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RSS raids Red nerve center
A postcard from the bloody battle ground
WSN Network

NEW DELHI: Thalassery has echoed with political violence so often and so regularly that the Indian media had long stopped even mentioning it, but on Sunday, the RSS-CPM violence spilled out in Delhi as Sangh Parivar activists stoned senior CPM leaders right inside the CPM headquarters and smashed cars even as Prakash Karat, Sitaram Yechuri and other top leaders watched.

Vendetta politics played out in full screen version and the attack, possibly the first such on the nerve-centre of a party in Delhi, was so stunning that the nuclear winter also thawed for a few moments. Even Sonia Gandhi called up Prakash Karat to convey her concern. 

The attack had its roots to a deadly conflict over 3,000 km away in Kerala, where a turf war between the BJP and the CPM have claimed seven lives in just one week.

The BJP-RSS workers laid siege to the Left party’s A.K. Gopalan Bhavan headquarters in Gole Market, protesting against the spiral of violence in north Kerala’s Kannur. Among the seven murdered in Kannur, five were BJP supporters.

The BJP, which has never won an election in Kerala, had been reminding the CPM of the Sangh’s clout in Delhi and the attack in Delhi was perhaps meant to be a trailer, putting into practice the warning that the RSS workers openly uttered in Kerala.

The ugly stone pelting and brawl lasted around 20 minutes before police used tear gas to disperse the crowd. A concrete slab was dropped on the rear windshield of the Maruti Zen that politburo member Sitaram Yechury drives. An office Ambassador, which Karat uses sometimes, was also damaged.

12 March 2008
 

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