Thiruvananthapuram: The Pinarayi Vijayan-Rajeev Chandrasekhar war of words triggered by the Kalamassery bomb blasts on October 29 seems to have suddenly acquired national significance, especially on the eve of the five crucial state Assembly elections.
While responding to the Kerala government’s decision to slap criminal charges against him for attempting to incite communal hatred, the union minister has expanded the sweep of his appeasement charge against Pinarayi to include Rahul Gandhi, too.
In a tweet put out just minutes after charges were filed against him under the Indian Penal Code and Kerala Police Act, Chandrasekhar said: "So the two INDI alliance partners @RahulGandhi and @PinarayiVijayan have jointly filed a "case" against me. Two of biggest appeasers in Indian politics who shamelessly appease poisonous radical violent organizations like SDPI, PFI and Hamas, whose politics have caused radicalization over decades from J&K to Punjab to Kerala and caused many innocent lives and security forces lives to be lost - trying to threaten me with a case for exposing their appeasement of Hamas."
By Rahul Gandhi, Chandrasekhar meant the Congress party. It was on the basis of a complaint filed by the Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) Digital Media Cell that the Kerala Police clamped criminal charges on Chandrasekhar.
On October 30, the convenor of the KPCC Digital Media Cell, Sarin P, shot off a letter to the Kerala DGP saying that the minister for electronics and information technology made "factually incorrect and politically motivated statements with the intention of promoting communal hatred and disharmony among different religions in Kerala".
"Linking this incident to the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Hamas group was done with the intention of targeting one particular community and promoting enmity towards them in the society," the letter said and added: "What he has done is legally wrong and a violation of his constitutional duties as a minister."
Pinarayi, too, had a similar lament. On October 29, the day of the blast, the Chief Minister said Chandrasekhar’s comment (suggesting a link between the blast and a Jamaat-e-Islami event in Malappuram a day before the blast) was "highly prejudiced”. He said the comment was made "with a clear intention to target a particular community”.
This similarity in political line, especially the concern for the Muslim community, has now allowed Chandrasekhar to brand two major INDIA parties, the Congress and the CPM, as the worst practitioners of appeasement politics. The opposition, especially the Congress, dreads the appeaser tag. Previous history has shown that such a tag can cause it to suffer stupendous losses in North India.
Even on the day of the blast, even while attacking Pinarayi personally, Chandrasekhar had unleashed a joint attack on the Congress and CPM and also the new opposition alliance INDIA (Indian Nationalist Democratic Inclusive Alliance) in the name of appeasement.
His tweet: "Price of appeasement politics of Cong and CPM will always be borne by innocents of all communities - That is what history has taught us. Brazen appeasement politics - shameless even by Cong/CPM/UPA/INDIA alliance standards to invite Terrorist Hamas to spread hate & call for "Jihad" in Kerala. This is height of irresponsible madness politics. Enough!"
On the sidelines of the larger political battle is the personal squabble between the Chief Minister and the union minister. Pinarayi had called the union minister “communal” and “obnoxiously venomous” and then made his police slap criminal charges on him. Chandrasekhar, in turn, had called Pinarayi “discredited”, a votary of “shameless appeasement politics” and “inept”.
