Bhagwan Nandu is a movement

Anyone writing the history of the sangh parivar in Kerala will have to record the name of a 'balidani'  - martyr - named Vattachira Sreekanth.   But neither the sangh parivar nor their opponents seldom remember this name.  On 6 September 1993,  Sreekant,  a native of Sreekaryam, Thiruvananthapuram was killed in a blast in Tanur, Malappuram.   He sacrificed his life not in any conflict with 'anti-national' forces or political opponents.  On the other hand,  Sreekant got killed in an explosion while making a bomb at the house of an RSS worker Parampat Suku.

Two active RSS volunteers - Babu,  son of Parampat Suku and Velayudhan,  son of Vadakkampat Koran - were seriously injured in the incident.  The gravity of the episode would become clear only when one knows why the RSS workers made bombs there.   These bombs were planned to be thrown at a 'shobhayatra' on the occasion of Sri Krishna Jayanti to be  held the following week.   This fact was revealed by none other than the police chief of Malappuram at that time,  who said 'God saved Malappuram'.   The diabolic RSS plot was to throw bombs at the children participating in the procession, and thus ignite communal riots in the area.   Thanks to God's blessing,  that plot got thwarted.  

This incident is recalled here in a particular context.  An attack on the district deputy secretary of Hindu Makkal Katchi took place last Tuesday (17 March), in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu.  News reports said that a gang of assailants came by motor bike with lethal weapons and attacked him.  Within no time, a tense situation arose in Tirupur and Hindu Makkal Katchi enered the scene with protests including road blocks.  The area soon turned into one on the brink of communal clashes.  Places of worship were attacked.

The police acted rising to the occasion. District police chief Disha Mittal appointed a special investigation team.  On Thursday 19 March,  the police arrested two culprits.  One was P Rudramurthi,  one else than the driver of Nandu and the second Manoj Kumar, a close friend of Nandu.  It was Rudramurthi himself who revealed the details during the interrogation.  This assault was planned by Nandu himself with the motive of ensuring the hold within the organisation,  creating communal conflict in the area and securing permanent police protection for himself.   And because the police acted in the right direction, people of Tiruppur were saved!

This cannot be treated as an isolated incident of a certain place in Tamil Nadu.  And Bhagwan Nandu is not a mere name,  it is a movement and an ideology.  Sangh parivar is a movement that has adopted it as a dogma and strategy to bolster the movement by whipping up communalism;  they have not qualms to employ the dirtiest of tricks to achieve that goal.   When the whole country is engrossed in anxieties about the Covid-19 virus,  what kind of a malicious conspiracy would this be for a Hindutva leader to make and implement!  But sadly enough,  the media by and large do not take pains to uncover such nefarious plans before the people.

Incidents of this nature are not new for the sangh parivar outfits.  Several such news items had come out on different occasions from different states.  To be read with them is what happened in Valanchery, Malappuram on the night of 27 August 2019.  It was a case in which a 'nagathara' (serpent statue) and an idol were destroyed in the Sree Dharma Sastha temple in Neythalappuram, Karekkad and human excreta were thrown there.  Within two days,  the police caught the culprit.  It was a Ramakrishnan,  native of Edayoor.

The police testified that it was done by the accused himself with the aim of creating communal clashes.    Most recently, i.e. last week in Kottayam,  the police rounded up a few who made guns in Pallikkathodu.   Over ten guns and revolvers were seized from them.  Among the arrested was an active RSS worker named Vijayan.  It would be rare in Kerala's history for that many arms to be seized in one go.  But this was not sufficiently debated in Kerala.   And going by what the BJP's Kottayam district president said at a news conference,  the man arrested would be fielded as a candidate in the coming panchayat election!

In a region where different parties work with differing goals,  it is natural to have some frictions and skirmishes.   But it is strange for a group to work with the sole and defined aim of fomenting clashes.   And it is stranger that such a group is called by some as a 'cultural movement'.