While CPM leaders were tying themselves up in knots trying to dodge posers related to ADGP Ajith Kumar's meeting with RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale, Speaker A N Shamseer has tossed aside ideological baggage and scoffed at the significance attached to the rendezvous.

"A senior police officer has met with an RSS leader. The officer himself has said that he was taken to the RSS leader by his friend. There is no need to take this seriously," the Speaker told reporters on Monday. His subsequent remarks could cause ideologically driven comrades to squirm. "RSS is a major organisation in the country. It is a senior leader of this organisation that the officer has met. I don't see anything wrong with that," Shamseer said.

A few hours before, CPM politburo member A Vijayaraghavan was seen doing a tough balancing act in front of the media. If the Speaker swatted away the ADGP-RSS meeting like it was a needless botheration, Vijayaraghavan had found it hard to underplay the gravity of the revelation.

His burden was to convince that the ADGP was not a CPM middleman. But, while saying this, Vijayaraghavan also had to give the impression that the ADGP's boss, the Chief Minister, was not at fault. "A person might have met another person. But it was not at the CPM's behest. The meeting might have taken place. The government will examine it," Vijayaraghavan said.

Fearing that this could sound as if the CPM was distancing itself from the CM, he said: "When we say the government will examine it, what does it mean? The government is made up of CPM leaders. The CM is a CPM leader and a politburo member."

However, reporters wanted an answer to a very basic point. "Was it right for the ADGP to meet a top RSS leader?" Vijayaraghavan gave an emphatic no, though in an indirect fashion. His answer even suggested that such a question was downright foolish.

"Don't ask whether it is right to beat up one's mother," he said. Translation: It is unthinkable for an officer under the CPM to meet RSS leaders. Even party secretary M V Govindan had expressed his "dissatisfaction" with the visit.

It is in this context that the Speaker's nonchalance assumes significance. Shamseer's refusal to view the issue as a crisis of ideology can even seem like a sudden about-turn. Just a year ago, his firm Marxist beliefs got him into trouble.

In July 2023, during the inauguration of an education scheme, the Speaker said that there were attempts to rebrand myths as scientific truths. He specifically mentioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi's observations in 2014 that traced the origins of plastic surgery, in-vitro fertilisation and aeroplanes to Lord Ganesha, Kauravas and the pushpaka vimana in Ramayana. The Yuva Morcha issued what looked like a life threat. And the NSS threatened a Sabarimala-like agitation.

To his credit, the Speaker stood his ground. He invoked Article 51 A(h) of the Constitution, which speaks of the need to inculcate a scientific temper, and said, "As a person holding a Constitutional post, how can anyone say I had wounded the feelings of believers?" Not believers but comrades would have felt the sting of the Speaker's words this time.