Kollam shuts down after BJP calls for strike against worker’s murder

were shut and vehicles were off the road in south Kerala’s Kollam district on Sunday in response to the BJP’s call for a strike to protest against the death of a party worker in a clash with CPI(M) men.

Ravindranth, 58, a retired subinspector of police, succumbed to his wounds at Thiruvananthapuram medical college hospital on Saturday, two weeks after he was stabbed in Kadakkal during a row over a temple festival. Five CPI(M) workers held in connection with the attack will now be charged with murder, police said.

Ravindranth’s decision to join politics angered the Left party, his family said. The murder was a classic example of CPI(M)’s politics of intolerance, BJP leader VV Rajesh said.

Last week, a 20-year-old BJP worker was stabbed to death in Thrissur.

Clashes between workers of BJP and the CPI(M) are on the rise as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, the ideological parent of the BJP, makes inroads in the southern state where politics has been dominated by the Left parties.

It is a vicious cycle of violence, which has left many people dead on both sides. Every time a life is lost, the two sides trade charges, setting off a new round of revenge killings.

Two weeks ago, a BJP delegation met home minister Rajnath Singh in Delhi, saying police were “highly partisan and party workers were being annihilated in a planned manner”. They complained that the CPI(M) was experimenting with the Kannurmodel of attacks in other parts of the state.

Notorious for violence between the two sides, Kannur in north Kerala has reported eight murders since the LDF government came to power in May. To calm tempers, chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan was recently forced to call an all-party peace meet in Kannur. When a woman is pregnant, she is told to eat healthy. But no one tells her what to eat this healthy food in. And that is the problem with science. It is not disseminated, it does not become part of popular knowledge, so science never speaks to the people who need to know it the most.

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