When will the political gangwars end in Kerala?
Owing to an altercation between students in a college in Kerala’s Kochi, a student activist of SFI has been stabbed to death. Kerala has a reputation of being the most mature state as far as political awareness among people is concerned. And even with that, contradiction would be, Kerala is also known for its gangwars. As a result of this, a life of a student would who have contributed to the future of the society is lost. No matter who has carried out this heinous act, it is highly condemnable. This has added another episode to the bloody history of Kerala.
And one has to be sure that this incident is not the end of it and is bound to have its undesirable repercussions, with may be another life being lost. Who knows! But this has been the way things have progressed in Kerala since ages. Most of Kerala’s history is soaked in blood. Swami Vivekananda, having witnessed casteism at its peak in Kerala, had called it an ‘asylum of lunatics’. One can see different stages of this from the Mappila uprising to Kayyur farmers agitation, the blood has flown much. The state fought both the British and the casteism (against upper castes) that had gripped its veins from within. Blood flowed like river.
Even the British didn’t exploit lower castes in Kerala like the upper caste Brahmins such as Nambooridis did. Violence was a part of any rebel in Kerala, so much so that women had to protest violently and even lose life to be able to cover the upper part of their bodies.
Narayana Guru had to build a separate temple for Ezhava community. Islam also found a stronghold in Kerala thanks to Malik Dinar. Three major ideologies changes Kerala’s topography. One was Narayana Guru’s, the other was of communism. And the exploited men and women of Kerala found respite in Islam too. Hence Islam spread rapidly in the state. All these ideologies have a strong role in the resistance people showed to the Zamindars of the state. Communism hijacked the agenda set by Narayana Guru in terms of people struggle.
However, even young muslim men have identified themselves with communism. So the inroads are kind of normal now. The islam has turned into a political force to reckon with, owing to social initiatives by the community members.
With this, casteists suffered a set back. Today, brahminical ideology has entered Kerala in a different form, that it is all set to devour the basic foundation for rationality set by Narayana Guru himself. Hindutva cannot be propagated without violence. Hence RSS has been resorting to this since long. And though this hindutva organization was successful in polarizing elsewhere in the country, it faced severe resistance in Kerala.
Sangh Parivar has been launching one sided war against rest of the country and was a force that couldn’t be arrested. But Kerala broke that confidence for RSS. Which is why the cry of ‘Kerala mein hindu khatre mein hai’ is getting louder at national level by BJP leaders.
RSS will try its best to drive fissures into the solidarity of Muslims in Kerala. Even the communists detest that because they fear the parties that come together in the name of religion may hijack the communist agenda.
Hence Communist-RSS, RSS-PFI, PFI-Communist friction is in its peak now. And reasons cannot be singled out for this. And if we observe the history, one would agree with the fact that communists have taken up a lot of people’s struggles to make themselves relevant. But, has it remained relevant in the present context is something we need to see.
Some muslim outfits are also consolidating themselves for reasons of faith and religion. All this has turned Kerala into a ground for gangwar. Students do need political awareness. But that shouldn’t cost them their future and dreams. Muslims are also part of the society that was exploited and they have all reasons to protest and consolidate when they see threat. But then again, this should not happen on the basis of violence which would finally cost everyone dear.
Muslims need to come together for progress and not blind faith. There is a dire need for some sort of a balanced narrative between Communist and Muslim outfits without benefiting the RSS and its subsidiaries. Communities should not come together for fanatic reasons.
All sorts of fanatism should be opposed and nipped in its bud. The thoughts of Narayana Guru should be revoked again Kerala. Blood to blood begets more dead bodies and nothing else. Political leaders need to understand this well and save the future of Kerala youths.
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SIR in Gujarat: More than 17 lakh deceased voters found on electoral rolls
Ahmedabad (PTI): The ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the electoral rolls in Gujarat has revealed that more than 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the existing voter list across the state, a release by the office of the Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) has stated.
According to the release issued on Thursday, the SIR exercise started in Gujarat on November 4 with booth-level officers (BLOs) distributing enumeration forms in their designated areas.
The campaign will continue till December 11.
"In the last one month, enumeration forms have been distributed to more than five crore voters registered in the 2025 electoral roll. In most of the 33 districts, 100 per cent of the distribution has been completed. Work on digitising the returned forms is currently underway. So far, the digitisation work has been completed in 12 out of 182 assembly constituencies," it said.
These include Dhanera and Tharad of Banaskantha district, Limkheda and Dahod (ST) of Dahod district, Bayad of Aravalli district, Dhoraji, Jasdan and Gondal of Rajkot district, Keshod of Junagadh district, Mehmadabad of Kheda district, Khambhat of Anand district and Jalalpore of Navsari district.
Dang district is at the forefront in this work with 94.35 per cent digitisation of the counting forms, said the release.
"During this exercise, it was revealed that 17 lakh deceased voters were still included in the electoral roll across the state. More than 6.14 lakh voters were found absent from their addresses. It has been noticed that more than 30 lakh voters have permanently migrated," the release said.
BLOs found more than 3.25 lakh voters in the "repeated" category, which means that their names figured at more than one place, the release stated.
