Udayor Blog

Hindus fighting among themselves have always been a reason for others taking advantages. The recent judgment of the Fast Court Judge Y Thajudeen Koya in Thiruvananthapuram awarding imprisonment and fine on 23 activists of the RSS – BJP cadres has the same story behind it. The present case was about the violence unleashed in the student agitations in the city under the student wing ABVP, where several shops, transport buses and vehicles were damaged. One man was also killed. Initially the ABVP students had protested about the undue favours shown to minority institutions in the plus 2 school allotments. By the P J Joseph lead education department under Chief Minister E K Nayanar. Capture of the education sector by the minorities had crossed all limits. But the police unleashed ruthless violence on the ABVP students, including girl students. Gory details of Hindu girls being beaten up by police were flashed by the media, blood oozing from their faces. As a reaction the students became violent where mainly minority shops on the MG Road were targeted, also public transport, were targeted, at the end a murder. That the shops attacked belonged to the minority communities, now taking over the Hindu owned properties like wild fire, was censored by the media.

It is also alleged that there were anti-social elements who penetrated the student march and did most of the violence, for few Hindu owned shops and property including that of the BJP leaders got damaged. One man, a Hindu conductor with KSRTC, reportedly who was formerly a CPIM follower who had broken away from them, was unfortunately murdered. It is still unknown why, who plotted for it. Soon, as is the normal ritual in Thiruvananthapuram, a list of the persons to be booked was handed over to the police. It is a silent understanding between the police and the political leaders, their bosses, to serve mutual interests and many of the parties, including the RSS – BJP have a panel of people who get booked wherever some violence happens and is registered as a case. The police too know that these are often the dummies but they proceed and the accused parrot what they are told. With the under hand deals and political pressure some times these cases are dropped by the government or kept pending for ever. It is a political trump card in the elections and the ruling parties bargain with this weapon. The victims most of the time are the Hindutwa brigades who fail to come to power in Kerala.

This shadow war also sees unsuspecting people in the cadres themselves getting charge sheeted, when they fall out with the powerful, in the parties. Since it is a world of violence and under world linkages not many dare to talk about it, leave alone challenge it. The labyrinths of Hindutwa politics in Thiruvananthapuram have perfected this modus operanti for some time now. Where no one believes no one, cannibalistic rivalries trap people who retaliate in the same language. With poverty now rampant the Hindu youth are easily drawn it to the web. There is a network of police officers with links to the under world and politics and the leaders use their leverages to save and punish people. How this time the list included names of senior people like J Sisupalan, the ailing 70 year old Hindu Aikya Vedi leader. Whose only fault was speaking at the meeting in front of the secretariat. Also many others who got caught and are now destined to suffer. It is these people, stigmatized by society, who eventually drift to the under world, where there is a large number of ex-Hindutwa youth now in to criminal ways, for a living. It is now a big population and majority of them are from the old tharavadus of the warrior community, Nayars. Passion in youth drive them on issues, later with wrong leadership they become criminals.

This time it was a genuine political issue that was behind the problem, what was cleverly made a criminal case. Indeed the take over of the education sector in Kerala by the powerful and vocal minorities has become alarming. The allotment of plus 2 schools to majority minorities by the Christian community party Kerala Congress (Joseph), was wrong and it was a legitimate protest. But the Communist lead government of E K Nayanar, which allowed the game plan to go through, did not see the threat of this new reform. Hindus as communists and Hindus as Hindutwa parivar were on clash, where the minorities made the kill. What continues, now there is a war even within the RSS –BJP itself, how this turn around came about. And soon after the violence unleashed, by design or default, this issue was dead. Instead what was there was a criminal case, where a large number of people from ordinary families got caught. Now they are convicted. Interestingly this case was allegedly used by the ruling minority lead Oommen Chandy government and its leaders for electoral gains. When in the last Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha elections this was used by the Congress lead UDF to bargain with the RSS – BJP. The deal, as alleged, was this, if they voted the Congress candidate the case will be dropped. Running a court case is also a costly affair. The Hindutwa groups now have thousands of court cases booked all over Kerala which cost them millions. It is the soft under belly that only insiders come to know.

It is clearly political, where the government wants to win cases they win, where they want to lose they lose, British invented judiciary is quite flexible. The public prosecutors and judges are after all under the ruling party. Even laws can be changed as Kerala saw in the case of tribal lands. Where a central statute meant to restore alienated lands to the hapless tribals was cleverly altered and enforced. For, here the ruling Christian community was involved. In the battery of cases involving forests and encroachment the Kerala government routinely losses, the public prosecutor gets diarrhea on the day of hearing, or the judge gets a transfer. It is not by accident that K M Mani, of another Kerala Congress, again of the Christians, loves to have the Law Ministry under him. The naïve Hindus, Communist, Congress or even the Kerala Congress, do not know what is happening. Lilliputian Hindu leaders in these parties, with bloated egos and selfish motives, become tools in the operation. The smarter ones make them fools, trap them, bargain with them using law books. Immediate gains, some money, power and fame makes them bow down, do the bidding of the clever minority politicians. For the apathic and confused Hindus of Kerala here is another episode in the mega-serial called politics. When the life of these young ones stand ruined, families shattered, with incompetent people in Hindu leadership, what was a political issue has become another criminal case.