It was a provocative remark made by a UDF MLA in the Assembly on Monday that caused former CPM leader G Sudhakaran to launch yet another blistering attack against his former party. 

Last time, while participating in the Motion of Thanks to the Governor on June 2, Sudhakaran required no prodding. He had then come prepared to give his former party a brutal reality check. The June 2 speech was also Sudhakaran's first as a non-CPM MLA in the Assembly.

On Monday, while participating in the discussion on the Budget, Kerala Congress's Thiruvalla MLA Varghese Mammen described communism as "an obliterated ideology and a hated belief system". No one in the opposition seemed to bother.

Not Sudhakaran. "I heard a friend say that communism was a curse. Lucky that I didn't see his face," he said, implying that otherwise he would have lost control. "Does anyone who claims that communism is a curse have a right to even exist in this world," he said.  

But Mammen was just the bridge Sudhakaran walked over to reach his real target: his former comrades.

"What does the great Jawaharlal Nehru say about communism in his 'Glimpses of World History'? That it was a curse? Instead of questioning the people who allowed it to be possessed by a curse, it is outrageous to despoil such a great ideology," he said.

Sudhakaran termed communism as an ideology that "can never be obsolete". "It is just that there is no one to practice and perpetuate communism the way it should be. It can now be found only in China and Cuba and Vietnam. They somehow manage to keep it afloat. But where is Communism in India. What you are told is communism is not communism at all," he said.

He then indirectly came to his own defence for having an electoral understanding with the Congress in the last Assembly elections. "Communist party had aligned with the Kerala Congress, and also with the Antony group of the Congress," he said, and lashed out at his former comrades: 'Who told you that the Communist party will not have a truck with the Congress in future? Tomorrow they will come together. They have already done so in Tamil Nadu. They have a truck with the Muslim League, too (in Tamil Nadu). Oh you great souls who clamoured that G Sudhakaran had slipped into the cesspool called the Congress, where have you fallen in Tamil Nadu? It is not a cesspool, but a necessity." 

He said that the CPM's only Lok Sabha seat in Rajasthan (Sikar - Amra Ram) was secured with the support of the Congress. "Of the four CPM seats in Parliament, only one was won solely on its might (Alathur - K Radhakrishnan). None of this should be forgotten. We should all introspect how our party fell to such lows. The Left Front that once had 62 seats and now has just six. Two for the CPI and four for the CPM, and five of them outside Kerala. This should be examined," he said, and once again went back to rebuke mode. "Now who is there to bring this all up? I have no idea. But the only thing I can say is that this is not how the party should introspect on its failures," he said.

Sudhakaran also used the occasion to reveal the vengeful nature of the CPM. "Every day state committee member Chandra Babu is invoking my father's name," he said, and with withering sarcasm, added: "Since I have not seen his father, I cannot say anything."

He was also critical of the language used by CPM members. Alluding to former MLA, and his opponent in the last Assembly elections, H Salam, Sudhakaran said that a former MLA had remarked that I was not even qualified to remove the straps of Pinarayi Vijayan's boots. 

"I am not qualified to untie the straps of anyone's footwear. It is with pride that I say this," he said. " There was a time when slaves used to untie the straps of their feudal lords. But we don't allow anyone else to remove the straps of our slippers. We do it ourselves. The language of untying straps is feudal language, not the language of communists," Sudhakaran said.

Pinarayi Vijayan was also not spared. In a clear reference to Pinarayi's "chettatharam" remarks against him during the election campaign, Sudhakaran said: "The real communists are those who live in thatched houses (chetta kudilukal). It was in these thatched houses that P Krishnapillai and E M S Namboodirippad had lived in exile during the period of struggle. It was the people who lived in these thatched houses that provided them food. This is now just history, not the lived reality. That is why I quietly left the party."