Blood sport claimed his limbs, not hope

Kannur: There is an indifferent smile on his face as he straps the prosthetic legs. He had lost the real ones 22 years ago, hacked by former ‘comrades-inarms’ in the CPM, who were seeking retribution for the cardinal sin in party heartland: ideological defection. The NDA candidate for Koothuparamba constituency, C Sadanandan Master, is considered a living martyr, but the name he would like to give himself would be warrior-survivor, of the politics of bloodshed in Kannur.
Master, through his candidature, is seeking to expose the gory face of the district’s political landscape.“The assault on me was CPM’s warning to people that the same fate shall befall them if they dare to break ranks. I am lucky to be alive to tell the tale, but the memory that flashes back every morning when I see my legs are painful,” he said.
The brutal assault happened on the night of January 25, 1994. A ‘gift’ for his ideological shift from that of Marx and Engels to Hedgewar and Golwarkar and setting up an RSS shakha in his village, Perincheri, near Mattannur. “I remember hearing a couple of explosions as I alighted a bus at Uruvachal. Before I could guess what was happening, someone grabbed me from behind, pushed me down and chopped off the legs,” he recalled fiddling the artificial legs. In the fading light he recognized eight faces, all known to him before.
“Semi-conscious, I lay in a pool of blood for 15 minutes or so. My body was numb as the police took me to hospital. Only then did I realize that I had lost my legs below the knees. One leg lay nearby, the other was dumped somewhere. The police collected them in a bag and rushed me to the hospital,” he said.
Reattachment surgeries, he says, were not that common and the facility was available only in Ernakulam. It was not sure if he could survive a long journey and the legs had to be sacrificed to save his life.
“Though I was an SFI leader during my pre-degree days, I couldn’t withstand their intolerance and violence. I slowly retracted from the circle and started reading articles by Akkitham Achuthan Namboodiri and P Parameshwaran among others. It drew me closer to the RSS. The CPM wanted me to pay dearly for that, but I don’t feel I was wrong, because the communist ideology has lost its relevance,” he said.
Though he fought the case legally, and the accused were brought to book in 2006, they are out on bail as their appeal is pending with the high court, said Sadanandan.
“The candidature came as a surprise to me, but now I feel this is a God-given chance to take my fight to the people. I am sure it would bear fruit, but the hard task is to walk long distances with these artificial legs,” he said.
The BJP knows its ‘living martyr’ might not win the electoral battle, but he is more like a mascot for the party that has lost many workers in the district. “People see not just a candidate in me, but a victim of Left atrocities who survived the odds and I am sure, through me they would realize the futility of violence,” he said.