Communists Fire on Workers

There it was, for all India to see: the Communists were beating up students, firing on workers.

These beatings and shootings, which sent a shudder of shock and disgust through all India last week, took place in the steamy, waterlogged southwestern state of Kerala, the Indian state under the rule of an elected Communist government. Trouble started in a series of scuffles between students and police in the coastal district of Alleppey over the restoration of a one-anna (2-c-) student fare on the ferryboats. In the days that followed, hundreds of students, also protesting against higher tuitions and Communist textbooks in the schools, were hustled off to jail, and some were beaten senseless. Then political demonstrators clashed in a wild melee of fists, stones, spears and daggers that killed five and seriously wounded seven. Troubles came to a climax at a cashew-nut plant outside the town of Quilon when strikers rushed the gates and the Communist-directed police opened fire, killing two and wounding six.

Kerala's Communist Chief Minister E. M. S. Namboodiripad cried out--as had Khrushchev at the time of the Hungarian revolt--that the strikers and students were being misled by agents provocateurs. The Communist weekly tabloid Blitz haltingly explained away police bru tality in Kerala by claiming that the police were "trained in a tradition of unbridled repression, of which Communists were the main target during the former feudal rule," and had not got over their old ways. The Central Secretariat of the Communist Party issued a 1,200-word resolution which concluded that the shooting down of the strikers at Quilon was "an unfortunate incident," and hinted that if things worsened, there would be a demand for Communist Namboodiripad's resignation.

Opposition to the Kerala Communists mounted rapidly. Many of the student rioters were Roman Catholics (Kerala has the largest Christian population of any state in India) determined to fight Communist encroachment in the schools. Following a call for a statewide hartal, or general strike, by the Congress Party and their Socialist allies, some 10,000 dock workers left their jobs in the port of Cochin. Bazaars and factories throughout the state closed for a day. Students stayed away from school. Strikes, demonstrations and picketing erup.ted in town after town. The harried Communists, who had so often employed these same tactics themselves, seemed at a loss in dealing with them except by repression. Communist-ordered police charged with their steel-tipped lathis against demonstrators in Calicut, injuring ten. The Revolutionary Socialist Party, which had supported the Conmunists when they took office in Kerala, switched to the opposition and now denounced the Reds for "organized totalitarianism."

At week's end panicky Red Boss Namboodiripad began backing down. His government announced its willingness to withdraw all cases against student agitators, and would let them ride free on the ferryboats pending a "judicial" inquiry into the fare rise. But students and workers were still up in arms against their Communist government.

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