Communist Party of India (CPI) state secretary Kanam Rajendran would have preferred to take on Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan directly. But coalition etiquette seems to have held him back.
Instead, Kanam has turned his might on the chief minister's proxies, chief secretary Tom Jose and DGP Lokanath Behera, the two most powerful bureaucrats in the state.
Behera, who runs the chief minister's home department, is detested for his handling of the Maoist threat. “It is primitive to think that the bullet is the only solution,” the recent CPI state council resolution said. “Don't forget that many of the police encounters that took place in North India were fake,” it said. This was a reference to the CPM's strong disapproval of fake encounters in BJP ruled states, and also a veiled charge that the only Left-led government in the country was now going the BJP way.
The CPI state secretary had, in another instance recently, said Naxal leader A Varghese was killed in a fake encounter in Thirunelly in 1970. Though the police had then said it was done in self-defence, police constable P Ramachandran Nair had in 1998 confessed that he had shot Varghese at the orders of then SP P Vijayan and DySP K Lakshamana. By invoking Varghese's name Kanam was essentially saying it would be foolish to accept the police version at face value.
Department of lies
“I have no respect for people who blindly believe what the police says,” Kanam had said in response to CPM Kozhikode district secretary P Mohanan's charge that Islamist fundamentalists were nourishing Maoist elements in Kerala.
Political observers like Appukuttan Vallikkunnu believe the barb was actually meant for Pinarayi Vijayan who has the habit of swallowing all that his police chief Behera feeds him. The CPI believes there is no Maoist threat in Kerala. “Most of the seven people killed in alleged encounters during the LDF tenure were shot from the back. Even the autopsy reveals that they were fired at from a close range, a clear sign they were shot to kill,” Kanam said. The police had said they fired in self-defence.
In the latest issue of the CPI's ideological fortnightly 'Navayugam', Kanam writes that Behera's police had flouted many of the Supreme Court guidelines during the police encounter that led to the death of four Maoists on October 27 in Attappady.
Here are some of the guidelines on police encounters laid down in 2014, in the People's Union of Civil Liberties vs State of Maharashtra case: Keep a written record of any tip-off of criminal movements or activities, file a quick FIR in the case of death or serious injury, inform the victim's nearest ones at the earliest, and surrender the police weapons used for the encounter for forensic and ballistic analysis.
“It is the law of the land, and it should be followed,” Kanam said.
The CPI has also rebelled at the arrest of two CPM youths under Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). The CPI secretary, and even other top CPI leaders in the state, constantly remind the CPM that at its 21st party conference in Visakhapatanam, the UAPA was branded as a "black law" that trampled upon the democratic rights of people. “The chief minister cannot give the police a free hand. He should at the very least tell the DGP to convey the LDF's political line to the force,” a top CPI leader said.
Trigger-happy chief secretary
The CPI secretary is more dismissive of chief secretary Tom Jose for supporting the police killings. “There is no rationale in stating that Maoists who indulge in armed conflict have got the same human rights and privileges as normal citizens,” the chief secretary argued in an article he wrote for The Times of India.
Pinarayi Vijayan was indifferent to the controversy the article had triggered. He merely said it was not the government's opinion. Kanam but tore into the chief secretary's argument. “Tom Jose is trying to create a normal citizen/Maoist separation. It is a shock that a person occupying the post of the chief secretary is unaware of even the basic tenet that in a democracy there is just one set of people,” Kanam said.
Unlike the CPI, Pinarayi's topmost bureaucrat is of the opinion that Kerala has become a safe haven for Maoists. “Many fail to understand that the Maoists are using Kerala as a safe haven to hide and plot against the state after things got rough in the neighbouring states,” says Tom Jose.
To Tom Jose's argument that in the jungle it is either kill or get killed, Kanam said: “A chief secretary's call to kill is a challenge thrown at the rule of law itself.”
Camus, the double-edged sword
The CPI state secretary even ridiculed the chief secretary's erudition. “We must remember French philosopher Albert Camus who stated with such clarity that the ultimate alibi for large scale murders is philosophy,” Tom Jose wrote. This was supposed to be a line from Camus's celebrated work 'The Rebel'.
“I don't know whether Camus has ever written such a sentence,” Kanam said, and quoted the exact words from 'The Rebel'. “We are living in the era of premeditation and perfect crime. Our criminals are no longer helpless children who could plead love as their excuse. On the contrary they are adults and they have the perfect alibi: Philosophy, which can be used for any purpose – even for transforming murderers into judges.”
The last line flipped the roles. The accuser became the accused. By quoting Camus to say that philosophy can be used by killers to pose as judges, Kanam turned the sharp edge of the argument towards the chief secretary's throat. The CPI is miffed that Tom Jose had stamped a set of people terrorists without bothering with proof.
It is another matter that the chief minister has not found it worthwhile to even make a show of admonishing his chief secretary or his DGP.
