Ravi Shankar Prasad, Is Your Language Worthy Of A Union Minister?

Strange how top leaders of seemingly opposite political forces such as Ravi Shankar Prasad of the BJP-RSS combine on the one hand, and Mamata Banerjee, Chief Minister and supremo of Bengal's Trinamool Congress on the other, so easily slip into the same team as far as putting down the opposition or indeed any dissenting voice is concerned. With violence. The name of their game whether in victory or defeat seems to be - accept our suzerainty or else... 

So Ravi Shankar Prasad, union minister whose party has been decisively defeated by the Kerala voters, comes back to Delhi, dons the garb of the victim and starts accusing the CPI(M) of violence. On national television, he threatens the CPI(M) "We will meet them on the street, they should remember that the BJP rules India."

Dear Mr. Ravi Shankar Prasad, speak like a union minister, not a shakha member, and learn your facts before organizing demonstrations at the head office of the CPI(M) and encouraging your workers to indulge in vandalism. The fact is that there has been a history of clashes between the RSS and CPI(M) in Kannur with casualties on both sides. Around 200 CPI(M) workers have been brutally killed by the RSS in Kerala, and many have been severely injured or suffered permanent disability. This round of attacks was started by the RSS-BJP combine on the very day that election results were declared and when it was clear that Kerala had rejected Modi's Gujarat model being brought to Kerala (in fact it worked against the BJP). The message "Po Mone Modi" (go home, son Modi) resounded throughout the state. 
 In revenge, the RSS goons attacked a victory procession in the village of Pinarayi, which falls in the constituency of Kerala's Chief Minister designate Pinarayi Vijayan, who won the election with a massive margin of 37,000 votes. It was an utterly cowardly attack: when people were singing and dancing with joy, bombs were thrown at them. Comrade Ravindran was killed and several, including his son, were injured. 18 RSS workers have been identified and named in the FIR. Elsewhere too, the BJP-RSS organized attacks. In Kasaragod district in the Kanhangad constituency the victory procession of the CPI MLA was attacked by BJP workers. The MLA, E Chandrashekaran, was injured with fractures on his hand; so were others. In Nemom, the one seat won by the BJP, their workers attacked and burnt a local office of the CPI(M). In Trichur also a procession was attacked. There was a clash and a BJP worker was injured, who later, sadly and unfortunately, died in hospital. It is the responsibility of leaders on all sides and more so union ministers to ensure that such clashes are avoided which lead to tragic deaths. But blaming the other for a round of violence started by the BJP is sheer hypocrisy.

The truth is that the BJP could not stomach its defeat and particularly that of its Kerala president, Kummanam Rajashekaran, who had boasted to the media that 5,000 RSS workers were working night and day for him. Now their plan is to deliberately create a law and order problem, even before the newly-elected government takes office. The Left and Democratic Alliance and its Chief Minister designate have assured the people of Kerala that they will ensure peace and security to all citizens and will not retaliate to the provocative actions of the RSS-BJP. But the people will teach them that threats like those given by a union minister will only lead to further rejection.

If in Kerala it is the frustration of those who cannot accept defeat at the hands of the people, in Bengal it is the arrogance of the victor. There is little doubt that Mamata Banerjee has won the elections with a decisive victory. That does not in any way negate the charges of corruption and nepotism that were made against her government and party leaders. During the campaign itself, the country became aware of the truth of what the Left had been saying for the last five years - the all-out assault by the TMC government on minimum democratic rights, including the right to free speech and the right to organize.
 The Election Commission, an autonomous institution trying to do its job to ensure free and fair elections in a highly tainted environment, also got a bitter dose of authoritarian Mamata-speak. She threatened the Commission openly. The threats to the opposition parties ranged from street abuse, loosely translated, like "I will see to you inch by inch", to "Wait till the elections are over and the central police go back". After the elections, her vahinis have run riot all over the state in an orgy of terror against the opposition, in particular targeting supporters of the Left parties.

Armed hooligans of the ruling party are throwing bombs at homes of Left voters and workers, knowing that there are women and children inside. They have entered homes, looted their belongings, even snatched away the cycles given to girls if it was suspected that their parents had not voted for the TMC. Women and children have been attacked and forced to leave their homes. Every day brings new stories of horror. The terror of the TMC vahinis in those rural areas where villagers dared to vote against the ruling party can be imagined when even in the heart of Kolkata, gangs of TMC hoodlums burnt homes with women and children who just about managed to escape. 

Voters in the prestigious Jadavpur constituency who had defeated then Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee in the 2011 elections have been, since the results are out, facing violence and terror because they dared to unseat the TMC this time and vote in CPI(M) leader Sujon Chakravorty with a margin of over 15,000 votes. Several houses have been attacked, supporters beaten including women. Not just the Left.

At least four women victims of earlier cases of sexual assault by TMC goons whose cases are pending in the courts have been warned to withdraw their cases on the threat of being assaulted again.

BJP leader Roopa Ganguly, who went to visit her party workers who had been attacked by the TMC in South 24 Parganas, was herself targeted by a TMC mob who smashed her car and she reportedly suffered injuries. Even as an opposition delegation met the Governor to give him details of the unprecedented post poll violence unleashed by the ruling party and the partisan role of the police, the BJP held a protest demonstration outside the Chief Minister's residence.
 But the BJP leaders in Delhi did not utter a word against Mamata Banerjee or the fascistic attacks going on in West Bengal. While they railed at, abused and threatened the communists on the basis of manufactured lies about Kerala, in Bengal, where their workers and leaders are really being attacked, the BJP national leadership is silent. The reason is clear: they need Mamata Banerjee's support in Delhi, so they are prepared to look the other way, even if their own workers are under siege. 

It goes further than that too. Authoritarianism and contempt for democracy are the common denominators that bind the two forces and the two top leaders together. So perhaps then it is not all that strange, how two seemingly opposite forces slip into the same team.

Brinda Karat is a Politburo member of the CPI(M) and a former Member of the Rajya Sabha.

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