Both the UDF and LDF members in the Kerala Assembly might stand a corruption charge brought against them but not an assertion, even a vague insinuation, that their party once had a dalliance with the Sangh Parivar. An affair with the BJP is considered the worst form of insult by both the fronts.

Therefore, it was no wonder when the ruling party members sprang to their feet shouting, screaming and banging their desks when Muslim League MLA T V Ibrahim said in the Assembly on Friday that the CPM was in an open alliance with the Sangh Parivar forces during the 1977 elections.

“K G Marar was the candidate of the CPM-led front in Uduma. You know who Marar was? He was the state's Jan Sangh chief,” Ibrahim said. Ibrahim had more to say. “You know who inaugurated the convention of the CPM's Palakkad candidate T Sivadasa Menon? It was none other than L K Advani,” he said. By then all hell had broken loose on the ruling side.

“And you know who translated Advani's speech during the CPM candidate's convention. O Rajagopal,” Ibrahim said. “This means that Pinarayi Vijayan, Marar and Advani were in the same camp in 1977,” Ibrahim added. (In 1977, Pinarayi Vijayan was CPM's Koothuparamba candidate.)

Ibrahim's provocative comments were made during the discussion on the Finance Bill in the Assembly on Friday. The LDF backbenchers were so worked up that deputy speaker V Sasi, who was in the chair, allowed CPM MLA M Swaraj to make a point of order.

“The Kondotty MLA (Ibrahim) has been uttering falsehoods and trying to mislead the House. This is not a place where he can speak all that comes to his mind,” Swaraj shouted over the din. “What is your point,” the opposition heckled him. He did not get to the point but said: “We know who went with whom in 1980.”

The young CPM MLA was perhaps hinting at how Congress (I) and Janata Party, of which Jan Sangh was a member, came together to prop up the C H Muhammad Koya ministry, which did not last for more than two months, after P K Vasudevan resigned as Chief Minister in 1979.

Though he wanted the lie to be removed from the Assembly records, Swaraj did not clarify what the lie was. The opposition members kept asking him to elaborate on 1977.

Soon enough they got the details. C K Nanu of Janata Dal (S) gave a spirited and emotional defence of the Left's alliance with the Jan Sangh during the 1977 elections that came after Emergency was imposed. Nanu was with the Socialist Party then. Stunning the ruling benches, the octogenarian spoke highly of the veteran BJP leader Marar, painting him as a martyr worthy of reverence.

“K G Marar did not contest as a Jan Sangh candidate but as a Janata Party candidate. It was the need of the hour then. The world's largest democracy was under threat and we had to save it,” Nanu said. Jan Sangh had then dissolved and merged with the Janata Party to fight Indira Gandhi.

Janata Party in Kerala then included both socialists and Jan Sangh, the BJP's earlier avatar. At the national level, the CPM was part of an alliance headed by the Janata Party.

Nanu felt that the Muslim League should have actually stood by the Left alliance in 1977. “Except in Kerala, Muslims across the country were with us,” Nanu told Ibrahim. “Even after what happened at Turkman Gate in Delhi you chose to stand with those who imposed the Emergency,” he told the Muslim League members.

(Hundreds who had gathered at Turkman Gate in 1976 to protest against the demolition of their houses by the Indira Gandhi government at the height of Emergency was shot at and brutalised by the police. Twenty civilians had died in the firing.)

Nanu said that it were the sacrifices of people like Marar that saved democracy. “They were the ones who suffered and went to jail. They were the ones who risked their lives to keep democracy alive,” Nanu, a former Congressman-turned-socialist, said. “You and I can speak so freely because people like Marar were willing to suffer,” he said.