than others because it has been involved in incidents of violence more than any other party.

The CPI (M) stronghold of Kannur in northern Kerala has recorded more political killings than any other district in the state. The party established supremacy in the district fighting off challenges from different parties -- the Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Indian Union Muslim League etc

The chain of violence, which still continues, began in the 1960s with the CPI (M) bumping off members who crossed over to the Congress. Gradually the Congress went out of the scene and the BJP emerged as the main adversary. This happened primarily because those who left the CPI (M) moved to the BJP in the belief that the Rashtreeya Swayamsevak Sangh was in a better position to protect them than the Congress. The defectors belonged to one Hindu backward caste, and most of those killed on both sides belonged to that caste. Violence involving Marxist and Hindutva cadres declined after the RSS organized simultaneous attacks on the CPI (M)’s headquarters in New Delhi and its offices or leaders’ residences at several places in Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in retaliation for a series of clashes in Kannur in which it lost three men and the CPI (M) two.

There has been a change in the religious complexion of political violence in Kannur in the recent past. In two murder cases now under investigation the victims were Muslims who defected from the CPI (M). One of them had joined the IUML and the other the National Democratic Front, another Muslim outfit.

The Kannur region has a tradition of honour killings going back to the feudal era. Often rivals conducted proxy fights employing trained warriors. Ballads narrating the heroic deeds of the warriors are a part of the region’s folklore. The spree of political murders was, therefore, interpreted as continuation of a gory tradition.

On May 4, while all eyes were on the southern constituency of Neyyattinkara, where a crucial Assembly by-election was due, T. P. Chandrasekharan, Area Secretary of the Revolutionary Marxist Party, was killed at a place not far from his home at Onchiyam in the Kozhikode district. It was an extremely brutal action. There were 51 cuts on his face. Evidently the killers wanted to make an example of him. His family and colleagues immediately alleged the CPI (M) was behind the killing.

A camp follower of V.S. Achuthanandan, who has been at loggerheads with the party’s state leadership, Chandrasekharan had been a thorn in the party’s flesh since he walked out of it with a large number of supporters. Refusing to seek sanctuary in the Congress-led United Democratic Front, as several prominent defectors had done earlier, he floated the RMP and began exploring the possibility of a Left alternative to the CPI (M). That made him a dangerous adversary in the eyes of the party leadership, which has attracted the charge of rightist deviation.

In the 2009 Lok Sabha elections Chandrasekharan rejected Congress plea for support and entered the contest himself at Vadakara to offer the voters a Left alternative to the CPI (M). He polled more than 50,000 votes, not enough to win but enough to ensure the CPI (M)’s defeat in a constituency which had stood by the Left Democratic Front for decades. There were several attempts on his life subsequently. When the LDF was in power there was a steady flow of intelligence reports into the office of Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, who is a Politburo member, about plots to kill Chandrasekharan. There was no action on them. After the United Democratic Front came to power last year, Chandrasekharan personally informed Chief Minister Oommen Chandy of the threat to his life but turned down offer of protection, saying if the party was determined to liquidate him no one could save him.

Even as the police began investigations the CPI (M) State Secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said the crime was committed by hired killers and suggested that the possible involvement of religious extremists be examined. His lieutenants insinuated that Chandrasekharan had an affair with a Muslim woman and that he was killed while on his way to meet her. When the vehicle hired by the killers was found, there was an Arabic sticker on it. The CPI (M) leaders pointed out that the vehicle belonged to a Congressman, who was related to a Union minister, and wanted that angle also to be looked into. Police concluded that they were drawing red herrings across the trail to divert the investigators’ attention away from party men.

Over a two-month period, the special investigation team arrested more than 70 men, most of them CPI (M) members or fellow-travellers. They include one state committee member, one district executive committee member and secretaries or members of areas committees and branch committees of the Kannur and Kozhikode districts. As the police grabbed one party man after another, the state leadership kept repeating that the party had nothing to do with the murder and that the UDF government, using the police, was falsely implicating its leaders. However, V.S. Achuthanandan struck a different mote. “No one who eats rice will believe party men have nothing to do with the crime,” he told newsmen, 

The party’s formal position is that it has nothing to do with Chandrasekharan’s murder and that if it is convinced that any of its members had anything to do with the murder it will take action against them. It will not go by the police account but will make inquiries on its own. However, those familiar with the working of the party apparatus point out that office-bearers of area committees of two districts cannot come together and mount a joint operation without the knowledge and approval of persons at a higher level. 

At the time of writing, the investigation is far from over, and the public are waiting to know if the long arm of the law will reach up to those at higher levels in the party. If media reports are right, interrogation of the arrested persons has revealed a wealth of information not only about the plot to kill Chandrasekharan but also about some earlier political murders. In some cases, it appears, the party and the police collaborated to save the actual killers. The persons whom the police arraigned before the courts were volunteers supplied by the party. Some of them were acquitted for want of evidence. Those convicted were paroled or released by remitting their jail term when the party came to power.

In the light of the facts that have surfaced now the police has reopened some old cases and instituted a few fresh cases. Among those figuring in the new cases is M. M. Mani, who was the party’s Idukki district secretary for two decades.

As the police cast the net wide and drew in a number of party functionaries whom the leadership had hidden in safe havens, the CPI (M) launched a calibrated campaign, marked by massive protest demonstrations and defiant speeches. Pinarayi Vijayan publicly warned that the party would turn into a burning torch. One leader asked party men to keep kitchen knives and chilli powder ready to tackle the police.  Clearly the purpose of the campaign was to intimidate the investigating officials and boost the sagging morale of party cadres. Mani landed in trouble as he tried to match the bravado of the Kannur leaders. In a speech, he declared that the party had drawn up a hit list and bumped off those on the top of the list. He said the accused in the cases registered by the police in connection with the murders were men whom the party had supplied. A video recording of the speech, delivered at a remote place, reached the television channels which aired it. In a bid to protect him, the state leadership explained he was a leader who had risen from the ranks and was given to coarse language. However, the national leadership, rattled by the wide publicity Mani's speech received outside the state, directed that he be removed from the post of district secretary.

Given the newly unveiled history of systematic scuttling of cases through political compromises worked out behind closed doors, it will be foolhardy to assume that the cases now under investigation will result in the conviction of those who committed the murders as well as those who ordered them. A disturbing part of the recent revelations is the CPI (M)'s attempt to pin responsibility for Chandrasekharan’s murder on extremist Muslims. The Central Bureau of Investigation, which is investigating the murder of a CPI (M) defector, has stated that the party attempted to implicate the RSS in the case. The LDF was in power at the time and Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan publicly stated that the RSS was involved. The cynical attribution of criminal acts of party cadres to Hindu or Muslim communal elements suggests the existence of a dirty tricks department where devilish minds are at work.

The CPI (M) has made a transition from politics of revolution to politics of murder. It is a story with all the elements of a Shakespearean tragedy. The Communists emerged from inside the Congress, where they had functioned as part of the Socialist group, during World War II. When the country gained freedom, accepting the Soviet assessment that transfer of power by the British was a sham and that conditions were ripe for revolution, they adopted the Calcutta Thesis which called for overthrow of the new regime through a violent uprising. There were stray acts of violence in Kerala in pursuance of this decision. The government banned the party but the heavy repression that followed the ban generated a wide measure of sympathy and support for it, especially among the poor and downtrodden masses radicalized by the movements of Sree Narayana Guru and Ayyankali. The Guru had set before the society the vision of a model state where everyone lived as brothers without caste differences or religious hatred. Communist leaders have acknowledged that they reaped a rich harvest by sowing seeds on the ground prepared by the Guru and other reformers. The party also drew support from sections of the declining feudal aristocracy whose members believed it offered them an opportunity to safeguard their position in the emerging society. Poets painted highly romantic visions of the revolution and playwrights and novelists spread the message of a fair and just society.         

In 1948, the princely states of Travancore and Cochin held the first elections in the country on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The Communist Party of India fought the elections in alliance with other Left groups. Its leaders, who entered the fray as independent candidates as the party was under ban, were all trounced. After the two states were merged and their legislatures integrated to form the Travancore-Cochin Assembly, a Communist was elected to the house from Kodungallur in a by-election. In the first general election, held in 1951-52, the CPI, still under ban, established a substantial presence on the opposition benches. In 1957, it came to power in the newly formed Kerala state.

The CPI tasted power in less than 10 years of electoral activity. Its government was, however, short-lived. A land reform measure, which sought to set a limit on holdings and distribute the surplus among the landless, endeared it to the dispossessed but earned it powerful enemies.. Another measure aimed at checking malpractices in the educational sector, dominated by the Church, angered the Christian community. Together these sections launched a ‘liberation movement’. The agitation provided the Centre with a pretext to dismiss the government while it still commanded a majority in the State Assembly.

In the elections that followed, the CPI received more votes than in 1957 but could not prevail over the combined forces of the Congress, the Praja Socialist Party and the Indian Union Muslim League, which received the whole-hearted support of caste and religious forces across the spectrum. The split in the Congress and the CPI and subsequent fragmentation of the polity created a situation in which no party could win a general election on its own. An Assembly elected in 1965 could not throw up a government and was dissolved without meeting even once. Determined to get back to power, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) forged a seven-party alliance, which included not only the CPI but also the IUML and other sectarian outfits. The alliance had a facile win and the CPI (M) gave the sectarian parties representation in the government. With that communalism gained respectability. Although small parties have switched sides from time to time, since the 1980s two fronts, one headed by the Congress and the other by the CPI, have alternated in power. Sectarian parties are present in both the fronts. Since their support is considered essential to ensure electoral victory the professedly secular Congress and the CPI (M) cannot muster enough courage to oppose the communal forces resolutely. Initially the CPI (M) took care to make contacts with such forces secretly. Lately, however, its top leaders have been dealing with them quite openly.

Half a century after the split, the principal element that sets the CPI (M) apart from the residuary CPI is its propensity for violence. Indoctrinated Kerala cadres enthusiastically took up coercive forms of agitation like gherao and bandh, which the Bengal party had developed. There is reason to believe that the party was able to outgrow the mother organization in the two states primarily because radicalized Bengali and Malayali masses saw its readiness to resort to violent campaigns as a sign of genuine revolutionary fervor. It is not without significance that Stalin, whom the Communist Party of the Soviet Union disowned posthumously, and B.T. Ranadive, author of the Calcutta Thesis which was repudiated and rejected by the undivided party, have pride of place in the CPI (M) pantheon.     

So far there is no sign of remorse on the part of the CPI (M) for the violent acts that have come to light. Its leadership in the state apparently believes it can brazenly ride through the storm, relying upon the loyalty of its cadres and the vulnerability of the government to political blackmail. Its organizational pattern of democratic centralism does not leave room for the rank and file to assert themselves. The central leadership, which, in theory, has the authority to call a recalcitrant state unit to order, is powerless to act against the Kerala party, which is the richest unit and provides a substantial part of the resources that sustain it.

From the book Crisis of ‘Corporate’ Communism, edited by V. K. Cherian and published by Har Anand Publications Pvt Ltd, which was released in New Delhi on Saturday, September 29, 2012.