Decoding political violence

Left leaders must introspect about the unenvious reputation

Following Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s recent visit to the family of a murdered member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Kerala, considerable attention has been focused on the problem of political violence in the southern state. There is, no doubt, more than a small element of political grandstanding in Mr Jaitley’s visit — the Bharatiya Janata Party has set its sights on winning seats in Kerala which have hitherto been denied to it. Yet too much political organisation, particularly in northern Kerala, is surrounded by the explicit use of violence. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has blamed the RSS for the problem of political violence. According to police reports, workers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) comprise the majority of the dead. It is perhaps understandable, therefore, that Mr Vijayan would blame the RSS, which has sought for many decades to expand into northern Kerala from its base in adjoining Mangaluru. The RSS strategists see the area, with its large Muslim population, as fertile ground for mobilisation. And creating a narrative of victimhood is often useful for the RSS when it seeks to expand.

But the Left, too, must introspect. Why is it that the two states in India where it has had the most power and for the longest period — if Tripura is excepted — are regions that have gained a reputation for political violence? The origins of Left mobilisation — in ensuring that landless labourers see landlords and the bourgeois as an “enemy”, attacks on whom have been seen as justifiable in the past — may well have something to do with this continuing problem. At least in West Bengal, ruled by the Left for decades, it is not difficult to see a link between the Left’s approach to political dominance and a persistent culture of political violence. While regimes prior to the Left in West Bengal were unquestionably oppressive in various ways, they used the state machinery to those ends; the Left focused on using its own cadre, a parallel state, towards specific political goals.

There are, of course, no easy answers here — establishing a clear cause and effect is likely impossible. Some may ask, for example, why violence in Kerala is harshest between the Left and the RSS if it is the Left that originally caused the problem, when the Left’s primary political opponent is the Congress? Or why the harshest manifestations of political violence in Kerala are so geographically specific — in the north of the state? And could it not be the case that West Bengal’s political violence and its long history of Left dominance emerge not from each other but from some additional factor — perhaps poor relations between landlords and the landless? These are all good questions, and need to be asked. The problem of political violence in Kerala is not as simple as either the BJP or the Left would like the rest of the country to assume.