BJP President Amit Shah's Kerala
Jan Raksha Yatra can't be analyzed just in political terms. Kerala is one of India's most literate, cultured and spiritually elevated states, showcasing a unique synthesis of Hindu-Syrian Christian ethos and a shared value system rarely found elsewhere. This mutuality and interdependence coupled with a respect for each other's' sensitivities was sought to be destroyed by successive Congress-Communist regimes using extreme Islamic and Stalinist elements to capture power. The violence unleashed by CPM goons was directed against CPI and Congress political activists too. But due to the constraints of political profiteering, they chose to underplay it. The RSS and BJP took "red terror" head on and hence, today, the state is witnessing huge support to the
Yatra led by the BJP president. Kerala was waiting some credible alternative and the civil officer who was once sent to the assembly with CPM support, resigned and joined the BJP and is now walking with Amit Shah. This is how the change appears.
It's amazing how some of our great editors found it more important to tweet first thing a couple of months ago on the banning by army canteens of Baba Ramdev's Amla herb product than the ghastly killings of 25 Indian soldiers by Communist terrorists in Chhattisgarh. Another channel, reputed AS very secular and offensively against Hindutva ideology, called me: "Would you please join a discussion on the clean chit given to Sadhvi Pragya in the Malegaon case?" Clearly, for this influential media, anything that can be used against the saffron
parivaar is more important than discussing the lives of our soldiers and the savagery of the adherents of the Communist ideology.
There has not been a single tweet or Facebook post by these worthy media moguls against the brutal acts of violence by Maoists and Naxals who are foot soldiers of the same Communist ideology that puts Marx, Lenin and Mao as its sources of inspiration. The same people, the same comrades, kill RSS workers in Kerala and the same people using various outfits try to stop a programme permitted by the Vice Chancellor of the Pondicherry University to pay tributes to Dr Ambedkar by the ABVP. Like the library-burners of ISIS, Indian communist outfits have become biggest threat to the freedom of expression and tolerance in a rapidly developing and progressing India.
It is a combine of the Communist outfits with Jihadi groups that is actively engaged in the actions that kill our soldiers, burn books, stifle "other voices", use social media to spread hate against the armed forces and eulogise the terror groups as "freedom fighters".
The ideology of the Communists, whether openly involved in acts of violence through Naxals and Maoists or attacking political rivals in Kerala under state protection through CPM's political network, are faces of the same coin Their inspiration comes from the same source of Marxism, and their icons of faith remain same - Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
The govt of India considers these followers of the communist ideology, described as "left wing extremism" a
major threat to the security of the nation. Further it elaborates "the CPI (Maoist), the main LWE (Left Wing Extremism) outfit in India, aims to overthrow the existing democratic state structure with violence as their primary weapon, and mass mobilization and strategic united fronts as complementary components and plans to usher in so called 'New Democratic Revolution' in India."
Hence, on the official website of the Ministry of Home Affairs, there is a separate division to give details about this menace and it says "Between 2010 to 2017 (upto 15.05.2017) around 2,457 civilians and 930 security force personnel have been killed by the Maoists in different parts of India. The majority of the civilians killed are tribals, often branded as 'police informers' before being brutally tortured and killed. In fact, the tribal and the economically underprivileged sections, whose cause the Maoists claim to espouse, have been the biggest victims of the so called
'protracted peoples war' of the CPI (Maoist) against the Indian state." There are many more details that follow. Can we expect that now at least the Home Ministry will rename its website on Left Wing Extremism as Communist Terrorism and include violence by CPM in Kerala also under it?
Media groups who vie with each other to declare India and her people as "rabidly racist" and keep silence on the violent acts against our soldiers from Kashmir to Chhattisgarh show extraordinary enthusiasm when a court gives a judgement on Sadhvi Pragya because it becomes an instrument to divert attention of the people from the ghastly acts of Communist terrorists in Chhattisgarh. The purpose of this "missionary" journalism is to avoid making Communist terrorism a focus point of prime-time discussions and provide a media-shield to the perpetrators of violence against our soldiers.
These 25 shouldn't have died. Those
75 too shouldn't have died. Those 2,000 citizens should have lived happily under our constitution and they shouldn't have died in their free country, in their own villages, killed by their own people, just because they belonged to a different belief and ideology - the belief in development and the ideology of democracy.
Amit Shah's
Jan Raksha Yatra walks miles beyond being a political one. It's a Gandhian weapon to rouse public conscience and courage against violence of de-Indianised elements rejected the world over but still found in India in their last residual terror-holes.
(Tarun Vijay is a BJP leader and former MP from Uttarakhand.)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.