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<font size="1"><a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/52-kerala/">https://www.thetricontinental.org/newsletterissue/52-kerala/</a>
</font><h1 class="gmail-reader-title">All the Cannons Will Silently Rust: The Fifty-Second Newsletter (2020)</h1>
<div class="gmail-credits gmail-reader-credits">Vijay Prashad - December 24, 2020</div>
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<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Chittaprosad-India-Peace-undated.-3.jpg" alt="Chittaprosad (India), Peace, undated." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="315" height="431"></p>
<p>Dear friends,</p>
<p>Greetings from the desk of the <a href="https://thetricontinental.org/">Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research</a>.</p>
<p>Our year has been eclipsed by the pandemic, the rush of a virus
paralysing societies across the world. Some governments offered smarter,
more scientific, and humane approaches to the pandemic; many (but not
all) of these have been governments with a <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/studies-3-coronashock-and-socialism/">socialist</a>
orientation. Amongst them is the Indian state of Kerala, tucked into
the country’s south-west with a population of 35 million and governed by
the Left Democratic Front (LDF). Kerala’s Health Minister KK Shailaja
was later <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/the-coronavirus-slayer-how-keralas-rock-star-health-minister-helped-save-it-from-covid-19">celebrated</a>
as the ‘Coronavirus Slayer’ for her leadership within a government that
puts the needs of the population ahead of profit and superstition.</p>
<p>It is not as if there have been no cases of COVID-19 in Kerala, nor
that there have been no deaths; it is rather that the government
operated in a measured, swift, and deliberate way to inform the public,
to use the government machinery to test the population for COVID-19, to
carry out contact tracing, to isolate and treat the infected, and to
take all possible measures to flatten the curve. Furthermore, as a
result of a long history of organised public action in the state – often
led by the communists and social reformers – trade unions,
cooperatives, student and youth organisations, women’s organisations,
and others operated in a very disciplined way to provide information and
relief to the public.</p>
<p>In early December, Kerala held local body elections across the state. The communists <a href="https://peoplesdispatch.org/2020/12/17/communist-led-coalition-sweeps-local-body-elections-in-the-southern-indian-state-of-kerala/">won</a>
more seats in these elections than all the seats won by the opposition.
The right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which runs the Indian
government in Delhi under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, and the centre-right Indian National Congress, which is the main
opposition in Kerala, ran a vicious campaign against the Left, including
harsh personal attacks directed at Kerala’s Chief Minister Pinarayi
Vijayan. The media – controlled almost exclusively by the major private
corporations – led the attack on the Left and ignored new initiatives
pushed by the Left in this remarkably difficult period.</p>
<p>For instance, the corporate media ignored the <a href="https://www.newsclick.in/CM-Pinarayi-Vijayan-Inaugurates-34-Centre-of-Excellence-Schools-in-Kerala-to-Strengthen-Public-Education">inauguration</a>
of thirty-four new public schools for the ‘Centre of Excellence’
project, which resulted in the slow return of children from expensive
private schools to the revamped state schools. If they did report the
initiatives, such as the building of about 250,000 homes for the working
class and the indigent through the ‘Life Mission’, the media focused on
mischievous <a href="https://www.newsclick.in/Allegations-Kerala-Life-Mission-Project-Provides-Lifeline-Homeless">allegations</a>
that charity money from the United Arab Emirates had violated foreign
exchange regulations. These unfounded attacks shaped the harsh context
of these local body elections.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33813" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/PP-Divya-leads-a-protest-in-solidarity-wiht-farmers-4.jpg" alt="PP Divya leads a protest in solidarity with Indian farmers." style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="417"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33813" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>PP Divya leads a protest in solidarity with Indian farmers.</span></p></div>
<p>Kerala’s Left went into this election with a series of important advantages. First, over the course of a <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/dossier-32-communist-movement-in-india/">century</a>
of struggle and governance, the communist movement has driven an agenda
to improve the living conditions of the people, including by promoting
health, education, and housing, and has inculcated a tradition of public
action. Second, it was the Left that initiated a people’s planning <a href="https://www.thecitizen.in/index.php/en/NewsDetail/index/4/10834/Kerala-An-Island-In-A-Sea-of-Bigotry">campaign</a>
twenty-five years ago; this process enlivened the local self-government
bodies and made them crucial platforms for public action and for the
development of the Left alternative. Third, the current Left Democratic
Front government has an exemplary record of managing crises that
predates the pandemic, such as the catastrophic <a href="https://www.thetricontinental.org/how-kerala-fought-the-heaviest-deluge-in-nearly-a-century/">floods</a> and the outbreak of the <a href="https://www.who.int/southeastasia/outbreaks-and-emergencies/health-emergency-information-risk-assessment/surveillance-and-risk-assessment/nipah-virus-outbreak-in-kerala">Nipah</a>
virus, both of which struck the state in 2018. Fourth, the Left’s mass
organisations in the state are alert to the needs of the people and are
often found working to provide relief, to fight against social
indignity, and to fight to expand the rights of people. This was most
clearly visible during the pandemic, when student, youth, women’s,
workers, and peasant organisations delivered food and medicine to the
people, built public washing facilities, and assisted local governments
with testing, tracing, and enforcing the quarantine. It was this mass
work that provided the best antidote to the virulence of the corporate
media.</p>
<p>It was out of this remarkable mass work that the Left chose its
candidates for the local body elections, most of them very young and a
large number of them young women leaders from across the state. Below
are short impressions of five of these new elected officials.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33833" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Reshma-Writes-in-Her-Diary-5.jpg" alt="Reshma Mariam Roy writes in her diary" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="288"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33833" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Reshma Mariam Roy writes in her diary</span></p></div>
<p>Reshma Mariam Roy won her seat from the Aruvappulam grama panchayat
(local self-government at the village level), which had been represented
by the Congress for the past fifteen years. Reshma turned twenty-one,
the minimum age to contest these polls, the day before she filed her
nomination. She is a member of the Students’ Federation of India (SFI)
and of the Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI), both mass
organisations of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and a leader in
her college union. During the pandemic, Reshma had worked for the
‘helping hand’ programme started by KU Jineesh Kumar, another Left youth
leader and the local representative to the state legislature; through
the programme, they aid anyone who required it during the lockdown.
During her campaign, Reshma kept a diary, in which she noted down the
frustrations and demands of the people. She was happy that the Left gave
young people the opportunity to run in these elections. ‘If people have
a good opinion of me after five years’, she said, ‘that is the real
victory’.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33793" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Arya-marches-6.jpg" alt="Arya Rajendran marches during the campaign" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="287"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33793" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Arya Rajendran marches during the campaign</span></p></div>
<p>Arya Rajendran, twenty-one years old, is the president of
Balasangham, an organisation of a million children that works to promote
scientific and secular values in children that was set up on 28
December 1938 in Kalliasseri, Kannur (Kerala); its first president was
the young communist (and later chief minister of Kerala for eleven
years) E.K. Nayanar. Arya, a member of the SFI, sat for her final
college exams at the same time as she campaigned for her seat on the
Thiruvananthapuram city council. ‘Local bodies are the nerves of the
democratic process of Kerala’, she said. ‘It is important that we have
young people committed to the cause of democracy being elected to
office. It is through local office that we can make sure that everyone
benefits from the Left alternative being developed in the state’.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33823" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/PP-Divya-1.jpg" alt="PP Divya campaigns in Kannur district>" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="287"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33823" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>PP Divya campaigns in Kannur district</span></p></div>
<p>PP Divya, at thirty-six-year-old, is already a veteran in the
communist movement. She is a leader in the DYFI and the All-India
Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and is a district committee
member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). She had already been a
member of the district panchayat (council) since 2015, but now she has
been re-elected and is expected to become the president of the district
council. Not only has Divya been a key person in the fight against
COVID-19 in her district, but she has led from the front to make basic
improvements in daily life there and has led protests in solidarity with
the farmers’ revolt that has gripped India.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33783" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Afsal-campaigns-2.jpg" alt="Afsal campaigns in Malappuram" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="323"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33783" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>Afsal campaigns in Malappuram</span></p></div>
<p>E. Afsal, like Reshma and Arya, is a leader of the SFI. At age
twenty-five, he won from the Mangalam ward of the Malappuram district
council. Afsal, Reshma, and Arya walk in the footprints of KV Sudheesh,
who was a student leader and an elected office holder of the Kannur
district council. On 26 January 1994, Sudheesh was stabbed to death by
members of the fascist <a href="https://mayday.leftword.com/catalog/product/view/id/21401">RSS</a>, which is connected to India’s ruling BJP.</p>
<div id="gmail-attachment_33971" class="gmail-wp-caption"><p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Prameela.jpg" alt="P. Prameela, who won a landslide at Pilicode, returns to work the next day" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="363" height="431"></p><p id="gmail-caption-attachment-33971" class="gmail-wp-caption-text"><span>P. Prameela, who won a landslide at Pilicode, returns to work the next day</span></p></div>
<p>Comrade Prameela, who works as an agricultural wage labour, was one
of the 58% of women who won seats in this local body election. Prameela
is a member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), one of the
directors of the board of the Kodakkad service co-operative bank, and a
leader of AIDWA. She won more than 90% of the votes to take a seat on
the Pilicode panchayat.</p>
<p><img src="https://www.thetricontinental.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/20201224_Kadammanitta-Ramakrishnan-e1608766335303.jpg" alt="" style="margin-right: 0px;" width="431" height="431"></p>
<p>In 1976, the communist poet Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan wrote <i>Kannurkkotta,</i>
or ‘Kannur Fort’, a poem that reflected his hope that the old can fade
away and the youth can bring forth a new world. Ramakrishnan was
president of the Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham (the progressive
writers’ association) and an elected member of the state assembly (his
candidacy supported by the Left).</p>
<p><em>All the fortresses will become antiques.</em><br>
<em>All the cannons will silently rust.</em><br>
<em>All the sultans will run away into the dark caves.</em><br>
<em>My children, who are not sleep deprived,</em><br>
<em>Will witness curiously all these events. </em></p>
<p>They will witness these curiously because they will not be fixated on
the past. With names like Reshma, Arya, Divya, Prameela and Afsal, they
will set aside the cannons and the sultans to construct a democratic
world. And we will be walking right beside them.</p>
<p>Warmly,</p>
<p>Vijay.</p>
<p><br></p>
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