Thalassery, May 25, 1996 8 pm Atal Behari Vajpayee has formed the first BJP-led government at the Centre. Two thousand five hundred km away in Thalassery, north Kerala, BJP district secretary Pannyanur Chandran is on his way back home. He is stopped by some CPM activists a few yards from home. Bombs rain. Then the men descend on Chandran, hacking away at his left leg, trying to sever it. When they cannot, they target his head. Before the very eyes of his family, Chandran, who had fought the elections for the BJP barely a month before, dies a brutal death. Thalassery, Aug. 25, 1999 8 pm Three years after Chandran?s murder, it is election time again. CPM leader P. Jayarajan, the top name on the RSS hit list for Chandran?s murder, is out for a walk with his wife. Chandran?s story repeats itself. Jayarajan finds himself surrounded by RSS activists hardly a few metres from home. Bombs rain on him, too. The CPM leader runs into his residence, but the attackers follow him and land blow after blow on his right hand, almost severing it. Miraculously, Jayarajan survives after a 13-hour surgery. He is still undergoing treatment at a hospital in Kochi. A war is on between the red and the saffron in north Kerala?s Kannur, the birthplace of the communist movement in the state. Thalassery, chief minister E.K. Nayanar?s constituency, falls in this district. The CPM?s message is clear: ?Your leaders pay with severed limbs and your workers with their lives.? The RSS? message is clear, too: they will do their best to pay back in the same coin. The battle is mainly between the CPM and the RSS as the BJP has only a marginal presence here. Spread over three decades, the war is now reduced to a game of numbers, much like a high-scoring football match. In the retaliatory attacks that followed the murder attempt on Jayarajan, CPM casualties rose to five while the RSS lost three men in one month. In Kannur, a red citadel since the Forties, the list of crimes attributed to the CPM against the saffron combine is endless. Since 1991, when the CPM became aware of a saffron upsurge in Eranjoli panchayat in Kannur, four prominent BJP leaders have had to pay for their growing stature with their limbs, the last being K. Mohanan who was kidnapped on August 27 this year. Casualties have risen to a few hundreds in the district in 30 years, while both the CPM and BJP-RSS agree that ?countless?? have been maimed or blinded. Since the Forties, the communist movement in Kannur has always been on extremist lines. But recently, the Left has started losing its grip. Of late, with the influx of Gulf money in Kerala, communist ideology is failing to hold youngsters and Kannur is witnessing a steady decline in CPM party membership. As a result, the CPM has resorted to force. But the strategy has backfired, leading to more and more of the CPM?s own followers leaving the party. And surprisingly, joining not the Congress or even the BJP, but only the RSS. Today, in panchayats like Kadirur and Erengettaparampa in Kannur, every second house has turned into an RSS residence. P. Vasantha, a nurse in Thalassery Government Hospital, had been an active CPM worker for more than 30 years. She led the staff union of the hospital. But her son Benni joined the RSS. Last month, CPM men attacked Vasantha?s house. ?The same party for which my husband and I worked for decades together bombs my residence and tries to kill my son before my eyes. I will never forgive them,?? Vasantha said. The family of comrades has unanimously joined the RSS now because the ?little one? of the family needs protection. Kannur BJP district president K. Karunakaran, who himself is from a family of communists, says: ?My father and grandfather were with the CPI. Those were the days when being a part of the communist movement was the done thing among aristocrats in Kannur. I was myself with the Marxists but I have left them.?? ?The CPM believes that an ex-Marxist is more dangerous than an anti-Marxist,?? explained Raman Pillai, the National Democratic Alliance convener in Kerala. ?When a partyman leaves the CPM, he needs protection. Neither the Congress nor the BJP can afford to confront the CPM in Kannur, which operates at its extremist level. Therefore, the obvious choice is the RSS.?? Leaders in the state CPM, on the other hand, went on record early this month stating that the Congress had worked out an illicit electoral understanding with the RSS and was fighting a proxy war with the CPM through the BJP-RSS combine. CPM state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan said: ?The motivation for RSS-BJP workers to instigate violence in the district comes from the false anti-CPM propaganda unleashed by the Congress leadership.?? An allegation that BJP Union minister O. Rajagopal, who comes from Kerala, dismissed as ?ridiculous?. Asked about the law and order situation in his constituency of Thalassery, the chief minister parried questions. He said he was interested in organising an all-party peace meet to end the 30-year war. However, others in his party did not seem interested in talking peace. LDF convener V.S. Achuthanandan said: ?If the RSS attacks continue, we are ready to give a fitting reply.??