Troubles in the State of Kerala

...As a result, Indian thinking is in a dangerous state of instability...

...There are organizations, with and without accompanying periodicals and newspapers, which allegedly give a week-by-week account of what is happening inside the Communist party of Kerala and of the large-scale desertions from its ranks...

...In a state where corruption and malpractice has been a way of life, this makes public opinion both uneasy and suspicious...

...Chako has gained popularity for the coalition by his anti-corruption measures and by the manner in which he is trying to give the younger element a chance inside his party...

...Similarly, on the Kerala University campus, also formerly strongly Communist, the anti-Communist student bodies now have ousted their rivals...

...They insist on making up their own minds and any attempt to take them along a given direction is almost certain to make them go the opposite way...

...Fortunately for democracy in Kerala, the old guard has been kept firmly in check by the party's high command in New Delhi and by Prime Minister Nehru, who will not tolerate any split at this time...

...At least one owes its continued existence to a group of discredited Congress party leaders who did not dare to stand for elections, who are now kept out of the Government and who, consequently, are hell-bent on recovering their former positions, even if this means wrecking the present Government...

...On the surface, much is as usual, but just beneath is an unrest and impatience such as this country has never before known...

...If there is disillusion with Communism, there also is a weariness with the slow, cumbersome processes of democracy and the seemingly endless discussions which must accompany every move forward...

...Perhaps the change has come so suddenly that it appears opportunistic...

...In Kerala, the most politically minded of Indian states, the bazaar grapevine reports that many of these groups and forums are financially supported from outside the state, some even from outside the country...

...But there is no immediate prospect of an election: Kerala will not even go to the polls with the rest of the country in 1962...

...But this displeases the party's old guard, the Brahmin section, which in recent weeks has been twisting and turning in an endeavor to regain command of the Kerala Pradesh (state) Congress Committee...

...By Sharokh Sabavala Troubles in the State of Kerala Unrest and impatience lurk beneath India's surface Bombay Indians and non-Indians interested in keeping the southern state of Kerala out of Communism's clutches should restrain their enthusiasm for the various organizations, groups and forums which have mushroomed since the spectacular Communist defeat at the polls last February, and which claim to be the kernel of Communist defection designed to expose Communist conspiracy...

...But a close inspection of some of these groups— the men who head them as well as their activities—reveals that their publications remain largely unread inside the state, that they have little or no following and that despite this lack of public support there appears to be no lack of funds to keep them going...

...In what was Travancore, the southern part of Kerala, Pillai is uncrowned king, but in Cochin and northern Malabar, he still is carefully watched...

...As India's third general elections slowly approach in February 1962, what most Indians seem to want is not an ostensible anti-Communism, which is negative, but the opportunity to rededicate themselves positively to the ways of democracy...

...If true, all this makes for heartening reading...

...There are, undoubedtly, many Indians whose ideological revulsion against their old beliefs is not only respected, but also creates a considerable impression...

...My own personal impressions while on tours of the state and what I was subsequently told tally with this viewpoint...

...The Kerala Government, a coalition of the Indian National Congress, the Praja Socialist party and the Moslem League, got together for the purpose of defeating the Communists and this remains the sole aim of its veteran leader, Socialist Pattom Thanu Pillai, who as Chief Minister is working at repairing democracy's fabric in his state...

...In Kerala, however, those Indians "whose gods have failed" do not generally appear to carry conviction...

...The people in Kerala, by tradition and educational upbringing, are fiercely independent...

...So single-minded is Pillai that at times he is prone to neglect his rather temperamental party and even ride rough-shod over the feelings of the coalition's major partner—the Congress party...

...He also tends to forget that until recently Kerala was made up of the former princely states of Travancore and Cochin and that time is required for mutual antagonisms to die down...

...Some of these groups may even be deliberate Communist fronts...

...Observers in Kerala say that if there was another general election immediately, the Communists would fare worse than they did last February...

...perhaps the people of Kerala, after 28 months of Communist rule, are wily in the ways of Communism...

...In recent weeks, the triple alliance has captured the civic government of the capital city—Trivandrum—in the first municipal election to be held since the general elections in February, 1960...

...This is not easy because all the democratic parties in the country are in varying stages of disrepair, because top leadership is aging and more and more clinging to outworn cliches, and because the second and third lines of leadership are nowhere in sight...

...As a result, the coalition appears firm, and the firmness is yielding its own results...

...Apart from this, Pillai's task is not rendered easier by the plethora of ex-Communist forums which want him to take the same ruthless measures—and in the same ways—against the Communists that the Communists did against the democratic parties...

...Nor do disgruntled and discredited members of the Congress party make life any easier for his able deputy, Chief Minister P. T. Chako...

...Above all, with respect for Communist cadres and leadership—the most dedicated in the country—still quite high among Kerala's people, it is not easy for most Keralans to understand why a Communist yesterday should be a violent anti-Communist today...

...Communist defection, apparently, has become fashionable—and lucrative—in this state...

...There are other, more openly ex-Communist groups, but they are led by former Communists whose ideological differences with the Communists are open to doubt and who are anti-Communist for the time being because of pre-election factional fights...

...The alliance won 28 seats against four for the Communists, who formerly controlled the Trivandrum Municipal Corporation...

...Public opinion, for instance, is far from enthusiastic about the Government's sponsorship of the Moral Rearmament Movement's group in Trivandrum, which also claims many Communist converts...