OPINION | The long shadow of political violence against RSS in Kerala

The RSS began its work in Kerala in 1942

Rajya Sabha member C Sadanandan Master recently made a powerful intervention in the House while speaking on the Motion of Thanks to the President of India’s address. He placed his artificial limbs on the table and recalled an attack that took place 31 years ago against him in Kerala.

His argument was that those who now speak loudly about democracy were the same people who had targeted him. He narrated how, while returning home, he was ambushed by a group of assailants, dragged to the ground, and had his legs hacked off. Speaking from his seat because of his disability, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) worker attributed the brutal assault to CPI(M) cadres, turning his personal ordeal into a stark reminder of the political violence that has marked parts of Kerala for several decades.

Violence against the RSS

Professor AKM Das, who has documented violence against RSS cadres by Marxists in RSS in Kerala: A Saga of Struggle, says: “My study shows that almost all those who were murdered belonged either to lower-middle-class families or families living in poverty. Also, many of those who were killed were the sole breadwinners of their families.”

Around 300 workers from the RSS and BJP have been killed in violence against their cadres, Professor Das claimed in the book, which was published in 2020. The violence has not stopped since then, so the tally could be much higher. In addition, a large number of cadres have lost limbs or sustained grievous injuries in this violence.

Clashes between the Communists and RSS workers began as early as the late 1940s. In December 1947, Communists attacked a meeting addressed by the second Sarsanghchalak, MS Golwalkar, at Thycaud Stadium in Thiruvananthapuram. Das’s book also mentions that in 1958 there was another attack on a meeting attended by Golwalkar. “The Communists attacked and the RSS resisted. The early clashes in Tellicherry took place in 1961–62.”

RSS in South India

The RSS, founded in Nagpur in 1925, reached southern India in 1939. At that time in Kerala, Travancore and Cochin were two princely states, while Malabar was part of the Madras Presidency until all three regions were merged.

RSS founder Dr KB Hedgewar sent his close associate Dadarao Parmarth, an RSS Pracharak (full-time worker), to Madras, the capital of the Madras Presidency. He also sent Yadavrao Joshi, another Pracharak, to Belgaum in Karnataka. A number of full-time workers arrived in southern India over the next few years.

The RSS began its work in Kerala in 1942, when Dattopant Thengadi went to Calicut as a young Pracharak, and Baba Telang, another Pracharak, came to Thiruvananthapuram. Later, another full-time worker, Purushottam Chincholkar, was sent to the Cochin region.

From 1942 to 1944, the pace of the Sangh’s expansion in Kerala was slow, but it gradually gathered momentum. Three Malayalees from Kerala participated in the 1942 annual RSS training camp in Nagpur for the first time: Ambali Karunakaran and P Kumaran from Calicut, and Mannar Gopalan Nair from Thiruvananthapuram.

The first RSS Shakha in Kerala was started with P Kumaran as Mukhya Shikshak (Chief Instructor) and around 12 swayamsevaks. Today, there are more than 5,000 daily Shakhas of the RSS in Kerala, covering every nook and corner of the state.

Early Clashes: The Kannur Model

Within ten years of its entry into Kerala, the RSS had established a presence across the state. The Communists, a powerful force in Kerala, were at ideological loggerheads with the RSS. This ideological battle soon turned violent when 36-year-old Vadikkal Ramakrishnan, an RSS worker, was murdered on 28 April 1969. A tailor by profession and the sole breadwinner of his family in Thalassery, he became the first RSS worker to be killed in Marxist violence in Kannur district, which later emerged as the key battleground. Casualties among RSS workers in Kannur have been disproportionately high.

According to J Nandakumar, an RSS full-time worker from Kerala, the primary reason behind attacks on RSS and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers in Kannur is the flow of cadres from the CPI(M) to the RSS and BJP. Most RSS workers in north Kerala have either come from the CPI(M) or belong to Communist families, says Nandakumar, who is the national convenor of Prajnya Pravah, an RSS-inspired organisation that works among intellectuals.

“The RSS’s unwillingness to submit to the terror and hegemony of the CPI(M), especially in their strongholds in Kannur, is intolerable to them. Another objective of this unabated terror against Hindu nationalists is to lure votes from well-entrenched Islamist groups, as part of the CPI(M)’s perennial minority appeasement policy,” Nandakumar adds in the introduction to RSS in Kerala: A Saga of Struggle.

Earlier RSSFACTS columns can be read here.

(Arun Anand has authored two books on the RSS. His X handle is @ArunAnandLive.)

Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.