These questions are being asked in Kerala where Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is also Home Minister and whose current claim to fame is on the basis of his no-nonsense handling of the Sabarimala women’s entry issue on the back of the Supreme Court’s decision that women of all age have the right to pray at the Sabarimala Ayyappa temple. Opposition to the decision was prompt and overwhelming but Pinarayi Vijayan stood firm and threw the might of the State behind women’s right.

When “obstructive forces” lit Ayyappa Jyothi from Kasargode to Thiruvananthapuram to protect Swami Ayyappa’s eternal celibacy, Pinarayi Vijayan responded with the ‘Women’s Wall’ stretching from Kasargode to Thiruvananthapuram and beyond. Everyone clapped and cheered and there couldn’t have been a stauncher supporter of women’s rights in Kerala than Pinarayi Vijayan. But no, it all was a sham, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is not deserving of the title, not if he hauls up DCP Chaitra Theresa John for raiding a CPM District Office in search of fugitives.

“How dare you?” is the charge against DCP Chaitra Theresa John. She committed the blasphemy of raiding the Thiruvananthapuram CPM District Committee Office in the city around midnight on getting credible information that DYFI activists who had pelted stones at a police station were holed up there. DYFI activists stoned the police station after being told they wouldn’t be allowed to meet two men arrested under the stringent POCSO Act. Post this blatant show of power, police listed the names of ten accused and went in search of them.

The morning after the police raid, DCP Chaitra Theresa John was summoned to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s hallowed presence and given a dressing down by the Home Minister. According to sources, DCP Theresa John heard Home Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and gave him time to get the poison out of his system and then in patient and calm voice told him she hadn’t committed any crime and was well within the law to go searching for fugitives on the run holed up in hideouts, it did not matter if those hideouts were offices of political parties. Pinarayi Vijayan had no answer to that and Chaitra Theresa John walked out head held high.

But, did that spare her “punishment”? Not by a long shot. Chaitra Theresa John was relieved of her post and DYFI and CPM continued to demand that “action” be taken against her. For what? For not “confirming first” that culprits were holed up in the party office before mounting the raid! Question is how to do the “confirming” without making a physical check of the premises, which is what the police did. The kind of logic by Pinarayi’s party is beyond comprehension and definitely illogical. Pinarayi does not have the guts or good sense to tell his party and DYFI activists to shut the hell up.

And Pinarayi’s Women’s Wall is down in a heap from Kasargode to Thiruvananthapuram. Is this the same man who claimed Guinness Book Record for building the longest women’s wall? Is this the progressive Navothana Nayakan in the mould of Ayyankali and Chattambi Swamikal and Sree Narayana Guru: reformers of the 20th Century? Pinarayi Vijayan is proving that all the hype surrounding him was for nothing. That at 77, he has not many years left to correct his image but IPS Batch 2015 Chaitra Theresa John has 35 years no less to make a mark.

Pinarayi Vijayan is setting a bad example. But communists have always been predominantly male dominant. Except for Brinda Karat, is there no woman CPM leader of note? And she maybe made the cut only because she’s wife of Prakash Karat. Communists whether they be of the Soviet Union of then or China of now do not have any woman leader to flaunt. Mao’s wife was part of the Gang of Four and she went out in disgrace. Pinarayi Vijayan had a chance to correct the wrong, but he’s showing the true colours of the Communist. Chaitra Theresa John is living example of communist double-speak on women’s rights, and gender justice. (IPA Service)