Northern Kerala seems to have fallen into a never-ending spiral of political violence. At least 15 BJP workers have been killed since the present ministry took office. The toll in the CPI(M) is yet to be totted up, but there must have been corresponding reprisals. Every killing is countered by another and inevitably, they are followed by statewide bandhs. The murder of two BJP leaders at Nadapuram last week brought on the latest bandh call. No doubt, in the weeks ahead, the Right will find a couple of victims of its own, just to keep the tally evenly balanced, and the next round of killings will be followed by a CPI(M) bandh. The never-ending game helps neither the economy nor the image of the state.

This time round, the murders have been marked by an unnerving level of brutality. The victims were dragged out of their beds and butchered before their families. The nation has grown inured to this sort of inhumanity, of course. The skirmishing between the organised armies of the far Left and the landowners that has been going on for more than a decade in Bihar has featured many incidents that are far more revolting. In West Bengal, the traditional hostility between the CPI(M) and the Congress has produced its own catalogue of gory tales. But this is certainly not expected in Kerala, where the game of politics has supposedly been played with the head, not with the heart and sinews.

This is a state with an enviable track record in education and empowerment, the two factors that, it is usually assumed, are most crucial to the development of a mature society. Here, people understand their ideology and articles of faith have always been greater motivators than class issues or a Darwinian competition for resources, which spark off most of the political violence in the north. The Keralites should be the last people to resort to violence to further their political aims.

But ironically it is that very education, and that commitment to ideology, that is responsible for the killings. The RSS was a marginal presence in north Kerala until about 15 years ago. Certainly, there was a good sprinkling of activists, the Left was too strong for them to proselytise freely. In fact, it was rare to see a saffron flag in the districts. All that changed when CPI(M) cadres began to defect to the Right. There, in all probability, lies the genesis of the anger. It is difficult for the committed cadres who stayed behind to stomach the tergiversation of their former fellow travellers.

In Kerala, political anger became personalised, and every dagger had a turncoat's name written on it. The bad blood is understandable, but it is time for both sides to put the past behind them. For good or bad, the days of ideology-driven politics are over. The public's attention span is decreasing, and modern politics is about taking commonsense stands on discrete issues, without attempting to force them into the straitjacket of ideology. Whether a fellow traveller has strayed from the path is no longer an issue with the electorate, and the political cadres of Kerala ought to get real and start addressing real issues.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.