Politics in Kerala will never be the same again. The dastardly killing of CPM dissenter T.P. Chandrasekharan by a gang, under the alleged instigation by ex-comrades, exposes the party’s fatal dalliance with the politics of murder. Two foremost intellectuals tell the party to heed the writing on the wall, in a conversation with R. Ayyappan

CPM faces credibility crisis in state

ASHIS NANDY

M arxism will survive but the Left in Kerala will do well to realise that days of Leninism are numbered. The murder of Revolutionary Marxist Party leader T.P. Chandrasekharan has been the defining moment; it will change the course of Kerala’s politics.

People were concerned, nay frightened, by political violence but they never really articulated it. But, the assassination of this brave one, perceived to be more Communist than reigning comrades, spawns a reaction that has remained long suppressed. For the people, it came as the last straw on the camel’s back.

Left leaders are nervous. Some amount of self-confrontation is on. The CPI (M) and its policies face a credibility crisis. The party stands naked. A catharsis is at work.

We may see a more Indianised version of Marxism, shorn of failed autocratic Leninist techniques.

Every party in the country has a theory of violence, a kind of voodoo worship they nurture deep down, rather conspiratorially. BJP, Congress, every party has a lunatic fringe.

But, among parties that claim to be progressive, Left is culpable of not giving up violence ideologically.
Violence is very much a CPI(M) strategy. The party’s allure to the cadre is this aura of violence.

How can the party retain its revolutionary core without violence? And, violence becomes the justification.

Didn’t we hear a senior party leader’s public rant that his party eliminated political rivals, and with such
histrionics?

This has created deep resentment, infiltrating even Left cadres. For now, there’s no visible backlash. But it could manifest electorally.

During the Emergency, when Jayaprakash Narayan was taken to jail, no crowd gathered in streets and raised slogans.

This gave Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay a morale boost. But elections disproved them.

The Left will do well to realise that days of Leninism are over. Marx’s diagnosis was right but Lenin’s treatment of it went horribly wrong. Soviet Union collapsed without a whimper.

The crisis of the Indian Left is worse than that of the BJP. The extreme right is opening up. They at least welcome Muslims to their fold.

The Left, on the other hand, is ideologically stiff. Without a change in thinking, they are headed nowhere.

‘Open protest’ is need of the hour

U.R. Ananthamurthy

Killing in any other part of the world can somehow be explained, but not in Kerala. It is the only place where differences are verbalised.

Here, no one keeps quiet and feelings are openly expressed without a tinge of fear. Hence, killing is a repudiation of a way of life, a culture.

This is all the more reason why writers and artists should never hesitate to express their strong disapproval of the murder of T.P. Chandrasekharan.

I wish writers in Kerala were more open, rather than resorting to the indirect route of fiction and poetry to voice their protest.

I was in China when the Tiananmen Square massacre took place. I came back to Kerala, I was the vice chancellor of Mahatma Gandhi University then, and wrote about the killings.

The LDF was in power and E.K. Nayanar was the chief minister. My piece, which appeared as a five-part series in Indian Express, was highly critical of the Marxist regime in China.

The CPI (M) did not do me any harm. The then home minister, T.K. Ramakrishnan, came up to me and said: “Ananthamurthy we like you a lot. But we don’t like what you write.” This was just a light-hearted comment.

Yes, some SFI students came up to me and told me that it was they who made me the VC. I laughed it away.

That was it. Bravado, like the one exhibited by M.M. Mony recently, is born of cowardice; it is not a Marxist trait. I have had the fortune to encounter some of the best of them and have only warm memories.

When I met Nayanar for the first time, he was in his private room. He was sitting on his bed, without a shirt.

He gave me a very informal welcome. Nayanar is the only shirtless CM I had ever seen.
I have always felt that V.S. Achuthanandan had something of the old communist in him. Like Nayanar, he too is not a devious or scheming person.

Marxists had also given Kerala corruption-free governments. Once it was said, “When Marxists are in power, hotels in the capital are deserted.

” This just showed they never let middle-men into the precincts of power. My biggest problem with Marxists is they, like Lenin, believed in the vanguard of the proletariat. The idea of the proletariat is plural to begin with but eventually ends up in singular.