Party Censor

Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and Prof M N Vijayan, the fallen CPIM ideologue and former editor of the party organ Desabhimani...

Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and Prof M N Vijayan, the fallen CPIM ideologue and former editor of the party organ Desabhimani, may have little in common. But when a bunch of CPIM comrades conducted a midnight raid on a printing press in Kollam last night to make sure that no issue of Padom, the extreme Left theoretical magazine that Vijayan edits gets to see light, it had to do with Roy8217;s God of Small Things.

The magazine8217;s cover story is an elaborate take on M A Baby, Central Committee member and a top acolyte of state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, heading the supposed liberal rump of the party. 8216;Is Baby a Communist?8217;, goes its headline. The article says Baby had justified Arundhati8217;s Booker-winning work 8212; which has a character aping CPIM8217;s late demigod EMS Nambuthiripad shown as making money from converting his joint family home into a tourist resort. Therefore, it insists, Baby has no right to seek votes in the name of EMS.

Baby is the CPIM candidate in Kundara, nearby, and the magazine was said to be for distribution among Left voters there. The comrade raiders did manage to scare away the press workers and take away all the printed copies kept for distribution. But soon after, someone took a copy of the magazine to a local photocopy shop and ordered for 2,000 prints. Midway through that, word reached the comrades and another wave of Red raiders converged, ransacking

the shop and seizing all photocopies.

This is not the first time that the CPIM comrades are playing the censor. A few weeks ago, they ransacked the office of Crime, a local magazine not particularly known for only above the belt writings, burnt its copies and destroyed its office.

The provocation was that its special issue carried a series of stories accusing Pinarayi Vijayan and his top liberal lieutenants of everything from corruption to moral turpitude.

If such search and destroy raids are the preferred means to stamp out such writings, the comrades have a far more effective system in place in many of their north Kerala 8216;party villages8217; 8212; villages that are controlled entirely by the party. Some of these villages are still out of bounds for newspapers other than the party-prescribed Desabhimani, though some others, like Kayyur, now allow in a select few.