Marxist-rebel murdered in Kerala: finger of suspicion troubles CPM

Trivandrum: Even after 38 hours, Kerala is yet to recover from the unprecedented grip of outrage and pain caused by the brutal murder of an immensely popular CPM-rebel leader in the northern district of Kozhikode. The slain leader, TP Chandrasekharan (51), was hacked 51 times by an armed gang on Friday night. The murder was so brutal that his face was mutilated beyond recognition. No other political murder in the state has drawn such large numbers of mourners. On Saturday, TV channels dedicated most of its airtime to the incident and the outrage it generated. Chandrasekharan, a CPM leader since his student days, had left the party in the recent past over the style of functioning of its leadership and had floated a communist alternative called the Revolutionary Marxist Party (RMP). He had openly questioned the state leadership of the CPM and its dilution of ideology. He was dubbed a VS Achuthanandan camper and was sidelined before he chose to leave. Unlike many other leaders who left the CPM in recent times, what made Chandrasekharan’s exit exceptional was that he also took bulk of the party’s cadre and mass-base in his locality with him and had emerged as a formidable challenge to the CPM stronghold in parts of Kozhikode. [caption id=“attachment_300059” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Chandrasekharan, a CPM leader since his student days, had left the party in the recent past over the style of functioning of its leadership. Screengrab IBN-Live”]  [/caption] He also emerged as the force that galvanised Marxists who loathed the CPM leadership, but believed in Left democratic politics. While many former CPM-evacuees allied with the UDF, Chandrasekharan refused to join any mainstream party. He even turned down an open invitation from the CPI. Instead, what he wanted to build was a Marxist alternative to the CPM. He strongly believed in the ideals of the old CPM and wanted to restore them through the new movement. Besides founding the RMP, he along with several other likeminded communists also formed a Left Coordination Council aimed at building a Left alternative to the CPM across the state. They believed in Left politics and that the present CPM leadership was decadent. Using the Marxist-Leninist ideological framework they constantly targeted the CPM, particularly the state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan and his acolytes. The RMP and the village of Onchiam, a brutal stronghold of the CPM, were the test-beds for his pioneering politics. And his success has been more than spectacular. The RMP literally extinguished the CPM from its erstwhile fortress and wrested control of the local panchayat, which the former had never lost in the past. In addition, Chandrasekharan also contested the last parliament election in the Vadakara constituency in Kozhikkode that ensured the defeat of the CPM candidate, who otherwise was poised for an easy win. Perhaps what angered the CPM leadership was the RMP’s belief that it was the true Marxist party. Organisationally, it behaved like one with considerable popular support. The Onchiam model had the potential to spread to other pockets of the state through the Left Coordination Council. It clearly threatened the cadre and the voter-base of the CPM, and nobody else. If it could tilt the tables in a traditional CPM-stronghold, it could have done the same in other parts of the state as well. Perhaps for these reasons, the CPM leadership has been extremely inimical to Chandrasekharan and his cadre. They constantly came under threat and were attacked many times. Recently, when the RMP decided to organise its area committee meeting in Onchiam, they were threatened. However, the slain leader and his followers braved the intimidation and successfully organised the meeting, which also brought together Marxists who believed in a CPM-alternative. Organisationally, RMP and the growing band of dissident Marxist-ideologues, have been a real threat to the CPM. Political observers feel that consistent with the growth of RMP and the Left Coordination Council, there has been a formidable erosion of the CPM’s political base. The party somehow had to arrest it. Had Chandrasekharan joined any other party, the story would have been different. The recent surprise-exit of a sitting MLA in southern Kerala, Selvaraj or that of AP Abdullakkutty, a CPM member of parliament, in 2009; both of whom joined the Congress; is a case in point. The CPM, at best, would have ridiculed, slandered or bad-mouthed him, as it did in the case of Selvaraj or Abdullakkutty. In Chandarasekharan’s case, there was a certain threat to the party’s dominance in the Marxist political space. For the same reasons, the United Democratic Front and the BJP lost no time in pointing fingers at the CPM for Chandrasekharan’s murder. Union minister Mullappally Ramachandran, said that the slain leader had told him about the threats to his life, but refused to take police protection since he wanted to work among the people. The Kerala chief minister, home minister and the President of the Kerala unit of the Congress also either insinuated or charged that the CPM was behind the murder. The CPM leadership, however, was quick to deny any involvement. Pinarayi Vijayan convened a press conference and said it was a UDF conspiracy. Curiously, hundreds of miles away, the Polit Bureau of the CPM also denied any involvement. VS Achuthanandan, another thorn in the flesh for his party’s state leadership, was the only prominent CPM leader who attended the funeral. He called Chandrasekharan “a brave communist.” Instead of denying his party’s involvement outrightly, he said the CPM district secretary has denied any involvement. Reports suggested that the modus operandi and the nature of the murder was similar to the killing practice in Kannur, where about 200 political activists lost their lives in a decade. Armed gangs with long sickles, stunning the target with country-bombs and then hacking him to death beyond recognition are the hallmarks of the Kannur model of political murders. Reportedly, the gang that killed Chandrasekharan also came from Kannur and was led by a criminal who was in jail for the double murder of political activists.