Balakrishnan Padmavathi
Dear Crusaders of anti-fascist alliances,
The Pinarayi Vijayan’s “Left” Front government in Kerala has killed four more comrades in yet another fake encounter happened in the forests of Western Ghats. This the third of this kind of killings happened in the last three years (of the present government in power). In total, they have shot down 7 comrades so far. We may agree or disagree with the ideology those who have lost in this battlefields, but lets be clear they were not forest pirates but comrades who dared to hold a red-flag to fight the injustice prevailing in the society.
The last episodes of this fake encounter has happened in the dense forests of Attapadi region in Western Ghats’ Palghat. If you remember, this is one of those region ruthlessly ravaged by the neoliberal economic order and its developmental projects. A region known for undernourishment, destitution and death in Kerala. A study conducted by Dr. Richard Scaria from the Department of Geography, Government College Chittur, shows that the malnourishment index of the region is even worse than those of the sub-Saharan African countries. Encountered with these harsh realities of neoliberalims, people like Madhu, a young tribal man, has come to nearby towns in search of food and got brutally attacked and killed by the “progressive” Kerala society on allegation of ‘food theft’. The information available to me at the moment shows that the present Vijayan’s government has done everything possible to not to deliver justice for Madhu and saving his killers.
The recent uproar about “Maoism” in Attapadi has to be understood in the context of this failed developmental intervention by both the liberal and left front government under the rubrics of ruthless global neoliberal economic order. The CPI(M) being one of the largest electoral communists organizations of India, has unapologetically embraced neoliberal capitalism. Therefore, any forms of LEFT ward critique of their revisionist move will not be tolerable to them. Thus the party has taken all possible measures to demonise those uncompromised left elements to isolate them and finally to eliminate it. The increasing instances of militarisation of Western Ghats and incidences of extra judicial killings and fake encounters has to be understood in this context.
It has to be noted here that, this forest encounters by the so called Left front government has to be seen in association with the ongoing witch-hunting of the intellectuals and activists in urban India in the name of “Urban Naxals”. To my mind, this clearly unveils the nature of Indian democracy- no matter whoever is going to control it- be the right or the electoral left. In both the cases the activists working on the field and those intellectuals stand with the larger concerns of human causes are the ones recognised as the enemies of the bourgeois national projects of both the Hindu Fascists and the “Social fascists” of CPIM kinds. Therefore, it is the high time we should stand together to form an uncompromised alliance against all forms of fascism be it Vijayan’s pseudo Marxist fascist project or Modi’s Hindutva fascism.
The author is a PhD scholar at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi
