Verily, a campaign hoax!

K Raveendran

The biggest joke or hoax of the campaign for the 2024 Lok Sabha elections is the CPI-M advertisement on television channels claiming that if India is to survive, the Left’s voice has to reverberate in Delhi. Going by whatever has happened in the 17th Lok Sabha, where the CPI-M had just three MPs, two of them from the communist-weary territory of Dravida land, where the writ of Veera Pandya Kattabomman ran rather than that of Karl Marx, it is indeed a tall claim. Kerala’s only Marxist MP Ariff rarely took the floor for a speech, although over 240 questions were raised in his name.

The bigger picture is that the Kerala MPs, barring perhaps one or two, never had a voice in the outgoing house. N K Premachandran was one, but he was no K P Unnikrishnan, the former telecom minister in VP Singh ministry, who, unlike our present generation of parliamentarians, could offer a hundred variants between ‘yes’ and ‘no’ as an answer. The Kollam MP was no great communicator, although he did manage to make some noises, something that caught the eye of PM Modi and won him the invitation for an impromptu lunch at parliament house, his detractors seeing it as a saffron proclivity and even making it a campaign plank.

Kerala MPs have been perennially tongue-tied in Delhi, perhaps posing a challenge as tough as the capital’s inhospitable weather. Parliament has excellent translation infrastructure so that a member can make a speech in any of the recognised languages. But to make a real mark, one has to speak either in Hindi or English, both of which are in steep deficit as far as the Kerala MPs are concerned. Placards have been doing much of the duty — at the rate of one placard equals a thousand words. In fact, the credit for introducing the placard culture in parliament must clearly go to our MPs. It is a different matter that they have had to face the music over this, including punitive actions such as suspension from the house.

But once upon a time Kerala had its golden era in Delhi, when legends like A K Gopalan ruled the roost in the house. AKG was too fiery to be tied down by factors such as language, occasion or place. He roared like a lion and the house listened in rapt attention. He made a monumental speech in parliament after Indira Gandhi imposed Emergency, but it remained unreported due to the censorship that prevailed at the time. Those who had access to the transcript felt their blood boiling in their veins, similar to what the great poet Vallathol wrote while describing the spirit of nationalism and love for Kerala.

For the record-minded, we also had an MP with the same initials, but standing at the other end of the spectrum: A K Antony, who was the total antithesis of his illustrious predecessor. Antony was totally at sea when it came to communicating; he did not appear to be comfortable even with his mother tongue, not to speak of the alien English or north Indian Hindi. In the eighties, when Antony was made the AICC spokesman, all Delhi newspapers changed their AICC beat, putting Malayalees in charge. So much for their confidence in Antony’s language skills. Obviously, AICC was an important beat and they didn’t want a story missed.

That was also the time when Patriot newspaper was planning to launch an edition in Kerala and I was closely involved. I accompanied my editor in chief R K Mishra for a meeting with Antony in parliament house to seek the Congress party’s support for the idea. I don’t remember if anything tangible came out of the meeting as Antony muttered, stuttered, fumbled and left me humbled, my Mallu ego badly bruised at a fellow countryman’s discomfort, particularly in front of my boss. Thankfully, it was Mishraji who took me to Antony and not the other way around.

The experience was refreshingly different when weeks later I met chief minister Karunakaran in his assembly chamber, along with our Keala correspondent, for the same purpose. Half an acre of land, next to Doordarshan Kendra at Kodappanakkunnu was allotted for the newspaper in a record time of three days. That was the Leader in action! But sadly the newspaper project never took off due to internal politics in the Patriot management.