Unmistakably, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan's history class on Wednesday was meant for his state secretary M V Govindan. The other day Govindan had claimed that the CPM and the RSS had joined together in 1975 to get rid of the Emergency and unseat Indira Gandhi.

On Wednesday, even while laughing away Govindan's remarks, Pinarayi corrected him. "During the Emergency, there was no connection whatsoever between the CPM and the RSS. During the 1977-79 period, there were innumerable CPM martyrs in Kannur alone. In all these cases, the accused were RSS people. Do you think the CPM can ever have an understanding with the RSS?" the CM told reporters.

Pinarayi's elucidation of the CPM's association with the Janata Party experiment, too, was far from the impression given by M V Govindan's remarks. The CM said the CPM fought the Emergency alone, without leaning on anyone. "The Janata Party, which was the culmination of a series of resistance movements led primarily by socialist parties in various parts of the country, was a broad coalition. But we were not part of it, our resistance was not carried out in the shadow of any other entity," the CM said.

Bharathiya Jan Sangh, the BJP's forerunner, later became part of the Janata Party led by Jayaprakash Narayan. "Like in the case of all other parties that became part of the Janata Party, the Jan Sangh too disbanded all its committees before merging with the Janata Party," Pinarayi said. "But the CPM did not merge with the Janata Party. We fought on our own steam," he said. 

Forget RSS, the CM was essentially saying that the CPM did not have any truck with even the Jan Sangh because it was dissolved the moment it merged with the Janata Party. Nonetheless, the CPM had an electoral arrangement with the Janata Party for the larger goal of "throwing the Emergency into the Arabian Sea".

The Janata Party disintegrated and the Morarji Desai government fell following the dual membership controversy. Certain leaders in Janata Party like A B Vajpayee and L K Advani were questioned about their RSS membership. 

The CM then cited various sources to argue that the RSS had backed Indira Gandhi's Emergency. He picked passages from Neerja Choudhary's book 'How Prime Ministers decide' to establish that the RSS enjoyed a cosy bond with the Congress party in the post-Emergency period. He quoted from the book to say that Indira Gandhi's stupendous victory in 1980 was achieved with RSS support. He also referred to a passage in the book that said that in 1982, Rajiv Gandhi had touched the feet of RSS sarsanghachalak Balasaheb Deoras. 

Pinarayi also spoke of the various electoral adjustments the Congress had made with the RSS and Sangh Parivar in Kerala. 

In 1960, he said the Congress and Jan Sangh fielded joint candidates in Kozhikode, Andathode, Gruvayur and Pattambi. In Pattambi, where EMS Namboodirippad was candidate, the Congress candidate withdrew after he filed his nomination. He was replaced by Jan Sangh's Raghavan Nair. Pinarayi said that no less a person than Deen Dayal Upadhyaya had arrived in Pattambi to campaign against EMS. "The deal was open and not a secret," Pinarayi said. Still, EMS won, he said.

In 1971, the CM said the Congress and Jan Sangh had put up a joint candidate against A K Gopalan of the CPM in Palakkad Lok Sabha constituency. AKG won.

Pinarayi said that it was during the four byelections held in Kerala in 1979 that EMS famously declared that the CPM did not want a single RSS vote. the CPM won all the four seats.

He also spoke of the Co-Le-B (Congress, League and BJP) alliance that the CPM had to fight in Beypore and Vadakara in 1991. The essence of argument was that it was not the CPM but the UDF that had flirted with the RSS.