It is very likely that an ordinary CPM worker had not heard of Pompeia. Mention the name and his face might contort into a big question mark.
Now try Publius Clodius Pulcher. The comrade might die laughing thinking that you are speaking gibberish.
The first was Julius Ceasar's second wife. And the second was a reckless Roman who, disguised as a woman, sneaked into a secret ritual hosted exclusively for ladies by the first.
Pulcher was found out, and a scandal broke out in Rome. It was said that Pulcher was trying to seduce Pompeia. Shocking the whole of Rome, Caesar let Pulcher off.
The all-powerful Roman, the pontifex maximus, also knew that his wife could not be blamed for the prank of a misguided spirit. Still, giving his countrymen yet another jolt, he divorced Pompeia, the love of his life.
Caeser's blood in Marxist veins
The comrades might be ignorant of what happened in Rome but they surely are familiar with the sense of justice that prompted Caesar to divorce Pompeia. “Ceasar's wife should be above suspicion,” Caesar had said.
It is the very same dictum that is more elaborately laid down in the rectification document that the CPM brought out in 2010. “Care should be taken to see that family members and close relatives of party leaders and those holding public office do not take advantage of their position to acquire pecuniary gains or assets disproportionate to their known sources of income,” it said.
This is why veteran comrades are a bit disappointed with senior leaders M V Govindan and A K Balan. Both these central committee members have sought to separate their party secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan from the allegations swirling around his son. They have essentially said that Kodiyeri Balakrishnan could not be held responsible for his son Binoy Kodiyeri's alleged failings.
Bourgeois ways
“Had such a thing happened for the first time, it would have been alright to give Kodiyeri the benefit of doubt. Even then he should be told to keep his house in order. But Kodiyeri's sons are habitual offenders, and everyone knows that their doings are causing serious harm to the reputation of the party,” a top CPM leader, who was once a central committee member, said.
Binoy Kodiyeri, who has now been accused of a rape by a bar dancer in Mumbai, was earlier involved in an alleged financial fraud in Dubai. “It was said the case was settled by paying huge money. From where did Binoy get the money? If he was helped by rich businessmen, as is being said, what are the favours that have been asked in return from his father and the government. Our party has degenerated into just another bourgeois enterprise,” the leader said.
Golfer's father
But no one is surprised. The rot had already set in. Even the most respected living Marxist, V S Achuthanandan, thought that public interest was secondary to his son's well-being. Despite the seriousness of the charges against V A Arun Kumar, Achuthanandan had never so much as even publicly admonish his son.
Once, when he was told about Arun Kumar's passion for golf, Achuthanandan had expressed pride at his son's flashy lifestyle, the kind a comrade has been asked to strictly keep away from. “He is a young man and he knows how to play the game,” a beaming Achuthanandan told reporters during a post-cabinet briefing in 2008.
The rectification document came two years later, in 2010. “The penetration of alien bourgeois and petty bourgeois values is manifested in a lavish lifestyle, building houses which are far above the minimum needs required, spending large amounts on weddings of children, organising festivities on a lavish scale etc. Increasingly, these are being acquiesced in and no questions are being asked within the party,” it said. The document was meant as a rebuke to Achuthanandan also.
Anthoor's double face
No one seems to have listened. In 2011, the wedding of the son of a leading trade union leader, who was also a CPM MLA, caught nearly half the capital in a traffic jam.
Last year, industries minster E P Jayarajan's son P K Jaison was accused of flattening a hill for an Ayurveda resort; Jaison was one of the directors of Kannur Ayurvedic Medicare Pvt Ltd that was behind the resort. Then, the speed with which the CPM-controlled Anthoor municipality had granted permission for the levelling work would have taken anyone's breath away.
Irony is, the very same municipality had insisted on all kinds of rules and pushed young NRI businessman Sajen Parayil to suicide.
Tale of two chief ministers
Things look beyond redemption but there was a time when the party had kept its leaders on a tight leash. When E K Nayanar was chief minister, his businessman son Krishnakumar had used his closeness to the party to win lucrative deals from the government.
Nayanar had distanced himself from his son but still the then party secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet wrote Nayanar an official letter advising him to be careful about the activities of his close family members. “Nayanar was peeved but he told those close to him that he, in a way, deserved it,” the former central committee member said.
Even the tallest of Marxist leaders, Jyoti Basu, had trouble on this count. There were widespread allegations that his only son, the pipe-smoking suited businessman Subhabrata Basu, was using his father's name to build a business empire. The allegations were not proven, yet Basu distanced himself completely from his son throughout his tenure as chief minister.
Converted untouchables
There were also romantic Marxists, almost Gandhian in their belief that their sons are better left to chance. Serving the people was the only task they were wiling to take upon themselves.
Their families, like Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi's, were born-again pariahs, forced outcasts. “Chadayan Govindan (former CPM state secretary) pulled his son out of Deshabhimani saying that his family would be accused of undue influence,” said N M Pearson, a social commentator and the son of N K Madhavan, a former comrade who was accused in the attack on Edapally police station in 1950.
Chadayan's son went jobless for months, no one dared give a furiously idealistic CPM leader's child a job.
Average of love and sacrifice
“Kodiyeri should realise that the chair he now sits was once occupied by self-sacrificing men like Chadayan,” Pearson said. “Chadayan's is an extreme case. Fathers, even if he is a communist leader, should look after the needs of the children but should balance it with the morality of public life,” he said.
Social critic and former naxalite K Venu, too, called for such a balance. “Both the father and son are separate entities. It would be cruel to burden the son with the father's ideology. But the son, whatever he opts to become, should be aware of the social responsibility the father carries as a political leader and behave accordingly,” he said.
