G Pramod Kumar - Kerala, CPM's Hypocrisy & BJP's Intolerance
Kerala is a great state
for polemic, except that it has to be driven by the CPM, whether it's ruling or
not. Otherwise, you will be
in trouble and will be overrun by a huge army of vituperative and abusive
cadres, leaders and proxies, and a self-seeking cultural-industrial complex. In other words,
criticism, even in the meanest language, is highly appreciated and even
encouraged, but it should be in favour of the CPM. That's precisely what
happened when well-known writer and Jnanpith Award winner MT Vasudevan Nair
recently criticised demonetisation and even suggested a hidden agenda behind
the move. The BJP reacted with its habitual intolerance. The party's state
general secretary AN Radhakrisnan said that MT, as he is popularly known, had no right
to criticise demonetisation because he was not an economist. He also questioned
his silence when the CPM hirelings had hacked to death a rebel-Marxist, TP
Chandrasekharan, a few years ago.
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The CPM, through its
leaders and cadres to cyber-proxies and intellectuals, immediately unleashed an
attack against the BJP for criticising MT. Although their voices qualitatively
varied, the message was the same: MT cannot be criticised and the BJP was
intolerant. Veteran leader and former chief minister VS Achuthanandan even suggested that the BJP was targeting MT they way did
Kannada writer Kalburgi. In response, Radhakrishnan stood by what he said,
"I have not insulted MT personally. I pointed out MT's double standards
for not speaking against several incidents affecting Kerala society."
As elsewhere in India,
the intolerance and bigotry of the BJP and the Sangh have become a real menace
in the state, and the attack on MT, who rarely took political sides in his
life, is its latest example. However, the CPM accusing the BJP of intolerance
is ironical. Nothing beats the lethality of its own history of intolerance,
whether unleashed officially or through proxies. There's an ecosystem, nurtured
over the years, that fosters and delivers it. Sometimes its critics are even
assaulted and killed. And it spares nobody.
Take the case of actor
Mohan Lal, the popular matinee icon of the state, who also spoke on
demonetisation. Unlike MT, he favoured the move and even praised Prime Minister
Narendra Modi. While social media was awash with abusive comments against him,
CPM leader MM Mani, now a minister, went a step ahead and alleged that the
actor supported Modi because he hoarded black money. Nobody from the left camp,
who are now standing by MT's right of free speech, defended the actor's freedom
of expression, however unfavourable it was. Instead, they fostered it.
The CPM's intolerance
is often expressed as violence and social isolation. The party that is
defending MT now, had assaulted Paul Zacharia, one of the most celebrated
modern writers in the state, because he criticised it for an incident of moral
policing. Similarly, when Thilakan, a highly regarded movie actor in the state,
was boycotted by the film industry, allegedly at the instance of some big
names, the party kept quiet even though it violated his fundamental right to
life. The then state minister for culture, who also doubles as an impresario,
conveniently avoided even commenting on the issue, let alone acting on it. It
also maintained a similar convenient silence when a prominent movie director
Vinayan was subjected to social and professional exclusion by the bigwigs of
the industry, because the party favourites were against him.
There are many more
such incidents that show how brutally exclusive and violent the CPM is against
its critics. Recently two Dalit girls accused the CPM of social ostracisation
and physical assault because their family supported the Congress. While the
entire state protested, local CPM leaders chose to stigmatise the girls and
ended up inviting legal action. In another case, a girl couldn't practice as a
doctor because of the same exclusionary tactics. From time-to-time, to malign
opponents, some of them even don the mantle of cultural police.
However, nothing
contrasts its defence of MT as much as its systematic attack on the late Prof
MN Vijayan, who once was a CPM hardliner and the editor of its newspaper. For
years, he had been a revered ideological mascot of the party, but the day he
started pointing out its "degenerative" tendencies and criticised its
decentralised planning because it was foreign funded, he became a persona
non grata. He became an object of target-practice for the cultural-intellectual
ecosystem of the CPM. The party haunted him till his death. A former CPM
insider G Sakthidharan, who was also a senior journalist in the party
newspaper, highlighted this irony in a Facebook post where he said that MT
didn't suffer as much persecution at the hands of the "Sanghis" as
Vijayan had suffered at the hands of the CPM.
A former Naxalite
leader Civic Chandran also sought to expose the CPM's double standards in
defending MT. "The left can criticise everybody, but nobody should criticise
them," he said. He also compared the intolerance faced by Mohan Lal on the
same issue with that of MT. Nobody is immune to criticism, he said.
"The left can
criticise everybody, but nobody should criticise them."
Interestingly, besides
the abusive trolls and the menacing ruffians on the streets, what's most
paradoxical in this intolerance debate is the use of the cultural-intellectual
catchment of the party to sanitise and legitimise its double standards. What's probably
unknown outside the state is that most of this group of people are not just
ideology-driven fellow-travellers, but are beneficiaries of an incestuous
ecosystem. Besides the government and quasi-government institutions that
provide employment and honours to its favourites, the party also has a fairly
big cultural and entertainment complex in the form of TV channels, newspaper
and magazines, publishing houses and a number of not-for profit organisations.
If the CPM is concerned about intolerance, it has to first practice what it seeks to
preach.
Being on its side is a
safe bet to pursue art and culture as a well-paid vocation, however good or bad
one professionally is. The CPM cries foul when the BJP is trying to cultivate a
rival art and culture ecosystem, by attracting people such as Mohan Lal, to
push its agenda. However, given its divisive ideology and lack of intellectual
allure, it's hard to get respectable names. If the CPM is indeed
concerned about intolerance, it has to first practice what it seeks to preach. And the
double-standards of this self-breeding cultural Tzars need to be exposed again
and again.
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