In the Central Hall of Parliament on Friday, it was while speaking of Kerala that Prime Minister Narendra Modi looked the most pumped up.
Modi presented Malayalam actor-turned-politician Suresh Gopi's win from Thrissur Lok Sabha constituency as a fitting tribute to the sacrifices made by "hundreds of karyakartas" in Kerala. Perhaps carried away by the moment, Modi said the atrocities the Kerala 'karyakartas' had to face were worse than in Jammu and Kashmir.
"If in the political life of India there is a place where a group of people was persecuted for holding on to an ideology, I have to say, it is Kerala," Modi told the new MPs. "It was far worse than even Jammu and Kashmir," he added.
If in the political life of India there is a place where a group of people was persecuted for holding on to an ideology, I have to say, it is Kerala.
Narendra Modi
This was not just vague but recklessly misleading. And coming from Modi, who is about to be sworn in as Prime Minister for the third time, this was shocking. Any reference to persecution and Jammu Kashmir would spontaneously generate associations with Kashmiri Pandits. Was the PM hinting that political opponents had subjected Hindu 'karyakartas' in Kerala to a more dreadful genocide than the one suffered by Kashmiri Pandits?
Political violence scorecard
Here are some facts. Between 2000 and 2017, Kerala police records say that 85 CPM workers, 65 RSS or BJP workers, 11 workers each of the Congress and IUML had been killed by political opponents. Though the CPM was involved in all the murders -- either as victim or perpetrator -- records show that it has lost more men than the RSS/BJP.
Unverified but widely accepted figures say that 535 Communist workers were killed since the formation of Kerala in 1956. Other parties had lost 447, of which the BJP's loss was 190.
In other words, contrary to the impression Modi sought to create, the RSS/BJP 'karyakartas' in Kerala are not a vulnerable group at the mercy of the CPM.
Secret meeting in capital
Nonetheless, after Pinarayi Vijayan came to power in 2016, the CPM had shown a rare determination to rein in the politics of vengeance. Two months after he took over, Pinarayi held secret talks with top BJP/RSS leaders in Thiruvananthapuram to end politics of violence in the state. During the talks, he spoke his mind but more importantly, listened with patience the bitter and angry outbursts of the other side.
The secret meeting was known to the world when journalist N P Ullekh wrote about it in his book 'Kannur: Inside India's Bloodiest Revenge Politics'. But when violence abated, the BJP scaled up its propaganda against politics of murder in Kerala.
In early 2017, the RSS organised protests across the country -- in Delhi, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Bhopal -- calling Pinarayi the mastermind of political murders. During one such protest, a top RSS leader based in Madhya Pradesh's Ujjain, Kundan Chandrawat, was so carried away by the anti-Pinarayi bashing that he announced a bounty of Rs 1 crore for Pinarayi's head. However, the RSS booted Chandrawat out of his position as 'prachar pramukh' (publicity head) of Ujjain.
But within two months, the then BJP national president Amit Shah flew down to Thiruvananthapuram and accused Pinarayi of unleashing a reign of terror on BJP and RSS workers. "If the Chief Minister and his party think that they can suppress the growth of BJP with intimidation, they are mistaken," he had then said.
The CPM's terrorisation of BJP workers has been a consistent political theme of the BJP under Modi and Shah.
Politics of martyrdom
In fact, even before a price was attached to Pinarayi's head, Modi himself had come down to Kozhikode in September 2016 and sought to emotionally fire up the Sangh Parivar cadre. "In Kerala, workers of Bharatiya Jan Sangh and BJP have sacrificed their lives. Their martyrdom inspires party workers in the rest of the country. Their sacrifice and sufferings will not go in vain," the PM had said.
The PM's subsequent public meetings in Kerala invariably had a mention of these sacrifices. Therefore, it was no surprise when he spoke of this on June 4 in New Delhi, just after his party won the 2024 elections. "BJP won a seat in Kerala as well. Our party workers in Kerala have made a lot of sacrifices," he said.
He repeated the same on Friday (June 7) as well, while addressing the new NDA MPs. But this time his combative tone was spiked with triumphalism. "In spite of the torture, and even when success seemed too distant, they (BJP karyakartas in Kerala) held on to the last shreds of their will power to scale the peaks of hard work. And now, for the first time, we have our representative from Kerala in Parliament," he said.
Modi made Suresh Gopi's triumph look heroic, the pinnacle reached after battling decades of political oppression.