A revolutionary mother and the feudal Left | Sukumaran C.V.

"Indignantly have I heard women argue in the same track as men, and adopt the sentiments that brutalize them, with all the pertinacity of ignorance," says Mary Wollstonecraft in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, which was published in 1792 and "is considered the first great manifesto of women’s rights".

Genuine feminists in Kerala have been witnessing indignantly women arguing ’in the same track as men’ against a 22 year old mother, Anupama, whose infant son was forcibly taken away from her when the child was just three days old and given to adoption, by her father who is a local committee member of the ruling CPIM, to protect the family honour as she delivered out of wedlock.

Two government agencies—Child Welfare Committee and Kerala State Council for Child Welfare—have connived with the grandfather who was anxious to protect the family honour, and the child was hurriedly adopted away, or rather exiled, to Andhrapradesh. Anupama delivered the child in October 2020 while she was virtually in home confinement. She escaped in April 2021 and joined with her partner who is a Dalit man and lodged complaints with the local police, with the Crime Branch and even with the Chief Minister. But her father’s hold in the party and the government prevented any action in favour of her. In search of her child Anupama approached the KSCCW, the adoption agency where her father "abandoned" the child; and the KSCCW tricked her by conducting the DNA test with the blood sample of another child! Knowing full well the mother has been searching for the child, KSCCW, whose president is none other than the Chief Minister who is the Home Minister too, hurriedly went forth with the adoption procedure and virtually exiled the child, istead of halting the adoption process as it ought to do according to the Juvenile Justice Act!

At last the crestfallen mother approached one of the Malayalam news channels, Asianet, and the channel aired the story in its News Hour debate anchored by Vinu V. John, the channel’s star News Hour anchor, with Anupama herself speaking in detail the trajectory of the multiple crimes committed against her by her family, the police, and the government agencies meant for women and child welfare. Instantly, the news created a storm and the whole media, both electronic and print, concentrated their full attention on the unprecedented crime in the history of honour crimes. Suddenly the so called progressive Kerala and the CPIM, the party which claims the credit for every progressive aspect of Kerala society, started a vicious propaganda campaign maligning the young woman. Character assassination, mudslinging and questioning her morality have been going on on social media ever since and it amounts to cyber lynching. Those who are affiliated to the party, men and women alike, participated/participate gleefully in this cyber attack against a mother who was greatly wronged by the government agencies in their over-enthusiasm to protect the "honour" of her father, violating the rights of both the infant and the mother! Anupama is vilified for three ’crimes’: Crime number 1 is that she conceived out of wedlock. Crime number 2 is that the father of her child is a Dalit man. Crime number 3 is that the man is a divorcee and hence he is immoral. Obscene contents are written and posted abundantly, commented indecently and liked and shared widely on social media by those who claim to be against the conventional bourgeois morality.

Another absurd way of expressing anger against the young lady is discussing the grief of the adopted parents for losing the child after having started loving it as their own! These people conveniently forget the fact that it is not Anupama who caused the adopted parents to grieve, but the government owned/funded adoption agency which allowed them to adopt the child knowing well that it is not an abandoned child or an orphan. To safeguard the feudal moral standards of a CPIM family, the party, the government and the government agencies for women and child welfare all conspired together and pushed an infant, its mother and its adopted parents too to traumatic spells in life.

As it is evident that the constitutional rights of both the mother and the child were grotesquely violated by the same goverment agencies that are supposed to protect the rights of children, those who facilitated the illegal adoption should exemplarily be punished. But the same agencies that have hurriedly adopted away the child were vested with the power and duty of bringing back the child. The child was given back to its mother, but that is not the end of the case as the party and the government wish to be.

No official is sacked or suspended for hurriedly exiling the child while the mother’s complaint was pending with them. And the cyber army of the CPIM continues its cyber lynching of Anupama calling her slut and her partner seed bull. These people belong to a party that claims to fight against bourgeois morality!! The news channel owned by the party also joins its cyber goons by telecasting skewed views, distorted facts and outright lies regarding the case as news to whitewash the CWC and KSCCW.

We have heard plenty about man’s inhumanity against man; but man’s organised inhumanity against an infant in order to protect the honour of its "communist" grandfather with the overt and covert help of a communist party and the government it controls is quite shocking and incredible. The CPIM in Kerala seems to travel on the same road through which it has successfully travelled in West Bengal to its inglorious downfall.

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[see related news report: Fighting parents, police and party, woman gets her son back after 13 months in Kerala ]