prasad1
Active member
The shooting in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, of respected Communist leader and activist Govind Pansare and his wife, and Mr. Pansare’s consequent death five days later, witnessed a surge of righteous indignation by political leaders on both sides of the spectrum. An angry regional language press too proclaimed the dastardly deed as “a shameful blight” on Maharashtra’s progressive tradition. This echoed Mr. Pansare’s own views — he famously said during one of his cautionary speeches once that “the notion of a progressive Maharashtra was illusory” today.
Parallels have been drawn on the modus operandi in Mr. Pansare’s shooting and the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in August 2013, by left-leaning activists, progressive educationists and secular thinkers alike. The frightening coincidences in the killings of two of Maharashtra’s most respected progressives, in a space of just 18 months, has brought the ideological fissures between the State’s right wing and left wing into sharp relief — a conflict that harks back to the 1940s.
The State’s secular progressives observe that both killings were possible only in a climate of extreme ideas fuelled by the infiltration and dominance of right-wing groups in Maharashtra’s educational and cultural institutions.
Death for dissent and disbelief - The Hindu
Parallels have been drawn on the modus operandi in Mr. Pansare’s shooting and the murder of rationalist Narendra Dabholkar in Pune in August 2013, by left-leaning activists, progressive educationists and secular thinkers alike. The frightening coincidences in the killings of two of Maharashtra’s most respected progressives, in a space of just 18 months, has brought the ideological fissures between the State’s right wing and left wing into sharp relief — a conflict that harks back to the 1940s.
The State’s secular progressives observe that both killings were possible only in a climate of extreme ideas fuelled by the infiltration and dominance of right-wing groups in Maharashtra’s educational and cultural institutions.
Death for dissent and disbelief - The Hindu
