Kerala once contributed much to Hindu culture and civilization, but is now poised as its destroyer, discharging Yama dharma. This land has a great line of teachers/rishis, beginning with Jagadguru Sankaracharya. Aryabhatta I, astronomer and mathematician; Govindaswamin, ninth century CE, who wrote a bhasya on Mahabhaskaariya; Sankara Narayana, author of the astronomical treatise Sankaranarayaneeyam; Bhaskara II, author of Lilavati, Bijaganita, Sidhantasiromani; Madhava, famous astronomer and mathematician of the fourteenth century, are true sons of the Hindutva tradition of ancient Kerala.

This Kerala has been under threat for the last six decades under communist influence. Communism penetrated Kerala by benefitting from socio-economic situations during the pre-independence decades. Now Kerala thinks and acts just opposite to the national mainstream. 

Communism in the princely states of Kerala did not do well. More than 50 percent of its geographical area - British Malabar - was then part of present day Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. The Communists realized that the seeds of communism could thrive only in the Malayalam speaking area because this region had been ploughed out by missionaries through western education by which Hindu values were submerged or practically out of use. That is why Communists initiated the movement for a Malayalam speaking Kerala instead of a geographic one.

Their dreams blossomed in 1956. In the next general election in the state, the Communist Party became triumphant. This victory was not of Marxian ideology, but the Hindu reaction against Christian opportunism and monopolization of political and economic power. By encashing the Christian conspiracy behind setting fire to the Sasta Temple at Sabrimala and subsequent Hindu sentiments, communists won the election. But those elevated to power through Hindu votes made their priority the impoverishment of Hindus and dismantling of Hindu faith from this land.

While the undivided communist party was in power during 1957-58, its first priority was to reduce temples to self-extinction and impoverish Hindus. The regime first of all put the enquiry report of the Sabarimala Temple destruction in ‘cold storage.’ Then it began Hindu impoverishment via annihilation of Hindu landownership with the land reforms of 1957.

To save Christian landlords, the church intervened to allow use of excess land in the hands of Christians by including relaxation clauses in the Land Reform Bill, thus excluding plantation lands / estates from the purview of land reforms. Now with mounting minority pressure, again the government amended the old Land Reform Act to incorporate those Christian and Muslim surplus lands which were converted as cashew plantations by giving estate status to it.

Major holders of coconut plantations and paddy lands were Hindus and their temples; their holdings were not brought under ‘estates’ when the land reform bills were drafted. Hence the entire land of temples became surplus land and temple deity the landlord/janmi. But the land owned by churches was not subjected to land reforms. Thus the ‘revolutionary land reforms’ of Kerala only impoverished the Hindus. At present, the average landholding of a Christian family is 126.4 cents and Hindus and Muslims are 69.1 and 77.1 cents respectively [1]. 

This anti-Hindu approach led a sizable number of Hindus to desert the communist fold, so the Communist Party leaned towards a policy of minority appeasement. The immediate result was the birth of an exclusive Muslim district, Malappuram, when all corners of national life warned of the danger in doing so. Now this district is the hatchery of all anti-national and terrorist activities in Kerala.

Subsequently a Christian district also carved out, a political decision which legitimized the state’s communal divide. History reveals how far Muslim bigots were appeased by the Marxist Party. In 1946, one Unnian Saheb of Perinthalmanna in Malabar, reconverted to Hinduism along with his family and received the name Ramasimhan.

A Moplah mob (Malabar Muslims) brutally exterminated the entire family as an admonition to all who wish to return to poorva dharma. All political parties, with Marxist Party in vanguard position under its self-styled revolutionary leader EMS Namboodirpad, tried to misdirect the police investigation and save the guilty [2].

The state conference of rgw Marxist Party held in February 2005 at Malappuram officially declared stained Muslim fanatic Wariamkunnathu Kunjahammed Haji, leader of the notorious Moplah Revolt who killed thousands of Hindus including innocent women and children in cold blood during the 1921 Khilafat agitation at Malabar, as a martyr of the Communist Party. Even the Muslim League is reluctant to do this. 

The universal failure of Communism as an alternative economic and political model and the 1964 split in the Communist Party drained its mass base in Kerala. The communist attitude on vital national issues like Chinese aggression alienated them from the public. EMS Namboodiripad said: “The Chinese had entered territory that they thought was theirs and hence there was no question of aggression as far as they were concerned. At the same time, the Indians were defending territory that they considered theirs and so they were not committing aggression either. …..” [3].

Since 1967 the motto of the Kerala Marxists shrank to mere sharing political power. They also opted for the annihilation of those ideologically against them, resulting in the killings of RSS workers, which continues unabated.  

RSS started work in Kerala in the 1940s. The first political murder happened on 12 April 1957 at Alleppey, when a farm labour, Abdul Khader, was stabbed to death by Communists. On 2 May 1957, a toddy tapper, Gangadharan, a member of INTUC, was killed at Alleppey. Thereafter, the Marxist regime sponsored the annihilation of political opponents, which is still going on. 

By the 1970s, the communists split into half a dozen parties including Naxalite groups. The splits were caused by power sharing, not ideological differences. The great looser was the Marxist Party, hence its prime agenda became the retaining of cadre and political power. The result was indiscriminate killings of those opposed to their ideology or functioning. Since 1969, RSS became the chief target of Marxist wrath.

The first prey Ramakrishnan of Vadickal village, Thalassery, a Mukya Sishak of the village RSS Shakha, in 1969. An accused in this murder was Pinarayi Vijayan, now State general secretary and PB member of the CPM. From 1969 to this day, 160 RSS workers and 39 workers of other political parties have been murdered Marxists in Kerala. More than 177 houses of RSS workers have been destroyed and a good number of RSS/ BJP activists ostracized from their villages of Kannur district. In some areas in Kannur, especially Thalassery, Panoor, Kathiroor and Kuthuparamba, only those policemen are posted who back Marxist cadre or are their pawns.

On 1 December 1999, K.T. Jayakrishnan, a UP schoolteacher of Panoor in Kannur district, was brutally hacked to death in his classroom in front of 45 children of below nine years of age. All 45 children lost their mental stability and recovered only after six months of intensive treatment. When the Marxists threatened Jayakrishnan, the court had directed the state police to give him protection. At the time of his murder, two policemen were on duty with rifle loaded with dead ammunition.

In the light of government sponsored butchering, the High Court of Kerala recently proceeded suo-motto against the Marxist led Government of Kerala. To save the face of the Party, the Government moved the Supreme Court against the suo-motto suit. The Supreme Court not only declined the Govt. writ appeal but commented that the steps taken by the High Court were laudable.  

The Party’s propaganda wing targets Hindu sannyasins and mathams and ridicules them as “human gods.” Their chief target is Mata Amritananda Mai.  Most top comrade’s children study in Amma’s educational institutions on an underwriting from comrade parents that their wards should ‘sincerely participate in all the religious activities including Bhajans’.

On the other hand, Hindu sannyasins’ educational institutions are forbidden to ordinary comrades. The reason behind the double standard is that party base will shrink if one becomes a true Hindu. Marxists strictly follow communism’s universal style: “all are equal and some are more equal.”

Once EMS, upholding the Soviet view that the Second World War was “an imperialist war,” was in danger of having his property attached by the British for working against the war effort. As he went to underground, Namboodiripad anticipated the attachment and dodged it by transferring it to his wife’s name [4].

Another Communist priority was the mercy killing of temples – because the temple is the source of Hindu power. Hence they sought to annihilate the influence of temples from the minds of the Hindus. Focusing on textbooks in school, they consciously avoided topics related to Puranas, Epics and Vedas. Before the 1970s, textbooks carried more than eighty percent from ancient Hindu texts. This is now reduced to fifteen percent and is derogatory to Hindu life. A recent development is to create unnecessary controversies regarding famous temples to generate mental stress amongst worshippers.    

Now the Marxist Party is in a capitalist mood and is functioning in corporate style. Its state general secretary functions like a CEO of the Marxist Party [Pvt. Ltd]. The party runs businesses like resorts, factories, amusement park, TV channels, and other ventures, and makes more surplus than real capitalist undertakings. To Karl Marx, surplus is ‘unpaid labour’; that is why he stood for socialistic/communist mode of production.

In China, though the party favoured multinationals and private entrepreneurs, it did not directly engage in commercial enterprises. But now the self styled proletarian party has no time to look after the welfare of the working classes and oppressed. All office bears of the state unit are busy with hectic business activities. 

Currently in Kerala, the Marxist Party’s chief enemy is not capitalistic forces or Islamic terrorists, but temples and Hindu sannyasins. They fear nationalism and Hindu dharma. That is why they are targeting BJP/RSS workers. The penetration of another Semitic “materialistic religion,” Communism, and its messing up Hindu society is a serious threat to nationalistic forces. I hope one day my mother country will overcome and shine as a Jagadguru.

Notes

1] Kerala Padanam, Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad, Kozhikode, 2006, p 54. Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad is a Marxist party organization.
2] For further information, see EMS’s Selected Works, [Mal], Vol. VII, pp 356-57
3] EMS on Chinese Aggression. Quoted from: Comrade Mohit Sen, A Traveler and the Road – The Journey of an Indian Communist, Rupa & Co, New Delhi, 2003. [Then EMS was then the National General Secretary of CPI [M]. He made this comment in a press conference].
4] “It is also worth noting that the Tesildar found that the value of the property was more than Rs. 50,000/-. Namboodiripad cheated the government of stamp duty and showed the value of this deed as Rs. 9,000/- only. E. Balakrishnan, History of the Communist Movement in Kerala.

The author is a retired Professor of History, and lives in Trivandrum