11-01-2007, 09:26 PM
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Charity begins at party office</b>
Pioneer.com
Balbir K Punj
In Communist-ruled West Bengal, people have risen in revolt against the continuing scandal of fair price shops and food riots have broken out<b>. The report on the riots showed how the entire ration shop network is dominated by CPI(M)'s apparatchiks.</b> Now developments in the other major Left-Front ruled State, <b>Kerala, have exposed the Communist attempt to take charge of all vital installations and break down the institutions that could challenge their drive towards supremacy. The battlelines have now been moved further -- to confront religious institutions as well</b>.
The Kerala unit of the CPI(M) has moved against the powerful Christian Church too by appealing to the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict on the private self-financing professional colleges issue. The din of confrontation with the Church recently reached a crescendo with the Church claiming that a dying, longstanding Communist leader and MLA,<b> Mathai Chako, was given the last rites according to Christian practices. The Marxists contested this claim of the Church and said that a Communist cannot revert to religion</b>.
The controversy led Marxist leader Pinarayi Vijayan to showering bitter words on the Church, accusing its leaders of lying. Earlier, the Church had warned the Marxists that it would resort to another liberation struggle, as it did in 1957, if the party persisted in getting control over the private professional colleges many of which are owned by Christian institutions.
The incident reminds one of another famous Communist -- Joseph Mundassery. A top leader of the party and a former professor, Mundassery was Education Minister in the first Communist Government of Kerala in the late 1950s. He was instrumental in drafting the education law to exercise Government control over the selection, posting and transfer of teachers in the private schools of Kerala, two-third of which were under the Church. The promulgation of this law led to the Church, the Muslim League, and the Nair and Ezhava communities among the Hindus banding together under Mannath Padmanabhan and creating a situation that forced the Centre to dismiss the Communist-ruled State Government.
Several years after the above events, Professor Mundassery lay dying. A priest was called to offer the last unction. The Marxists then raised a controversy over the claim that the relatives of the professor had manoeuvred the intrusion of religion and that he would not have agreed to the religious rites voluntarily.<b> The fact, however, is that the atheistic Communists are losing out to the theistic institutions among all religions and this is a cause for concern to the comrades. </b>The recent row over the last rites of a dying Communist MLA is only one such case in point.
Critics of the CPI(M) have recalled how<b> even the wife of the topmost Communist leader and former Chief Minister EMS Namboodiripad insisted on religious rites when he died and that she herself has been observing the religious rites as a widow.</b> Temples, churches and mosques constitute a strong religious force in the State with most of the educational institutions controlled by them. The Communists have not hesitated to look for opportunities to mollify them when needed. As recently as in the last Assembly election, the Communists' thumping victory owed to their making up with the orthodox elements in the Church and the Muslim masses.
The events in the prestigious Periyaram Cooperative Medical College Hospital have further exposed the Communist drive to dominate Kerala's politics by taking charge of the critical economic and cultural sinews of the State. The Kerala High Court observed mid-October that there was prima facie evidence that the election to the society that controls the medical college was manipulated and it refused to vacate the stay on them it had issued earlier.
The election held on September 23 was marked with enrolment of party workers as members, false voting and large-scale impersonation. So far that society was under Mr MV Raghavan, a Communist rebel who is with the present day Opposition UDF and was a Minister in the UDF Government that lost the election last year. As a rebel from their ranks, Mr Raghavan has been a CPI(M) target for long, with the Marxists attacking every institution that he had been instrumental in setting up in the North Malabar area of Kerala. The Periyaram medical college is one such institution.
<b>North Malabar, especially the area in and around Kannur, has been at the vortex of the Marxists' violence perpetrated on many institutions that could challenge their supremacy. The RSS has been at the receiving end - many swayamsevaks have been killed in broad daylight.</b>
<b>Marxists have made common cause with the Muslim extremists also in a bid to oust the Muslim League from its dominant position in that community.</b> Official investigations into a number of riots in the area have exposed these Marxist-extremist machinations. Workers of the Congress and even those of the CPI have been attacked in different instances in the Malabar area.
In fact the Kerala Government and the CPI(M) are in the docks over several deals. The most notorious is the party leaders' accepting huge sums from impugned businessmen. The media in Kerala has unearthed how the party organ Desabhimani had pocketed Rs 2 crore from one such businessman and another such donation from a lottery dealer who is also under investigation.
While the focus of these events has been on the Marxist party and its chief, Mr Vijayan, the Chief Minister, Mr VS Achuthanandan, too has come under the cloud as the media has provided details of a deal a confidant of his made with a Dubai-based fugitive from Kerala. In addition, the LDF Government itself had to cope up with a land scandal involving one of its Ministers -- from the allied Kerala Congress (PJ Joseph group) -- who subsequently had to quit.
Stung by these and other exposures within a short time after its return to power, the Marxists are employing the familiar counter-weapon of diversionary tactics.<b> Mr Vijayan and his party workers are attacking the media as agents of the CIA out to destroy the Marxists.</b> However, the media's agitation against such attacks forced the Marxists to desist from further attacks on it. Moreover, prominent newspaper<b> Mathrubhoomi, which exposed two of the largest corruption deals, is owned by a JD(S) State chairman, Mr Virendra Kumar. The JD(S) is part of the ruling LDF in Kerala</b>
Another diversionary tactic is the Chief Minister's much publicised demolition drive against encroachers on the Government land in the plantation town of Munnar. Here too, the LDF Government was suspected of wrongdoing when it sought to exempt party offices from such demolition even when they were found to have encroached on Government land: The CPI(M) was learnt to have been a beneficiary of this exemption. After all, charity begins at home.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Pioneer.com
Balbir K Punj
In Communist-ruled West Bengal, people have risen in revolt against the continuing scandal of fair price shops and food riots have broken out<b>. The report on the riots showed how the entire ration shop network is dominated by CPI(M)'s apparatchiks.</b> Now developments in the other major Left-Front ruled State, <b>Kerala, have exposed the Communist attempt to take charge of all vital installations and break down the institutions that could challenge their drive towards supremacy. The battlelines have now been moved further -- to confront religious institutions as well</b>.
The Kerala unit of the CPI(M) has moved against the powerful Christian Church too by appealing to the Supreme Court against the High Court verdict on the private self-financing professional colleges issue. The din of confrontation with the Church recently reached a crescendo with the Church claiming that a dying, longstanding Communist leader and MLA,<b> Mathai Chako, was given the last rites according to Christian practices. The Marxists contested this claim of the Church and said that a Communist cannot revert to religion</b>.
The controversy led Marxist leader Pinarayi Vijayan to showering bitter words on the Church, accusing its leaders of lying. Earlier, the Church had warned the Marxists that it would resort to another liberation struggle, as it did in 1957, if the party persisted in getting control over the private professional colleges many of which are owned by Christian institutions.
The incident reminds one of another famous Communist -- Joseph Mundassery. A top leader of the party and a former professor, Mundassery was Education Minister in the first Communist Government of Kerala in the late 1950s. He was instrumental in drafting the education law to exercise Government control over the selection, posting and transfer of teachers in the private schools of Kerala, two-third of which were under the Church. The promulgation of this law led to the Church, the Muslim League, and the Nair and Ezhava communities among the Hindus banding together under Mannath Padmanabhan and creating a situation that forced the Centre to dismiss the Communist-ruled State Government.
Several years after the above events, Professor Mundassery lay dying. A priest was called to offer the last unction. The Marxists then raised a controversy over the claim that the relatives of the professor had manoeuvred the intrusion of religion and that he would not have agreed to the religious rites voluntarily.<b> The fact, however, is that the atheistic Communists are losing out to the theistic institutions among all religions and this is a cause for concern to the comrades. </b>The recent row over the last rites of a dying Communist MLA is only one such case in point.
Critics of the CPI(M) have recalled how<b> even the wife of the topmost Communist leader and former Chief Minister EMS Namboodiripad insisted on religious rites when he died and that she herself has been observing the religious rites as a widow.</b> Temples, churches and mosques constitute a strong religious force in the State with most of the educational institutions controlled by them. The Communists have not hesitated to look for opportunities to mollify them when needed. As recently as in the last Assembly election, the Communists' thumping victory owed to their making up with the orthodox elements in the Church and the Muslim masses.
The events in the prestigious Periyaram Cooperative Medical College Hospital have further exposed the Communist drive to dominate Kerala's politics by taking charge of the critical economic and cultural sinews of the State. The Kerala High Court observed mid-October that there was prima facie evidence that the election to the society that controls the medical college was manipulated and it refused to vacate the stay on them it had issued earlier.
The election held on September 23 was marked with enrolment of party workers as members, false voting and large-scale impersonation. So far that society was under Mr MV Raghavan, a Communist rebel who is with the present day Opposition UDF and was a Minister in the UDF Government that lost the election last year. As a rebel from their ranks, Mr Raghavan has been a CPI(M) target for long, with the Marxists attacking every institution that he had been instrumental in setting up in the North Malabar area of Kerala. The Periyaram medical college is one such institution.
<b>North Malabar, especially the area in and around Kannur, has been at the vortex of the Marxists' violence perpetrated on many institutions that could challenge their supremacy. The RSS has been at the receiving end - many swayamsevaks have been killed in broad daylight.</b>
<b>Marxists have made common cause with the Muslim extremists also in a bid to oust the Muslim League from its dominant position in that community.</b> Official investigations into a number of riots in the area have exposed these Marxist-extremist machinations. Workers of the Congress and even those of the CPI have been attacked in different instances in the Malabar area.
In fact the Kerala Government and the CPI(M) are in the docks over several deals. The most notorious is the party leaders' accepting huge sums from impugned businessmen. The media in Kerala has unearthed how the party organ Desabhimani had pocketed Rs 2 crore from one such businessman and another such donation from a lottery dealer who is also under investigation.
While the focus of these events has been on the Marxist party and its chief, Mr Vijayan, the Chief Minister, Mr VS Achuthanandan, too has come under the cloud as the media has provided details of a deal a confidant of his made with a Dubai-based fugitive from Kerala. In addition, the LDF Government itself had to cope up with a land scandal involving one of its Ministers -- from the allied Kerala Congress (PJ Joseph group) -- who subsequently had to quit.
Stung by these and other exposures within a short time after its return to power, the Marxists are employing the familiar counter-weapon of diversionary tactics.<b> Mr Vijayan and his party workers are attacking the media as agents of the CIA out to destroy the Marxists.</b> However, the media's agitation against such attacks forced the Marxists to desist from further attacks on it. Moreover, prominent newspaper<b> Mathrubhoomi, which exposed two of the largest corruption deals, is owned by a JD(S) State chairman, Mr Virendra Kumar. The JD(S) is part of the ruling LDF in Kerala</b>
Another diversionary tactic is the Chief Minister's much publicised demolition drive against encroachers on the Government land in the plantation town of Munnar. Here too, the LDF Government was suspected of wrongdoing when it sought to exempt party offices from such demolition even when they were found to have encroached on Government land: The CPI(M) was learnt to have been a beneficiary of this exemption. After all, charity begins at home.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->