Kerala’s long history of political violence is often reduced to slogans, party statements, and disputed numbers. What tends to disappear in that process are the individual lives, the families, and the moments of extreme brutality that defined entire phases of the state’s political history. This series revisits some of those episodes through reported accounts and survivor narratives, examining how political allegiance became a trigger for lethal violence.
Several of the cases explored in this series are documented in Aahuti: The Untold Stories of Sacrifice in Kerala, a compilation of political killings involving RSS and BJP sympathisers in the state. In this series borrowed from Aahuti, we focus on reconstructing what actually happened on the ground and the wider context in which such violence unfolded.
In the second instalment, we look at a chilling incident of political violence that sent shockwaves through Kerala’s Alappuzha district, two RSS workers, Murali and Kaladharan, were brutally murdered in June 1982 after they intervened in a local intimidation episode, according to documented accounts.
Murali, who served as Mandal Karyavah of Chennithala, and fellow karyakarta Kaladharan had rushed to the residence of a local Swayamsevak after reports emerged that a group of CPI(M) activists had stormed the house and threatened his elderly parents. Responding to the family’s cries for help, the two leaders, accompanied by others, reached the spot and temporarily defused the situation.
However, the violence did not end there.
While returning from the area, Murali and Kaladharan stopped at a nearby temple to offer prayers. It was there that the assailants struck.
A group of armed attackers descended on the temple courtyard, tied up the temple priest, and launched a violent assault. Murali was attacked inside the temple itself and hacked to death using sharp weapons including daggers and swords. He died on the spot from grievous injuries.
Kaladharan initially managed to flee the scene amid the chaos. But the attackers pursued him, and he too was later killed. His body was subsequently recovered within the temple premises.
The double murder occurred in the backdrop of heightened political tensions in the region following the earlier killing of Dharmajan and Yashoda – an incident that had already triggered unrest in Alappuzha.
Local accounts suggested that the attack on Murali and Kaladharan was part of a continuing cycle of retaliatory political violence unfolding in the district at the time.
The brutality of the killings, particularly the murder carried out inside a place of worship after restraining the priest, intensified fear in the locality and underscored the deep political hostilities prevailing in parts of Kerala during that period.
The incident remains one of several politically linked killings from the era documented in accounts of ideological violence in the state.
Aahuti (released 2016 by BJP, endorsed by PM Modi) lists over 270 RSS volunteers murdered by communists since 1969, highlighting this as exemplary brutality against families, including women like Yashoda.
Source: Aahuti
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