Re: Communalising Kerala

["Craven, Jim" <JCraven@xxxxxxxxx>]

This is truly sad.
--
Michael Perelman
Economics Department
California State University
Chico, CA 95929

Tel. 530-898-5321
E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu

Response Jim C: This does indeed break my heart. I lived in Kerala
during part of the 1980s in a little village of about 150 people; the
village was half Hindu, half Syrian Orthodox Christian, it was half
Congress-I and half CPM in political orientation, and it was one of the
few places in India where sectarian violence was unknown. Kerala was one
of the few States of India where you could literally find Jews (many in
Cochin), Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Communists, Jains and many other
groups living side-by-side without the sectarian violence. Of course
there were organizations like RSS, Shiv Sena, Arya Sammagayam (I met one
of the leaders of RSS once by accident) but they confined themselves
mostly to polemics and covert organizing with none of the violence
common in the north. There were also survivors of the Naxalites who had
been targeted for extermination by the central government but they
mostly stayed underground and in some cases went on to other forms of
political action on the inside.


I still have friends in Kerala and I'll be asking about this from those
on the ground there now.

Jim C.