Come November and the killing fields in the Thalassery taluka of Kannur district always go berserk. Reports of brutal killings and that too in broad daylight, assail us. November 2007 was no different, with four killings in a row – all of CPI(M) sympathisers. Obviously the sangh parivar was involved in a frantic bid to hold together its diminishing cadres. The CPI(M), busy with conferences held as part of its 19th party congress, did not retaliate immediately. They waited until March 2008. On March 4, CPI(M) hit squads attacked and almost killed a local RSS leader, which led to the killing of seven people thereafter – five RSS-BJP workers and two CPI(M) activists.

As usual, all 12 persons killed in November and December belonged to the Thiyya community, the flag-bearers of both the CPI(M) and the sangh parivar, to whom the chosen party means much more, more than parents, or their favoured gods.

History has it that Kannur was the land of warriors, practitioners of Kerala’s martial art, Kalaripayattu. They lived and died for battle. Centuries later, people continue to fight and die in battles that are very often someone else’s.

For a district that has witnessed over 2,000 political clashes in the past three decades, tension and blood-letting is not a new experience; it has been, and is, a way of life.

The CPI(M) and the sangh parivar are vying with each other to build their own pocket boroughs through pitched battles that have assumed the proportions of ancient clan wars. The running battles between the CPI(M) and its foes date back to pre-independence days when the undivided Communist party started fighting the Congress here, for its own survival. The party fought and won most of its battles against the Congress and by the end of the 1950s it had become a major force in Malabar.

The Communists did not stop there. They ‘liberated’ the villages from the Congress and turned them into their strongholds. The CPI(M), which had eclipsed the CPI soon after the party split in 1964, claimed as many as 70 party villages in the district as its own during the early 1970s. Today the number of party villages is over a hundred!

A close study of CPI(M) operations in the district since then reveals that the party has never allowed any other political force to make inroads into its bastion. If it was a battle between the Communists and the Congress at the beginning, the RSS-BJP, which had sneaked into the district in the late 1960s, became the number one enemy of the Marxists soon thereafter. The ongoing battle between the two in Kannur is thus a war being waged with the aim of either protecting or capturing their respective strongholds. As a result, over the past 30 years as many as 167 people have lost their lives in the continuing feud between the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP.

As pointed out by scholar Dr T. Sasidharan, the Thalassery taluka, which lies close to Vadakara taluka in Kozhikode district, was once the land of the Chekavas, ancient warriors who, much like the Samurais of Japan, were always ready to die for the cause they stood for. "The Chekava heroes and heroines like Thacholi Othenan, Aromal Chevakar, Unniyarcha, are their role models. Even Pazhassi Raja, who had fought valiant battles against the British, still inspires them."

Crime records reveal that Kannur tops the table as far as political clashes and murders are concerned. During the last decade alone, 73 persons have become victims of political blood-letting in Kannur. This apart, over 1,000 murder attempts and several hundred political clashes were also recorded during the same period.

Fights between the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP began in 1968 with the killing of Vadikkal Ramakrishnan, an RSS volunteer who was hacked to death while returning from the saakha (shakha or local branch). The RSS, which had entered this northern district of Kerala allegedly armed with ample funding from the Hindu lobby in Mangalore in Karnataka, took up the challenge.

However, according to CPI(M) leaders, clashes in the district began with the RSS attempting to destroy communal harmony and the CPI(M) donning the mantle of protector of the minorities. The communal riots in Thalassery in 1971, in which more than 100 Muslim homes were set ablaze and looted, marked the beginning of the endless battles between their party and the RSS, they point out. "Even today the RSS-BJP combine is targeting CPI(M) workers and leaders just because we had protected the Muslims of Thalassery during the 1971 riots," says P. Sasi, Kannur district secretary of the CPI(M).

RSS-BJP leaders however blame the CPI(M) for making things worse in the district. "Our party has started making inroads into the CPI(M) strongholds. This has infuriated the leaders and the cadres alike and hence the attacks," says BJP state president, PK Krishnadas. But CPI(M) leaders disagree. According to them, party cadres act in such a way only because their opponents provoke them.

With the CPI(M), the RSS-BJP and in some pockets, the Congress, virtually ruling the villages, the state police have not been able to check the tide of violence. And very often the police fail to act promptly, as they are supposed to do, preferring to go by the diktats of politicians. In most cases, a list of culprits from the other side is provided to the police by the party concerned; these are often innocent youth who have no other mantra but to obey their party bosses.

Catch them young is the motto of both the CPI(M) and the sangh parivar. Besides training adolescent boys in the local kalaris (training schools) or saakhas, they also recruit unemployed youth to carry out the killings. As Dr T. Sasidharan observed, the lack of education as well as unemployment have prompted many a youth to become part of the killer squads for both parties.

If blood-lettings in the killing fields of Kannur are politically motivated, the brutal killings and arson in the neighbouring district of Kasargod and in the Vadakara taluka of Kozhikode district have a distinctly communal colour. Very often goons and henchmen of smugglers belonging to both the Muslim and Hindu community make life hell for the people in Kasargod. There are also incidents in which extremist outfits like Al-Uma have been involved. But in Vadakara’s Nadapuram belt the fight is directly between the extremist Muslim outfits and the lumpen elements in the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP. We shall come back to that later. In Kannur, a hitherto CPI(M) heartland, the emergence of a third player, the National Development Front (NDF), has further exacerbated tensions. The NDF is on the offensive against both the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP.

According to state police sources, five Muslim fundamentalist outfits allegedly funded by both Iran and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) are currently operating in the Muslim dominated areas of Malabar, once known for its secular fabric and character.

Using the National Development Front as an umbrella organisation, these fundamentalist bodies have made their presence felt strongly in places like Thalassery, Uliyil, Anayidukku and Thaliparamba in Kannur, the entire Nadapuram region in Kozhikode and Tirur in Malappuram. Unable to face the threat from the new player, even the CPI(M), which projects itself as the sole protector of minorities, has taken up cudgels against them.

"Both Muslim fundamentalism and Hindu fundamentalism are equally dangerous. The situation has become much more dangerous in Malabar, especially in Kannur, with the emergence of the third player (NDF)," feels PP Sasindran, a special correspondent with the leading Malayalam daily, Matrubhumi.

Even as political leaders and intellectuals describe the growth of fundamentalism among the educated Muslims of Thalassery and elsewhere in Kerala as a baffling phenomenon, a close look into the history of Thalassery and its surroundings would reveal that fundamentalism existed here, though not in its present form, even before the partition of India.

Jinnah’s Muslim League had a considerable following in Thalassery in the early 1940s. But only fishermen and coolies formed the rank and file of the party then, led by the late Sathar Sait who migrated to Pakistan soon after partition. The educated and elite Muslim families in Thalassery were politically allied with either the Indian National Congress or the Communist party. The Muslim League became a force to reckon with only after one of its charismatic leaders, the late Cheriya Mammukeyi, moved into Thalassery from Kannur in the 1960s.

Thalassery never breached its secular character until Hindutva forces unleashed a reign of terror on the Muslims here in 1971. Communal clashes became a regular phenomenon over the next few years. The violence in the Nadapuram region of Vadakara taluka is no class struggle between the haves and have-nots, as is being made out. Rather, it is a patently communal feud. The perpetrators are extremist groups in the Muslim community and the lumpen elements in the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP sporting a convenient dual identity.

Interestingly, what has further fuelled this violence is the sudden decimation of the once prospering money laundering racket (or tube money business) in these areas. A detailed inquiry into the battle between the Hindus and the Muslims in the Nadapuram region, which the police write off as a CPI(M)-IUML (Indian Union Muslim League) clash, would reveal two pertinent points.

One is that the extremist forces in the Muslim community and the lumpen elements in the CPI(M) and the RSS-BJP have had a role in communalising the century old fight between landlords and farmhands.

The second is the sudden decline in the underground tube money business. The latter has rendered many a youth jobless, adding them to the ranks of lumpens and extremists. Most of these frustrated youth, finding the rug of affluence suddenly pulled from underfoot, have found solace in either the Muslim extremist groups, including the NDF, or the newly formed gangs known by such colourful names as LTTE, 24 Brothers and so on.

(KA Antony, a political correspondent with The Indian Express until 2005, is currently special correspondent with Metro Vaaratha.)