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Journalism of Courage
There is no place in a democracy for the politics of bloodletting that a Kerala CPM leader boasts of
CPM district secretary in Idukki M.M. Manis verbal vitriol was chilling for the nonchalance with which he ticked off a list of local Congress leaders who,he said,his party murdered in cold blood in the 1980s,and worse,for the possibility that this bluster could contain grains of truth. In Kerala,blood has flowed in political encounters,and revenge politics takes the fatal form of street battles and crude bomb blasts,but never has a politician made such a public declaration of the modus operandi of elimination: The first person in the list was shot dead. The second was stabbed to death. And the third was beaten to death.
It has been less than two months after the CPMs 20th party congress in Kerala where Karat said the party should bend all its resources and energies to go beyond its traditional strongholds. But in Kerala itself,where the party was in better shape,having lost the assembly elections by a wafer-thin margin,it is in a bind. The district which hosted the congress,Kozhikode,is where Chandrasekharan was killed. It is now the ground zero of disillusionment with the CPM. The party has more than a Pinarayi Vijayan-V.S. Achuthanandan spat to worry about. Or even the forthcoming Neyattinkara by-election,crucial as it is. It has to stanch the bloodshed and show cleaner hands.
