No way to protest

The hate politics practised by the BJP and CPM in Kerala’s Kannur district was vented in New Delhi on Sunday, as BJP and RSS activists vented their rage at the CPM headquarters. AK Gopalan Bhavan was the war zone where party workers, led by prominent BJP and RSS activists, attacked CPM workers and damaged property, leading to retaliation and further violence. The BJP leadership has also vowed to fight fire with fire, as political differences in Kannur resulted in seven deaths on both sides. Either way, this episode is shameful, no matter what the provocation; and the party workers who got ‘carried away’ by their feelings and resorted to violence, as well as the leaders who egged them on, must be made to answer for their actions.

Kannur district in Kerala’s northern Malabar area is a poor, internally riven area of deep emotional significance to both the Left and the BJP. Despite the state having the largest number of RSS shakhas in the country, the BJP has been unsuccessful in weaning away votes from the UDF and LDF coalitions, and they have chosen to concentrate their efforts on this communally divided region as their best shot. It is also historically important to the CPM, and so the last few decades of Kannur’s political climate have been marked by sordid dealings on both sides, and cycles of violence and retribution. The latest of these resulted in five deaths on the RSS side and two on the CPM side, and great bitterness that erupted in this clash in New Delhi.

And now that the stage has been set in the capital, the national leadership must take immediate action to quell what look like wars of medieval vendetta rather than the political back-and-forth of a mature democracy. It is up to the CPM and the BJP to curb their excesses in Kannur. And this is not to assume any moral equivalence in this Delhi episode, where it is clear who the perpetrators of violence were — and the vandals must be brought to justice. Ideological battles cannot be decided by angry thugs.