THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: CPM politburo member M A Baby has sought to restore the late Prof M N Vijayan, to his high exalted position of a Left ideologue, extolling his invaluable contributions as a Left fellow-traveller, thinker, teacher, literary critic, trenchant critic of communalism, orator, president of the Progressive Literary Movement and the editor of Deshabhimani weekly.
Mr Baby’s blunt and forthright admission on Prof M N Vijayan, once derided by the dominant party faction for being close to Opposition leader V S Achuthanandan and highly critical of the then party secretary, Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, appears in the latest issue of Janasakthi weekly, edited by CPM critics.
Although the party would not subscribe every assessment by Prof Vijayan, it would not hesitate to accept his correct observations and critical assessments of the Left.
Even Mr Pinarayi Vijayan, for whom Prof Vijayan had been a mentor, had not made any similar observations.
Mr Baby also said CPM leaders and workers should be careful to avoid words that wounded others. All party men were bound to self-critically analyse their lapses and digressions from the party diktat. Not having the openness to correct one’s mistakes lent ammunition to critics to attack the party.
He admitted that he was also once party to sectarian activities but the party had by and large fought the scourge of such sectarian tendencies. The State unit’s organizational issues were now before a six-member politburo commission, headed by general secretary Sitaram Yechury.
Asked how the LDF, which called Congress corrupt, afford to work with Kerala Congress (B) leader R Balakrishna Pillai, Mr Baby said there was a question of credibility in Mr Pillai’s stance against corruption.
He was not part of the LDF though he and son K B Ganesh Kumar were on their own exposing UDF’s corruption. Society would naturally raise the question whether Mr Pillai was qualified to be in the forefront along with the Left in its anticorruption campaign. The weekly is edited former Deshabhimani associate editor G Sakthidharan.
