It’s the end of the year and so I don’t want to write long boring articles. Just short pointed ones. So here is one with two simple observations and two takeaways.

The Constitution is actually in danger. But not where our intellectuals want us to think.

What is happening in Kerala? Who dissolved democracy over there?

First of all, look at the tone of the headline. “Kerala Governor says … ”

It’s good for media to be factual. But I can’t help wondering if the media would have been so factual if it was a random person making an allegation say about being stopped by gau rakshaks and harassed for a leather bag? Or perhaps someone who thought a broken church window was evidence of a sinister plot by the Prime Minister against against all Christians.

But this is just Governor of Kerala making an allegation. And the accused is not the Prime Minister of India but an eminent intellectual.

If the Governor of Kerala can be stopped from speaking, is there a shred of democracy left in Kerala? Or a spark of shame left in the CPIM government of Kerala?

This is a video from earlier this week, showing CPIM workers surrounding the car of Karnataka CM B S Yediyurappa and hitting it with sticks. Everything is clearly on video.

CPI(M)s youth wing, unleashes a cowardly attack on K'taka CM Shri @BSYBJP . It was the driver's evasive action that helped the CM escape from further brutality.

State police didn't take any precautions even after getting security threats in advance.@Tejasvi_Surya @amitmalviya pic.twitter.com/drWFJ0PzTX — BJP KERALAM (@BJP4Keralam) December 24, 2019

If a Chief Minister can be attacked like this in broad daylight, one can only imagine the reign of terror in Kerala. Forget democracy, or dissent, or free speech, where is the State?

Does it exist any more?

Suffice to say that if a high security individual had been attacked like this in the US for instance, their security personnel would have opened fire on the rioters. If the rioters had escaped with their lives, I am sure they would be looking at 20 years of hard prison time at the very least.

What happened to the rioters here? Does anyone know? Were they even arrested? Has the Govt of Kerala apologized to Karnataka CM for the breach of security? Has the CPIM as a party apologized to B S Yediyurappa? Why not? What gives them the ego to go on like this? And why doesn’t BJP make more noise about this?

At the beginning of this post, I said I would make two observations about the whole thing.

The first is this. The Kerala Governor is doing fine. At least he got a national stage to state his grievance against Irfan Habib stopping his speech. But spare a thought for possible young historians who might have dared to express a dissenting thought in front of Irfan Habib. The man has saddled India’s history establishment for decades.

What do you think happened to possible young voices who might have tried to challenge his worldview?

The second point is this. Why is BJP not making a bigger deal out of this. The attack on B S Yediyurappa was no laughing matter. What stops the BJP from demanding an apology from the CPM and the Govt of Kerala? The BJP could have put its entire machinery into pressuring the Communists to apologize to Yediyurappa. But it didn’t.

This is the problem with the ‘right wing’ ecosystem in India revolving so completely around a single political party. Whether we like it or not, the real priority of a political party is to win elections. At the moment, the BJP sees Kerala as almost unwinnable in the short term. Which means that the party has no real interest in pushing the envelope in Kerala. From an electoral point of view, it’s a waste of energy and resources.

And thus, the Govt of Kerala gets to pretend like Constitution and democracy simply do not exist. Contrast this with the opposing camp, which has many interests at many levels: from elections to media to academia. As a result of this, the left is able to fight a battle at multiple levels. Because they have separate dedicated teams for each task. They have their digital, mainstream and social media henchmen, their Bollywood influencers, they have their “fact checkers,” they have their puppet intellectuals, they have their foreign academic contacts. Each group is capable of acting autonomously and striking a blow. Even when the Congress has no immediate electoral prospects, they can get their act together.

The right simply does not have that. Without proper division and delegation of tasks, everyone ends up doing everything and always focusing on the next election at hand. And that is how way too many political opportunities are left behind.