During her political probation, Sonia Gandhi, like most non-Malayalis would have thought that Kerala Congress is the unit of her own Congress. It isn’t. In fact, this regional party is not even a single party. There are some four outfits that go by this name, each suffixed with its leader’s name. Sonia’s Congress is in no better shape in Kerala. Even by Congress standards, it must be a record to have at least five factions merrily and openly carrying on under the hand symbol. Of these, the two major factions led by A K Antony and K Karunakaran are making the kind of news that Sonia can’t ignore. Me too a revolutionary, says Karunakaran Thiruvananthapuram: Indicating he’s moving closer to the CPI-M, Karunakaran on Wednesday said the Marxists approach to him was realistic. ‘‘I am a revolutionary as I am receptive to changes. A person who cannot do that is a reactionary,’’ he said adding that there was “nothing unusual about a common platform for the Congress and the CPM.” —ENS Karunakaran himself, daughter Padmaja and son Muraleedharan, who also heads the state PCC, have together done all they can to defeat rival Antony’s and the party’s official candidate M.O. John in the Ernakulam parliamentary by-poll. The silver jubilee turf feud between the 80-plus Karunakaran and the 60-plus Antony has long been part of the Kerala political lore. What is new is that it has become critical enough to upset the traditionally bi-polar state politics. Even the left has got sucked into it. And the rivalry itself has become so acute that once the by-poll results are out on September 29, even the best of Ayurvedic oils can’t make the Congress bend backward enough to accommodate the two leaders. Karunakaran is expected to cheer the Left win, if that happens, louder and clearer than the Marxists. If the Congress candidate wins, Antony would emerge as the unassailable leader of a Congress minus Karunakaran and possibly the perpetual Jyoti Basu of a non-Left rule. No wonder the CPI(M) has started wooing Karunakaran in so many words. In the bargain, it has had to swallow a lot more than words. Forget permanent friends and enemies, permanent hostilities don’t seem to work here. Karunakaran has been more consistently anti-Left than Antony who post-Emergency hobnobbed with the Left only to return soon enough to the Indira fold. If you want to hear how during the Emergency, Home Minister Karunakaran’s cops handled the reds, ask Pinarayi Vijayan, the state secretary of the CPI(M). Again, it was Karunakaran who played the soft-Hindu Congressman to the hilt. His daily chant to the TV crew that turns up at his well-lit living room has been that Antony is running a non-Hindu (read Anti-Hindu) government. Antony did one-up by making soft-Togadia utterances and followed it up with more frequent visits to sants and godpersons. Like all feuds, this one has also had its occasional thawing. As it happened way back in the ’80s when Muraleedharan entered parliamentary politics. Antony preferred him for the Kozhikode Lok Sabha seat over the heads of worthier aspirants while Karunakaran left the meeting to make a fatherly impartial visit to the toilet. Such choreographed bonhomie is unlikely to be replayed. More recently, Antony in his current avatar as pragmatic CM, wooed Murali and angered the father even more. This didn’t last either. Now the prodigal son is back with the father but has made a measured by-poll-eve statement favouring both the party candidate and his under-revered father. The Ernakulam by-poll is turning out to the father of all battles for the Congress.
