Thiruvananthapuram, Dec. 14: A Malayalam proverb " Koduthal kollathum kittum" has come in handy for the BJP in Kerala as the party seeks to bask in the discomfiture of the Congress and the Left at the visit of the Prime Minister to the state.
The proverb loosely translates as "what you give, you get it back even in Kollam". The nearest English equivalent will be "as you sow, so you reap".
Kollam, the south Kerala district formerly known as Quilon, is now in the news because of the controversy over shutting out chief minister and Congress leader Oommen Chandy from a ceremony tomorrow to unveil the statue of former chief minister R. Shankar.
Although linguists find no special reason except for the rhyming "ko" and "ko" in the first two words of the adage to explain why it attributes the "divine retribution" theory to Kollam, the fact that the statue-unveiling event is scheduled to take place in the district was enough for the BJP camp to chant in gay abandon that it was karma calling.
In a warm-up speech ahead of the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Thrissur district this evening, BJP leader P.K. Krishnadas recalled an incident from 2013. It was the 51<+>st<+> anniversary of the Sree Narayana Dharma Meemasa Parishad, a spiritual discourse organised by the Sivagiri Mutt founded by the social reformer Sree Narayana Guru. The mutt had invited Modi to inaugurate the event, but it infuriated the CPM and the Congress, which boycotted the programme in protest.
"Those who treated Modiji as a pariah then are now fighting to rub shoulders with him,'' Krishnadas rubbed it in.
State BJP president V. Muraleedharan, who spoke after the arrival of the Prime Minister, went a step further and referred to an episode from the Atal Bihari Vajpayee era. "In 1998, when Vajpayee ji visited Kerala for the inauguration of the Kudumbashree scheme (that aims to empower women), the then chief minister, E.K. Nayanar, decided to stay away as he did not want to be seen in the company of a BJP leader,'' Muraleedharan claimed.
He also referred to Chandy's decision to stay away from Modi's swearing-in ceremony in 2014 because of political reasons. Chandy, however, attended the oath taking of a chief minister, Muraleedharan added, referring to the presence of the Kerala leader at Nitish Kumar's oath-taking in Patna last month.
The 2013 boycott had prompted Modi, who was Gujarat chief minister then, to observe that though saints like Sree Narayana Guru had managed to eradicate untouchability from social life, it was still practised in political life.
Modi repeated the lament today. In fact, he said that such extreme political untouchability existed in no other state. "In the same Kerala where saints like Narayana Guru fought to remove social untouchability, political untouchability has been most prevalent so much that opponents are kicked out or even murdered in cold blood. More than 200 BJP workers have been killed in Kerala for purely political reasons. In no other state will you see this untouchability in such distorted form,'' he said.
The developments at Sivagiri two years back was preceded by a few more incidents, which the BJP says "displayed the intolerance of the state's Congress and Left political class towards Modi''. In April 2013, Kerala's minister for labour and rehabilitation Shibu Baby John had called on the Gujarat CM in Ahmedabad.
Although John termed it as a courtesy call, hell broke loose back home where the Left sought to corner the Chandy government over the visit. Among the Congressmen who snubbed John were then overseas Indian affairs minister Vayalar Ravi, state Congress chief Ramesh Chennithala and then Union minister K.C. Venugopal who incidentally breathed fire in Parliament today over the move to keep Chandy off tomorrow's event. So much so that Chandy had to finally seek an explanation from John.
Praise of Modi's development model had also cost CPM MP A.P. Abdullakkutty his party membership in 2009. If that was not all, the antipathy to Modi had the then Left government even going back on its plan to induct Amitabh Bachchan as the brand ambassador of Kerala tourism.
Although Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, the then state tourism minister who is now the CPM state secretary, was keen on Bachchan, a central leader waved the red flag, citing Bachchan's association with Gujarat tourism.
Bachchan had then responded through a blog, saying: "You take umbrage at my association with Gujarat, but never have the guts or courage to stop a Ratan Tata, or an Ambani from investing in the state and running successful factories and ventures there. Would you have the guts to tell them to not associate with the state, to pull out all their investment and manpower they build through years and years of their 'association'? I guess not. You would happily bring politics into the matter just to dissuade. But what good does that do to a person that is non-political. Reason and common sense overrides all else in moments like this. Such a shame really."
In February 2014, shortly before the Lok Sabha elections, Modi again became the subject of boycott when a mayor stayed away from the inauguration of the centenary celebrations of the " kayal sammelanam (lake meeting)" organsied by the Dalit outfit, Kerala Pulayar Maha Sabha.
Then, too, Modi had said: "I'm still a victim of political untouchability."