The Sunday Guardian

Blood runs saffron in cpm’s killing fields of kannur

The CPM’s violence in Kannur is seeping out, scarring the landscape of God’s own country.

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They sit around a table, like in a meeting of highpowere­d executives, the setting— its severity, the silence. And then the bright white light that falls on them betraying them; shining down on their broken bodies and spirit. The hand that rests on the table, unselfcons­cious of the scars it bears on its wrist, peeping out from under a long sleeved shirt, skin competing to conceal it, a thick fold growing over the deep gash that once left this hand hanging by a tendon. The man with the wideeyed, unblinking stare, he stares too long, the infant in his arms asleep, his pupils expanding under the thick glasses he wears. An artifice again, a deception to conceal their blindness. But that unflinchin­g stare, it belongs to a man who cannot see. At the other end of the table, a young man sits in a checked shirt; he is introduced as half Sadanandan Master, a man who has lost one leg in an attack. I understand perfectly even though he wears full trousers. He is one of the many who can pass off as “normal”. And the women who sit across from him, bare- necked, bare-faced, staring ahead, these are the widows of Kannur, identi- fied by the expression on their face and not their attire. The children are the most resilient (I have found in my interactio­ns with victims of this violence in Kannur). They seem to absorb their macabre reality—dead father, amputated uncle, torched house— rattling off their future ambitions, like children with another reality would. Odd how one asks children the same questions, this time in an attempt to project a “normal” existence on them. They all answer. A little giggle, a shy smile, a determined look. A police office. An IAS officer. An Armyman. All so normal. And then…“anything that will take us away from Kannur”, one says. It’s a link between these profession­s, so easy to miss. And it is the most damning testimony of the violence.

One of the little girls is on the cover of a book— the cover image catches a single tear rolling down her cheek. It might have been clicked when she saw the rubble where her house once stood, charred to the ground, or maybe the photo was taken as she looked down the well in her house that was now covered with hair waste from local barber shops, rendering the water unpotable. Or it could have even been the sight of her beloved bicycle that was crushed by the same brutal hands that demolished her home. But it’s a lasting image for a book ( Aahuti) that tells the untold stories of BJP and RSS workers who have lost their lives and limbs over a 70-year period to CPM violence in Kerala. Sivada stands before me, a sprightly little girl, her hair pinned up, its oiled loose ends snaking down her narrow arched shoulders. She is related to the Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan; the comrades cannot be faulted for bowing down to nepotism, sharing the same blood with the most powerful man in the state does not mean it will not be shed. Besides the act of betrayal by the adults in her family, that of supporting the BJP has brought this upon them. The logic in Kannur runs something like this, fashioned into justificat­ion, the neighbours will sigh at the sight of their destroyed home, but opine privately and openly that they had it coming. Oppression creates its own dialect, to speak it and understand it, one must live it.

Those who call Kannur home, understand this language and the violence that is its subtext. Those on the outside, like the well-meaning man I met on the train on my return from Kannur, will tell me that “they” keep away from those parts. Who are the “they” and who are the “us”? The violent histo- ry of Kannur has “otherised” these victims in a state that prides itself on its civility and culture. But the violence is seeping out, scarring the landscape of God’s own country. A woman burnt to death along with two others inside her home in Pallakad. A Dalit leader from the BJP brutally beaten and blinded in one eye during a protest in Thiruvanan­thapuram. A mother dragged on the ground for protesting her son’s suicide. A senior college professor from Thiruvanan­thapuram again, surrounded and manhandled by SFI students for hours, not permitted to even go to the bathroom and made to hand over money for a college fest without being presented an account of expenses. Or most recently a CPI panchayat leader and his family attacked by their allies in government in Trichy. The violence is spreading.

But it is yet to reach Delhi, the enormity of it, the barbaric inhumanity of it. So they come here, the victims of this violence. A caravan of the macabre. They move from one meeting to another, seeking time, the photograph­s with the politician­s, a talk with students. There is a mother amongst them, she has a lot to say. I don’t know why I introduce her as a mother, when she is also a widow, the same violence by the CPM snatched away both her husband and son, 14 years apart. Maybe I call her a mother because she ceased being one to that son only a few months ago. She doesn’t speak English or understand Hindi, she reaches out and clasps my hand, insisting we have met before, placing one shaky finger on my shoulder and nodding as she points it away from me and says Kerala. I tell her we haven’t. But it’s not entirely true, I have met her before, in Sujith’s mother.

Sujith, my first friend from Kannur. We were introduced a little over a year ago by his death. One dark night in February as the capital rumbled with the chants of right to free speech, he was denied the right to life. His screams fell silent on the ears that ricocheted with their own wordy moral righteousn­ess. He was killed by a medieval instrument of torture, a plank of wood with nails embedded on it. It scraped the skin from the back of his neck down to his waist. His mother described it to me, two months later, between sobs asking for justice. Yes, I had met this Amma before, in another form. Now she stood before me as Remith’s mother. She told me her son’s killers walk by her house every day. Free. She wants justice as well. An activist friend once told me, every story, every person you will encounter will break your heart and they will be all that matter at that moment. And after a while, when it is this endemic violence, they will remind you of each other, intensifyi­ng your helplessne­ss. And you will meet others until you stop or the violence stops.

And on some days, you want to stop and escape from the abuse, the violence of speech and thought it brings into your life. Retreat into your room and conjure up words that build a world of imaginatio­n that makes people, laugh, cry, delight and be entertaine­d. A world that promises only fleeting emotions. But the blank page stares back at you, like those unseeing eyes of that man at the table with his beautiful little girl resting in his arms, a daughter he will never see. And you begin to tell the same story again with different characters. Advaita Kala is an internatio­nally published novelist and award winning screenwrit­er. She has written extensivel­y on the violence in Kannur.

 ??  ?? Funeral of Vismaya’s father.
Funeral of Vismaya’s father.
 ??  ?? Man whose hand was nearly chopped off.
Man whose hand was nearly chopped off.
 ??  ?? Prajeel was stabbed 31 times.
Prajeel was stabbed 31 times.
 ??  ?? Vismaya, whose father was killed in January.
Vismaya, whose father was killed in January.
 ??  ?? Sivada.
Sivada.
 ??  ??

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