Defence Minister and Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley’s flying visit to Kerala to condole the death of an alleged RSS activist, murdered allegedly by CPM workers, has already received considerable attention and some criticism. NH also carried on Sunday the open letter that CPM Member of Parliament MB Rajesh wrote to Jaitley.

How did the country’s defence minister find enough time to condole the death of a RSS worker and not visit the home of armymen killed in action ? Why was he flown in a special aircraft on what was essentially a political mission? And why didn’t the minister visit the home of CPM workers killed by RSS activists—were some of the questions put to him. No answer has been forthcoming from the minister so far.

Now a retired Brigadier’s post on the union minister’s political mission to Kerala is being shared on social media. Here is the text of the social media post:

“Kerala strangely is being discussed by people, many of whom can’t even point out where the state lies on the map! As a Keralite born and brought up there and settled in my village in Kannur for the last twelve years, after my 34 years of army service and being not a political activist but a keen observer of political events, I would like to dispel a few notions of some people including a few non-resident Keralites too, about the state.

Since I have served in almost all the states, I can confidently say that Kerala is probably the most peaceful state in the country, where law and order prevails, notwithstanding occasional political killings that happen in other states too. When they talk about the ‘Killing Fields’ of Kerala, data and breakdown of political killings are never brought up.

If you take the CPM-BJP killings, more CPM men were killed by the BJP than vice-versa. Most insidious is the propaganda on the number of Hindus being killed in the state. The BJP men killed are Hindus and the CPM men killed are also Hindus, as the party’s cadre are predominantly Hindus. Now, they add the number of Hindu CPM men killed by them to the total tally of Hindus killed in the state under the Marxist Rule!

What is seen in the state is that killings are almost always the result of violence started by the BJP and which then is almost always retaliated squarely by the CPM men!

Another notion I want to correct is that BJP would be coming to power in the state shortly; I don’t see even a remote chance of it happening. They now have one MLA in a house of 140 and the total percentage of votes the NDA got during the last year’s election was 14%, that is after tying up with SNDP, an organisation of powerful and predominantly backward Hindu community of the state; that alliance is now breaking up. In every recent local body elections, after the ‘killing field’ propaganda was unleashed, the percentage of votes the BJP is receiving is getting lower.

On the other hand, the performance of the Left (Left practically means only CPM), that has more than three-fourth strength in the assembly, is improving! So, if any one says that Keralites are shortly throwing away the CPM to get BJP in its place, he deserves only pity.

If the present CPM govt is dismissed for which ground work appears to be on in an elaborate way, and a re-election is held after six months, the CPM is likely to come back with much more comfortable majority than they have now and the BJP is likely to lose even the solitary member that they have now ! The fact of the matter is that while propaganda is its forte, its penetration at ground level is weak in the state.

The other day, Arun Jaitley came to Trivandrum in an Air force plane to exclusively visit the house of an RSS man who, as per the BJP, was killed by the CPM.

The local residents say that he was killed in a gang war. A kilometre away was the house of Flt Lt Achudev who was killed in Arunachal Pradesh in a Sukhoi crash last month. Jaitley is our defence minister; while he came all the way in a govt transport to meet the bereaved family of a man who allegedly died in a gang war, he had no time or inclination to meet the bereaved family of the Air Force officer who died during his line of duty!