Watching the contrasting styles of Governor Arif Mohammad Khan and Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, it is tempting to frame their fight as a John McEnroe versus Bjorn Borg or a Muhammad Ali vs Joe Frazier match-up.
But there is a problem with falling for such sporting analogies. These legendary sportsmen had used their rivalry to elevate their sport. Here, these two men are letting politics plumb new depths.
Suffice to say that Arif Mohammad Khan and Pinarayi Vijayan are an odd pair. Though different in temperament, both are strangely similar in many ways.
They can deliver the most outrageous statement like it was normal stuff. One can claim that a reputed nonagenarian historian (Irfan Habib) had attempted to assault him or the Chief Minister has hatched a conspiracy to physically harm him. The other can describe a brutal battering on the head using flower pots and helmets as a 'life-saving act'.
Nor are they inhibited while choosing obscenities to hurl at others. "Bloody fools", "criminals", 'goondas'... so goes the vocabulary of one. The other had once called a bishop "wretched creature" (nikrishta jeevi) and a former political ally a "stinker" (para naari).
In their pursuit of glory, neither of them is least bothered about the troubles the ordinary people are put to. Nearly 1000 police personnel, close to 25% of the police force in Malappuram district, were taken out of their routine work and amassed inside a university campus just so that one man can triumph against a students’ organisation. The other had relished the sight of school students standing for nearly an hour under the harsh sun as he passed them on the Nava Kerala bus.
Both are also infamous for rebuffing journalists when uncomfortable questions are posed.
But here is a difference. While one can make tactical withdrawals, the other is dead against taking back even a word of what has been said.
Bloody retreat
Take the Governor for instance. On December 16, he said that the Chief Minister's home district of Kannur had a "bloody history" of killing. When he realised his remarks could be taken to mean that he had painted an entire district and its people as treacherous, he promptly made amends.
On December 18, while on the University of Calicut campus in Malappuram, he said his remarks were distorted. "Kannur had suffered for decades. I have not talked against the people of Kannur," he said, and suggested that the district was a victim of Pinarayi's "fascist" tendencies.
Kannur was sought to be pacified and his shooter’s line of sight was targeted solely on Pinarayi Vijayan and his party. "It is the CPM that brought fascism to Kannur. Don't you know the history of the Chief Minister? Do you know how many killings in Kannur the Chief Minister was responsible for? It is the same man who is now trying to intimidate the people," the Governor said.
A similar balancing act was resorted to with the police after he asked Malappuram district police chief Sasidharan S to remove one of the banners the SFI had erected on the campus on December 17. This was widely seen as the Governor using his constitutional authority to publicly humiliate a senior police official. The very next day the Governor said Kerala police was the finest in the country.
Bloody save
In this sense, the Chief Minister is highly predictable. He sticks to even his most improbable remark as if his government's life depended on it.
He, for example, has consistently maintained that the brutal assault of Youth Congress workers by DYFI workers was a life-saving act. He has also refused to accept that his gunman had violated protocol, jumped out of the escort vehicle and had brutalised Youth Congress protesters using a stick he was not supposed to lawfully carry. He replied in the negative when asked whether he had not even come across news clips or photographs of his gunman's aggression.
So protective is the Chief Minister that when it was pointed out that one of his escort men had said on social media that they would do the same again, he said everyone had the freedom of expression. This was the very same man who had publicly ridiculed former health minister K K Shailaja for speaking an extra five minutes and snubbed Kottayam MP Thomas Chazhikkadan for raising some demands, both at the Nava Kerala Sadas.
Black flag conundrum
Holding on to one's bizarre positions can at times throw up funny results.
Take for instance the Chief Minister's criticism of the Governor for stepping out of his car and challenging the SFI cadres who had staged an aggressive black flag protest against him in Thiruvananthapuram.
"Will anyone try to physically assault someone waving black flags," the Chief Minister asked during the Nava Kerala Sadas press meet in Pathanamthitta on December 17.
If that is the case, why Youth Congress and KSU protesters waving black flags right through the Nava Kerala yatra were mercilessly beaten up. Forget the Youth Congress, even a man collecting food packets for a destitute home at Vakathanam in Kottayam was kept in preventive custody till the Nava Kerala bus passed that area just because he had a black shirt on.
The subsequent remarks at the press conference were more baffling. "See how we took on those black flag demonstrators who jumped towards the Nava Kerala bus. Did we use obscene language against them? Did we call them goondas? We have always maintained that there is space for protest in a democracy," the Chief Minister said. "The only thing we have made clear is that such protests should not degenerate into violence. When that happens, the police will intervene. Isn't this the democratic way," he said.
There was not a hint of sarcasm on the Chief Minister's face, not even a sly acknowledgement that we will do what we please.
Herein lies the other big difference. The Chief Minister comes across as enigmatic. And the Governor looks wildly impulsive.
Mass appeal
This seeming spontaneity of the Governor can further show up the differences between the two men. When the SFI cadres bang on his car, for instance, the Governor steps out and screams at them. This immediately invites a comparison with the way the Chief Minister deals with Youth Congress and KSU workers who raise black flags when the Nava Kerala bus muscles past.
Pinarayi remains seated inside his fortified glass-covered bus (he claims that he even waves back at the protesters), and lets the cadres of his party's youth organisations thrash the flag-wavers as they please. One a street-smart fighter and the other a protected monarch.
And then, the Governor deciding on a whim to walk through the Mittayi Theruvu crowd in Kozhikode turned out to be the ultimate differentiator. The Chief Minister who was on a unique mass contact programme was barricaded away from the public and the Governor, the ceremonial head, was among the masses.
