BJP’S AUDACIOUS CHALLENGE TO CPM IN KERALA

The BJP, organizationally spearheaded in Kerala by the RSS which has more shakhas there than even in its Gujarat bastion, has taken on the mighty CPM in its den with all the sound and fury at its command. By bearding the CPM lion Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in his home district of Kannur through a fortnight-long padyatra launched on October 2, BJP president Amit Shah has held out an audacious challenge to the CPM.

For three decades that the CPM held total sway in West Bengal until it was mauled finally in elections by the irrepressible Mamata Banerjee, its goons ruled the roost and people talked in hushed tones about how the elections were rigged.

Today, the CPM stands vanquished in Bengal but in Kerala it is still going strong, having trounced the Congress in the last elections. Unlike Mamata who harnessed the disgust among Bengalis at CPM rule with rare theatrics, the BJP is appealing to the emotions of Kerala-ites over the spate of murders of its men especially in Pinarayi’s home district.

The BJP has just one seat in the Kerala assembly, having only opened its account in the last Assembly polls in May 2016 in a House of 140 but it is seemingly building support if vote share is anything to go by. There is indeed a long haul ahead but the party is building itself brick by brick and controversy after controversy.

At the Centre, from a peak of 59 MPs (excluding the Lok Sabha Speaker) during the United Progressive Alliance 1 of which CPM had 43, the Left’s number has dwindled to 19 at present of which the CPM now has nine MPs in Lok Sabha and eight in Rajya Sabha.

As the party’s general secretary, Prakash Karat was deemed to have been a disaster because of the dwindling numbers and failure to forcefully articulate the party’s position on issues. It now transpires that his successor Sitaram Yechury, who was expected to resurrent the party, has been no better in the manner in which he has failed to arrest the drift in Bengal in the last two and a half years that he has been at the helm in New Delhi.

Yechury has moved the party closer to the Congress and is considerably more rabid and virulent against the BJP, but that has by no means helped control the slide. In Bengal the CPM has fallen to disastrous levels posing no challenge to Mamata’s Trinamool Congress. In Kerala, where the Left and the Congress virtually win alternately in Assembly elections, the fact that the CPM-led government is in the saddle is of no credit to Yechury whose Bengal faction is ill-disposed towards the Kerala unit. The only other CPM state is tiny Tripura where too it is under siege.

Indeed, the Left is at the crossroads and the conduct of its policies besides the effectiveness of its leadership will determine its future. Coincidentally, both in Kerala and West Bengal a burgeoning BJP is a potential challenger to its position. Though even in West Bengal it has a mere three seats in a House of 295 it is growing in vote share while the Left and the Congress are shrinking.

RSS leader Mohan Bhagwat’s recent remarks that Kerala, along with Bengal, was protecting anti-national forces for political mileage have triggered verbal sparring between CPM and BJP leaders, the two blaming one another for the cult of political violence in the State.

Pinarayi Vijayan lost no time in reacting to Bhagwat’s statement, saying that it was a challenge to each Kerala-ite, as such statements attributing antinational propensities were the outcome of the frustration of the RSS and BJP leaders for their failure to communally divide the State. This was followed by Union Minister Prakash Javedkar stating that the “Marxist” in CPM was Maoist. Amit Shah has been breathing fire with a clear strategy in mind, striving to increase the party’s footprint in the state manifold.

On his 15-day padyatra, Shah is to pass by Pinarayi’s home with his supporters in a show of defiance and bravado. It is in Kannur district that most murders of RSS activists have taken place over the years and the RSS believes there is the hidden hand of Pinarayi behind the cult of violence.

To gain further political mileage and in an effort to polarize the voters, Shah has also raked up jehadi terror as a threat, alluding to the attempts of dreaded terror outfit ISIS (Islamic State) to get recruits from the State with the Left Front government looking the other way.

The CPM is seeking to counter the BJP-RSS propaganda by saying that it too has lost many men to RSS goons and that the killings are on both sides.

Amit Shah is indeed on test to see whether his emotional pitch makes an impact in Kerala and to what extent. The State has had an enviable record of communal amity and it would be a pity if the peace between the Hindus and Muslims is disturbed by inspired polarization.

Conscious of the fact that the BJP can ill afford to alienate all minorities in a state where they form a substantial part of the State’s population, the BJP is assiduously wooing a section of the Christians. Whether they would succeed in converting them into a major vote bank, however, looks a doubtful proposition because of the deep suspicion that the BJP and RSS arouse.

Yet, all this has to be weighed against the fact that the CPM is on a downward spiral as a party, its theories outdated and worn out. While in Bengal it is down and out, in Kerala and Tripura where it is in the saddle, it faces new challenges from the BJP which is starting from a scratch but is cashing in on CPM’s losing lustre.

AMIT SHAH is indeed on a test to see whether his emotional pitch makes an impact in Kerala and to what extent. The State has had an enviable record of communal amity and it would be a pity if the peace between the Hindus and the Muslims is disturbed by inspired polarization.

The author is a political commentator and columnist. He has authored four books