Violence is violence, whether it’s brutal murder of Muslim man or RSS worker

Arun Jaitley on Sunday did a great disservice to the nation by taking a partisan view on political killings in Kerala.

New Delhi, August 7: Is violence left, right or centre? A murder is a murder. When blood oozes out of a slain person's veins, religion, caste, gender and nationality take a back seat. And so does political affiliations. Or maybe it doesn't.

Death, unlike life, does not believe in any trapping like an Aadhaar card, a passport or a caste certificate. A brutal death always evokes fear, horror, sympathy and mourning among the livings.

In the current chaotic atmosphere in the country, where violence has almost become regular and to a great extent acceptable, different massacres get different responses from different political parties.

Say if it's the butchery of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker in Kerala, the Congress, the Left and other opposition parties maintain a deafening silence over it. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) at the Centre maintains a similar silence or brushes aside cases of mob lynching of Muslim men as an "aberration".

The same Congress and Left join hands and create ruckus in Parliament to condemn mob lynchings of Muslim men witnessed across the country in the name of cow protection in the recent times. The BJP, on its part, wakes up from its "slumber" when a man belonging to its ideological wing, the RSS, is stabbed to death multiple-times allegedly by "goons" belonging to the ruling dispensation in Kerala.

On Sunday, when very "Delhi-centric" Arun Jaitley went on a trip to Kerala to meet the family of slain RSS worker Rajesh Edavakode, who was allegedly hacked to death by Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) workers on July 29, one could not stop but wonder why similar "urgency and anger" was not displayed by the finance-cum-defence minister of the country when mob killed Muslim men like Mohammad Akhlaq and Pehlu Khan for allegedly storing beef and smuggling cow.

Condemning Rajesh's death, a visibly angry Jaitley said, "The kinds of wounds inflicted on Rajesh would have embarrassed even terrorists."

The senior-most minister in the Narendra Modi regime blamed the ruling CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front (LDF) regime in Kerala for the killings of RSS workers. However, he did not say a word about the assassinations of CPI-M cadres, neither did he cared to visit the house of a murdered left party worker.

If figures are to be believed in the last 17 years, political killings in Kerala took lives of equal numbers of the RSS-BJP workers and the left cadres.

According to an exclusive report by NDTV, as per the state police department record, between 2000 and 2017, 85 CPI-M workers, 65 RSS/BJP workers and 11 persons from the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) have been killed in Kerala.

The police called all these murders result of political rivalry between various parties. The investigations clearly found involvement of either the RSS/BJP or the CPI-M workers in all of these killings.

Over the years, Kannur district had the dubious distinction of being the hub of political killings in the southern state. However, in recent past violence has reached the capital city of Thiruvananthapuram.

NDTV in the same report cited the figures of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) pertaining to political killings in the state. As per the NCRB, since 1991, 45 CPI-M workers and 44 RSS/BJP workers have been killed allegedly by political rivals in Kannur.

Jaitley, and his party, the BJP, which has its government in the Centre and in 18 states of the country, should stay away from taking a partisan view of violence. By having a one-sided view of savagery, senior BJP leaders like Jaitley and Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi (who advised the Opposition to visit other countries to see the plight of minorities) are not only doing a disservice to the country, but are also harming the reputation of the Prime Minister who insists on Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas (together with all, development for all).

"It is sad that every time the LDF is in power, incidents of violence increase. You have political opponents being killed," Jaitley said, while addressing a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram.

When the Congress and other anti-BJP parties accuse the Modi regime of giving tactical support to the right wing groups, accused of murdering and beating Muslims and Dalits, Jaitley and other leaders of the saffron party warn them of not "politicising" mob lynchings.

Late last month, during a debate on mob lynchings in the Rajya Sabha, Jaitley slammed the Opposition for politicising the issue of mob lynching and said "violence can never be a partisan issue and oppression in the name of cow won't be tolerated."

On Sunday, in Kerala, the union minister conveniently forgetting his own caution issued against the Opposition a few days ago, ended up committing the same blunder of "politicising" the killings in the state.

Kerala, considered to be the bastion of the communists, has been proving a tough electoral battlefield for the BJP with just one MLA in the current state assembly. Kerala is also the state where the RSS has the highest number of its sakhas (branches) in the country.

However, still the BJP is finding it hard to win the votes of the Keralites. Thus, Jaitley's visit to the state when political killings have shaken the ruling party is clearly to win sympathy among the masses by highlighting "murderous streak" of left cadres.

Jaitley said, "Visited the family of our deceased karyakarta Rajesh, who was slaughtered in the most barbaric manner. This kind of violence will neither suppress ideology in Kerala nor it will be able to scare our workers. It will only increase their determination to work harder against those who are perpetuating this operation."

"He belonged to the weaker section of society. Rajesh belonged to a poor family and now his family has no means of a livelihood. He was stabbed mercilessly and there were 70-80 wounds inflicted on his body, even enemies would not be as brutal as those involved in the murder. In the past few months party officers are being attacked, our workers are being attacked and their houses are being set ablaze," Jaitley added.

All Jaitley did in Kerala was spoke like a karyakarta (worker) of the BJP. He should not forget that he is holding two top political berths (defence and finance portfolios). As a union minister he is responsible for the safety of all countrymen, not just that of people belonging to his party or affiliated parties.

Those who still believe that only one kind of killings should be condemned and others ignored, read these lines from the evocative poem--It is murder--by contemporary poet, Sylvia Chidi.

When you take away a life/With the aid of a knife/It is murder/While you extinguish the living with a gun/Without being able to recreate what was born/It is murder/If you feed someone dead tablets/Later have second acrimonious regrets/It is murder/You are taking away a life/It is clinging on to survive/Need I say anymore further/It is murder.

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