Intolerance Of The Left: A Brief Laundry List

Among others, CPM leaders Mohammad Salim and Sitaram Yechury have recently spoke of  the’Intolerant BJP’ in the Parliament.  Yet, the documented reality is the fact that the Left–including his own party–is the most intolerant of all political groups in the country. Here are a few samples.

1. Communists had supported the Partition of India in 1947, China in the 1962 war, opposed India’s nuclear tests in 1998 while supporting China’s nuclear tests in 1964 and calling Netaji as ‘Tojo’s Dog’ apart from drawing a cartoon of a donkey with Netaji’s face.

2. On 12 May 2006, a Left MP belonging to the Forward Bloc (from Purulia in West Bengal) was  convicted of a charge as serious as rape in a case of 1982.

3. On 27 August 2003, five CPM workers were awarded the death sentence for killing the BJP leader, Master Jayakrishnan in front of school kids who he was teaching on 1 Dec 1999. The traumatized children had to be counselled later.

This was upheld by the Kerala High Court on 26 July 2005. After this order of the High Court, the CPI (M), which gives long lectures to the BJP and RSS on honouring court verdicts, openly burnt the effigy of the judge throughout the state with some workers even threatening to kill him.

But the Supreme Court acquitted four out of the five in December 2006 in a bench comprising of Justice Markandey Katju and reduced the death penalty of the fifth to life imprisonment who was soon released by the Left Government in Kerala. But in December 2012 the Kerala Police re-opened the case, and in July 2013 the CBI said that it will probe laxity in earlier investigations’ in this case.

4. On 7 May 2008 the Times of India reported that a CPI (M) workers’ mob assaulted and stripped a 28-year old woman Nandigram as she refused to join the party. The doctor attending her at Nandigram Hospital confirmed there was sexual assault.

5. On 2 March 2002 the Times of India reported that CPI (M) workers hacked to death two BJP members who had switched to the BJP from the CPI (M) in Kerala.

6. One of India’s most wanted terrorist Yasin Bhatkal was actually arrested by the West Bengal Police in 2008 but due to poor prosecution from the CPI (M) he got bail and went scot-free, a reflection of perhaps, its pro-terrorist policy.

7. In November 2010 as many as 44 cadres of the CPI (M) including party office bearers were convicted for the brutal killings of 11 landless farmers by the CPI (M) workers in July 2000.

8. The CPI (M) leader of Kerala, M M Mani openly bragged in a public meeting as to how the CPI (M) brutally killed its political opponents in Kerala. The CPI (M) removed Mani from his position after this in June 2012 but then reinstated him to same post on 25 October 2013.

9. On 30 November 2010, an RSS worker was killed by CPM cadres.

10. On 27 April 2009, an RSS man was stabbed to death near Kannur by CPI (M) cadres.

11. On 28 May 2010, in Kannur district two RSS men were killed in Kerala again by CPI (M) cadres.

12. On 1 December 2013 in Kannur district, a BJP worker was hacked to death and two others were injured by CPI (M) workers.

13. CPI (M) Politburo member and West Bengal former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee admitted to the “grave wrongs committed by some of our party men” i.e. CPI (M) in areas like Netai by eliminating their political opponents. Nine people were killed on 7 January 2011 when alleged CPI (M) mercenaries attacked villagers at Netai a small village in West Midnapore district. While several of the attackers were arrested, some others were still at large.

The former Chief Minister addressing a rally at Midnapore said the January 2011 mass killing at Netai was a “grave wrong committed by some of our partymen, many of whom had since fled the area” condemning criminalisation of politics.”

14. The investigation into the murder of rebel CPM leader T P Chandrashekharan, which caused great embarrassment to the CPM and for which CPM leaders were convicted, led to more alarming disclosures.  Accused in Chandrashekharan’s murder, T.K. Rajeesh could be nabbed only after his girlfriend Rubina, who worked at a Kolkata bar, gave his mobile number to a visiting Mumbai police team that traced the twenty-something girl with Kolkata police’s help, sources said.

Rajeesh had allegedly confessed to being part of the seven-member team that murdered Chandrasekharan and said the killers had been acting at the behest of some Kerala CPM leaders. The police said he had also admitted to a direct role in the murder of four BJP-RSS activists in the past, including the daylight assassination of K.T. Jayakrishnan, state vice-president of BJP youth wing Yuva Morcha.

15. The trial court convicted 12 CPM members, including 3 top leaders, for the murder of CPM rebel leader T P Chandrashekaran.

16. Karayi Sanveejan, an accused in the murder of BJYM State Vice President Master Jayakrishnan died in August 2003. The mother of Karayi Sajeevan, named as seventh accused in the case pertaining to the brutal murder of Yuva Morcha’s Kerala vice-president KT Jayakrishnan in Kannur in 1999, has alleged that the CPI (M) was behind her son’s death.

Sanjeevan was found dead on the night of August 11, 2003 just 15 days before a court in Thalassery sentenced five of the accused to death. “He had told me he was going to tell the court the whole truth but he had not divulged it to us. That he might spill the beans could have scared the CPI (M) and this could have led to his death,” his mother Kamala said.

17. Former CPM MP AP Abdullakutty alleged that Kerala CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had asked the party leaders to follow the “Bengal line” of killing political enemies without shedding a drop of blood. He alleged that Vijayan explained that this “model” involved kidnapping and burying alive political enemies with a sack of salt on them in deep ditches.

Abdullakutty writes that Vijayan said this in a party meeting held at Azhikodan memorial party office in Kannur on March 5, 2008 ahead of a peace meeting convened by the district collector following violence in Kannur. Kutty says the meeting was attended by CPM MPs P. Karunakaran, P. Sathidevi and CPI (M) MLAs from Kannur other than him.

He further goes on to say that the discussion on eliminating enemies came up when Sathidevi complained to Vijayan that they were worried about BJP’s protest in Parliament showing pictures of barbarous killings by CPM in Kannur. “Pinarayi Vijayan said that if we adopt the Bengal model there won’t be any trace of the murder,” writes Abdullakutty.

“I was shocked to hear such a comment from the state secretary. Later, when we were at Parliament, I enquired about this to West Bengal MP Anil Basu. Basu told me that what Pinarayi told was right. He said that Kerala line of killing is barbaric and in Bengal they don’t even shed a drop of blood and bury the enemies alive. He said that the outside world won’t even see a piece of bone,” says Abdullakutty.  He says that he met Anil Basu along with P. Suresh Kurup, then CPM MP and present MLA of Ettumanoor.

18. CPM leader Comrade Biman Basu was caught on camera asking CPM cadres to attack Election Commission people in protest against a decision which CPM did not like. Left Front chairman Biman Basu called upon the party cadres to ‘attack’ the Central observers and ‘teach’ them a lesson for ‘siding with the Trinamool Congress and the BJP in the campaigning against the CPI (M).’

Basu, who was also a member of the CPI (M) Politburo, in a public statement on 8 May 2004 incited the party workers and supporters against some Central observers. Some Central observers alleged to the CEC that their lives were in danger following threat by some CPI (M) workers who were opposing them to act impartially for ensuring a free and fair poll in West Bengal.

They wanted adequate protection during their stay in the state so that they could work freely and independently. These observers also registered a formal complaint with the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Mr Basudev Bandopadhyya, in this connection. Reacting to Mr Basu’s threat to the Central observers, the TMC leader, Mamata Banerjee, demanded that Mr Basu would be arrested forthwith for intimidating the Central election observers.

BJP president, Mr Tathagata Roy, alleged that Mr Basu had gone out of the way in inciting the party cadres against the observers since they were now finding it difficult to rig the poll in their traditional methods. Mr Roy demanded police action against Mr Basu. 

The cases of CPI (M) killing RSS and BJP men in Kerala are so many that an entire encyclopaedia can be written on it. More than 800 RSS cadres were killed in Kerala alone from 1994 to 2002.

Indeed, the aforementioned are just a small tip of the proverbial iceberg of Leftist violence in India.Mr. Sitaram Yechury would do well to recall this sordid record.