For the first time, the communists have decided to do the unthinkable: Celebrate India’s 75th year of independence this year!
At a roadside bar in Kochi, an inebriated communist supporter confessed how it happened.
No, it is not because of chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan. It is because Modi hai toh Mumkin hain.
The tough job for the communists is not the unfurling of the tri-colour because they have no past experience of it, but to speak of their role in the freedom movement, because they have no role in it.
They can of course blame Modi for bringing this headache on them and no one can blame them for this. They can also rightly question why Modi did not take part in the freedom struggle. True, he wasn’t born, but that is beside the point. The point is, we should focus on when India was born, and not Modi, they can argue.
But this will still mean they have to say SOMETHING at least about their involvement in the freedom movement as it is the 75th year of Indian independence. Let’s face it. If you don’t speak about it for 75 years, then people are bound to ask why. Though there is a contrary view in the Politburo that it is enough time for people to forget about it.
This is what is going to really test their mettle. How to talk about your role when it was not IN setting India free, but in keeping India FROM getting free, with a straight face and a superior smile? Secularism can help, but it too has a limit.
Indeed, it’s going to be really tough not just for people on the podium, but also those off it – for the speakers as well as the audience. So expect a lot of rush at the state’s watering holes and wine stores from both the leadership, the party cadre and the citizenry.
Since the people of Kerala are highly enlightened folks, they will surely feel sorry for Pinarayi Vijayan when he is forced to speak about how the communists supported the two-nation theory and the demand of a separate nation by Muslim League.
Or when Prakash Karat proclaims that Communist Party of India was officially against the Quit India movement – and this was at the diktat of their masters in Moscow.
They will be teary-eyed when Sitaram Yechury will reveal how the communists use their propaganda machinery to look down upon nationalism and shame everything that is “Bharatiyata”.
They will be red-eyed when Brinda Karat will fondly recall how the communists described Mahatma Gandhi as a traitor and Subhas Chandra Bose as a fifth columnist, at their party convention held in then Bombay in May 1943.
We will have to wait and see how the people of Kerala will react when the venerable D. Raja will proudly point out how the communists of that time even refused to accept India’s freedom from the British, and after Independence, even sided with China in the Indo-China war of 1962.
Later, they will read the op-ed of N. Ram of The Hindu on Aug 15, where he will write about how the communist leader of the 1940s, P.C. Joshi, “…was doing a better job of stemming the Quit India Movement, of denouncing Subhas Chandra Bose and leaders of the Congress underground than the British government itself.”
You may even catch Arundathi Roy reveal how Mahatma Gandhi in his letter dated June 11, 1944 to Joshi talked about the Communist party helping the authorities arrest the leaders of labour unions.
Whatever be the mode of celebrations, this August 15 will make history in Kerala – when the toddy-loving Keralite will be served a unique decoction of the devil literally quoting scriptures.
But will this political gymnastics of Olympic proportions make any dent on the people of Kerala?
It will. They will definitely return again to the nearest toddy shop in droves.
For those who prefer not to give up hope, Kerala can yet set itself free. But for that to happen, the state’s minorities – who are a near majority at 48% – have to cast the first stone. Which is like Pinarayi Vijayan winning in Gujarat.
But after communist Tripura, where even a saffron-painted lamppost won in the elections, hope lies eternal.
So if the minorities change course and say tata, bye-bye to so-called secular warriors, the Hindu majority – forever divided unlike the minority community – can say bye-bye to their caste warriors.
It’s time to blow the whistle on the communist game of gaslighting the people of Kerala. After Bengal, Kerala should decide to break free, shed its old skin grow a new one and think afresh, with no narratives attached – majority/minority, leftist-rightist, etc.
This August 15 when the communists unfurl the national tri-colour, the people of Kerala should choose to own that moment as their own moment of swantantryam from them.
By- KS Muralidharan
