THIRUVANANTHAPURAM:In politics crazy Kerala, it’s so hilariously easy to switch from a mundane debate on universities to one on the questionable escapades of, say, Stalin’s Soviet Union.LDF and UDF MLAs energetically proved the point on Tuesday, during the discussion on three education Bills which were later passed amid UDF objections.
The erstwhile Soviet Russia and many of its better-known denizens came alive for several hotly debated minutes in the Kerala Assembly on Tuesday even as the Chair tried, in vain, to steer the discussion back to more pressing topics. CPM’s M Swaraj, defending the Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit (Amendment) Bill, abruptly went off on a tangent saying that Communism was never against journalists and never silenced voices like that of Gauri Lankesh.
Muslim League’s K N A Khader immediately wanted to know why then was Alexander Solzhenitsyn unceremoniously packed off to freezing Siberia. Swaraj parried with two questions of his own: “How did Solzhenitsyn become a favourite of the Swedish Academy?’’ and ‘’How should a government react to a counter-revolutionary movement?’’