Justice V. R. Krishna Iyer has been a champion of larger causes. If the ``peace initiative'' undertaken by him recently was only provincial in scope, it was not without reason. The campaign aimed at peace not between India and Pakistan or in Sri Lanka (an area of Iyer's special interest) but in his own home state and, more particularly, in a single district. The provocation was the cycle of political violence between the CPI(M) and the Sangh Parivar that a suffering Kannur could not apparently break out of.The pre-democratic mode of politics in a state justly proud of its record of social progress on several counts was indeed a contradiction that eminently warranted such enlightened concern. The initiative, alas, could not have been rebuffed more crudely. Within a day of the political compact claimed to have been signed at Kochi, three more gory murders by the warring groups have carried Kannur's bloody trail further. There is good reason to fear that the alleged killing of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morchaleader K. T. Jayakrishnan, countered with the hacking of a Marxist cadre and leading to incidents elsewhere as well, may not mark the end of the grisly tale that began three months ago with a near-murderous assault on CPI(M) state committee member P. Jayarajan. The BJP-called `hartal' on Thursday, billed as a prelude to a statewide anti-Left Democratic Front `struggle' from December 10, the Human Rights Day, and the hardening stance of the state rulers against the saffron opposition would together seem to threaten only continued street battles.Both sides have called each other ``fascist'', with the BJP and the RSS keen to return in Kerala the compliment generally reserved for them at the national level, as illustrated by Venkaiah Naidu's eager intervention in the matter. What should concern the people of the state, with the tradition of the highest voter turnout in the country, is the way democratic discourse is being derailed. They must notice that this is being done by political camps that claim tobelieve in ideological purity. `Hindutva' and cultural nationalism cannot be shown by the sophistry of any sangh high priest to be promoted by hackings and killings. Nor can the Marxist crimes be claimed to advance class struggle of any concept that does not equate it with a series of blood feuds. Neither side, in other words, is winning popular support of the kind they profess to seek by making its point with muscle power alone.The Iyer initiative failed not only because the Kochi `memorandum of understanding' was not signed by the BJP, the RSS, and their new-found state-level ally, the Congress. Nor because, in addition, the LDF government has been content to remain an onlooker in Kannur - and even now pretends that the agreement among the CPI(M), the CPI and the Indian Union Muslim League allows it abdicate its official responsibility in the matter. No initiative of this kind can succeed, in fact, unless and until the parties and forces involved see their own political interest in putting an end to thepolitics of murder. Practitioners of democratic politics have as vital a stake as the common people in combating those out to make violence a way of political life.
