Sangh Parivar sniped at, slander campaigns faulted

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Governor P. Sathasivam has indirectly slammed the ‘Sangh Parivar’ outfits for unleashing a spate of slander campaigns against the state. “During the past one year, there have been slanderous attacks on the secular traditions of our state, doubts thrown on our social secular achievements and vilification of the law and order situation from various quarters,” the Governor said during his customary annual address to the Assembly on Monday.

Mr Sathasivam ridiculed the hate campaign. “Despite being a state with some of the best law and order indices in the country, a month-long campaign was carried out across India on certain flimsy grounds by some communal outfits,” he said and added: “But the people of Kerala unitedly stood together to defend our traditions and achievements.”  Though he did not specifically name the ‘communal outfits’, it was clear who he was referring to.

It was in October last year that BJP’s general secretary Ram Madhav, a leader with strong links to the RSS, had declared in Manipur that his party and its feeder organisations would “reinforce our campaign through the social media against the misrule, violence, and underdevelopment in Kerala and Tripura.”  It was what he said next that national channels, like Republic TV, had taken up to vilify the state.

“The Left, especially the CPI-M, with clandestine support of state machinery has turned Kerala into a killing field and went berserk against the BJP-RSS workers and leaders. They have the history of violence. They have indulged in violence in West Bengal earlier,” Ram Madhav had said. Misleading pictures were circulated on social media showing that Kerala was a land where cows were slaughtered in public. 

The campaign even saw Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adithyanath, who had to face the heat for child deaths in his constituency in Gorakhpur, coming down to Kerala and preaching the state about handling the Chikungunya epidemic. The economic might of Muslims in the state was twisted to suggest that Kerala was another Pakistan. And it was also made out that political murders were a daily occurrence in the state. The Governor mounted a staunch defence. “Once again has Kerala been identified as first in the country in maintenance of law and order and top the country in the ranking of quality life," he said and added: "There has not been any instance of communal riot in our state."