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Monday, Dec 17, 2007
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Pinarayi hits out at Chandrachoodan

Staff Reporter

Pinarayi Vijayan says the CPI(M) is not a punching bag.

Kozhikode: Communist Party of India (Marxist) State secretary Pinarayi Vijayan on Sunday came down heavily on the reported remarks made by Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) State secretary T.J. Chandrachoodan that the shadow of the politics of the rich had fallen over Left parties.

Addressing the delegates of a three-day district conference at its inaugural session here, Mr. Vijayan, without naming the RSP leader, said that such comments were usually made by extreme Left organisations. If the RSP leader wanted to make any statements, he should discuss them within the Left Democratic Front (LDF), he said.

The CPI (M) Polit Bureau member read out what Prof. Chandrachoodan had said in Kollam district on Saturday. “Left parties had lost its sensitiveness to social issues. Now leaders are going after Pharis Aboobacker. But leaders in countries where the communists have come back to power are purity personified,” he said referring to the reports in language dailies.

Mr. Vijayan said that it appeared that the “RSP leader had made his tongue available for a price.” However, the silence of the CPI(M) must not be construed as a sign of weakness. The party was not a punching bag, he added.

He flayed the RSP leader’s reported reference to Minister for Devaswom and Cooperation G. Sudhakaran as “an elephant dirtying the entire State with its dung and leaving the unenviable task of cleaning up the dung to the LDF.” “Anyway, we are not collecting the dung, may be it is him and his party,” Mr. Vijayan said.

He said that the RSP leader was welcome to initiate discussion within the LDF. No issue had been left unsolved, the State secretary said.

Mr. Vijayan criticised several Christian denominations and Muslim organisations for advocating the politics of the United Democratic Front (UDF). “The CPI(M) is not against any religion. But religious organisations should not interfere in politics,” he said. He alleged that the Congress party and the Indian Union Muslim League were using Christian denominations and Muslim organisations respectively as a tool to wean away believers from the CPI(M). Christian priests and Muslim religious leaders were attempting to foment trouble. “That will not work with the CPI(M),” he said.

He said that Muslim organisations had let loose a disinformation campaign that the LDF government was proposing to making Sunday a working day and stop teaching Arabic in schools and colleges. There was no proposal to make boys and girls sit together on a bench.

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