The mob-lynching of the 20-year-old student, JS Siddharth, in the hostel of the College of Veterinary and Animal Sciences in Pookode, Wayanad, has pointed to yet another brutality associated with the Students Federation of India (SFI). Though members of other student organisations like the Kerala Student Union (KSU) and Muslim Students Federation (MSF), too, are alleged to have been involved in the violence against Siddharth, SFI's leading role can hardly be denied. The involvement of its top office bearers among the key accused and their dominance on the campus can never be ignored. Even if politics had no role in the incident, as claimed by the SFI, can it be absolved from responsibility? Nevertheless, it defies common sense that in this age of pervasive camera phones and hypervigilant social media, the world had no clue about the barbarism until a week passed after it occurred on the campus shuttlecock court and in front of more than 100 fellow students.
The ruling CPM is primarily responsible for the rampant criminalisation that has pervaded its student wing in recent times. It has now become routine for members of CPM and its connected organisations, figuring in almost all the serious crimes breaking out in Kerala, especially during the last eight years the Left Democratic Front (LDF) has been in power. They range from murder, arson, looting, cheating, atrocities against women, sleaze, moral policing, or drug-peddling to real estate crimes. The Left has many times in the past been accused of indulging in violence or election-related offences like booth-capturing or rigging. But it has never been tainted by activities mentioned above on a scale as witnessed now. There was even a time not in the distant past when the Left workers and leaders enjoyed a moral high ground in people's minds as incorruptible and unselfish compared to those of other political parties. The argument that it is only a sign of our changing times when far more serious crimes are common than in the past and that they manifest in today's every institution, including political parties, only partly explains the phenomenon. It's also more than a coincidence that Siddharth's lynching occurred even as the Kerala High Court's doubling of the sentences against the accused in the state's most brutal political assassination was being pronounced.
Certainly, the affairs inside the CPM once again prove the British historian Lord Acton's famous dictum: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The CPM's unprecedentedly long innings in power is the........