Secretary, Communist Party of India ( Marxist) West Bengal State Committee, Surjya Kanta Mishra has courted a massive controversy by claiming that the three dangers lurking in Bharat’s society are: ‘Hindu, upper caste, and men’. His claims were boastfully posted on the official Facebook page of the CPI (M) WB unit on Monday, December 28.

The post written in Bangla translates to, “There are three words that command the dangers lurking in our society: Hindu, upper caste and man. As part of the Bharatiya society, we cannot say that we are free from these dangers in all fields. We must continue our struggle against these dangers.”

The post escalated quickly and triggered a massive debate on social media; Hindus were livid at the derogatory comment made by the senior politician. While many stated that “communism is a social cancer”, others maintained that the a big danger to Hindu society are those who sought refuge in Bharat after being driven away by Islamists from their ancestral homes in East Pakistan (today’s Bangladesh), and after landing in Bharat, took to propagating communism and ‘secularism’ and became averse to Hindu Dharma.

Mishra has held various ministerial positions – Land and Land Reforms, Panchayat and Rural Development and Health and Family Welfare – in the CPM-led Left Front governments that ruled West Bengal from 1977 to 2011. He became the Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly in 2011, after the TMC’s victory. He was appointed member of the Polit Bureau, the highest decision making body of the CPI(M) in 2012 and appointed CPI(M) West Bengal unit secretary in 2015.

Vice-President, BJP Mahila Morcha, WB and media panellist Keya Ghosh took to Twitter to call out the bigotry in Mishra’s comments.

Surjya Kanta Mishra, though only in name, is a Hindu. He is also a descendant from a Brahmin family and is a man. An average reader is left wondering if he is the danger he claims Bharatiya society is faced with?

He is not the only ‘upper-caste Hindu’ male from the Communist party that may be looked at as a danger to this society. The CPI (M) in West Bengal is replete with the ilk he hails from. All the tallest leaders in the Communist party have come from the same identity pool, be it Jyoti Basu or Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The Communists in West Bengal have never recognized a woman leader in the party; neither have they had a woman as their General Secretary nor placed a woman leader as their candidate for Chief Ministership. The party has existed for five decades and in these five decades, they couldn’t find a deserving Hindu SC candidate to offer him/her a chair of authority.

Such doublespeak is the hallmark of Communists all over the world. The proletariat (working class) is quickly forgotten after power is won through bloody class warfare, and the ruling elites start enjoying the same luxuries and privileges they claimed to have been fighting against.

For eg., Jyoti Basu lived an affluent life and his love for fine scotch, posh parties and good food was an open secret. As chief minister, he shifted his official residence for a time to the magnificent Raj Bhavan in Kolkata. Post retirement, he lived until his death in a sprawling state bungalow. But no one would have begrudged the former CM such indulgences, if only he had not left behind a broken and economically ravaged state after a 23 year term. A similar pattern can be seen repeating in Kerala where senior CPM leaders like Pinarayi Vijayan, Kodiyeri Balakrishnan and their offspring are sunk in corruption and wrongdoings. From Hugo Chavez to Pol Pot, the same story has been repeated.

When it comes to unleashing atrocities on the backward classes, it is the same party that, when in power, had fired at innocent and hapless Hindus who had sought refuge in Marichjhapi and killed thousands of them. The police of the Jyoti Basu government was accused of raping the women in Marichjhapi and his communist government is also tainted with the rape of NGO worker Anita Dewan. A vulnerable Muslim woman from Bangladesh, Tasleema Nasrin, was denied refuge in West Bengal in the communist era.

While the senior communist leader trains his guns at Hindu Dharma and its ‘upper caste’ men, he posts pictures of himself celebrating Christmas. In 2015, Mishra had denigrated Hindu beliefs by stating, “I am the son of my father, not of Lord Rama.”

In 2015, communist leader Bikas Ranjan Bhattacharya, another Hindu (in name only), had triggered a massive uproar by eating beef in the middle of a Kolkata street in the provocative beef-eating festival organized by the communists.

Communism, in general, looks at religion as the ‘opium of the masses’. However, another communist leader of the same stature, Md. Selim did not touch pork to challenge the beliefs of his religion. The communist party has brazenly endorsed and shown respect for all other religions while denigrating the Hindu dharma repeatedly.

The communist party Mishra belongs to, during the 35 years of its rule, has demonstrated that nothing but communism is one of the main threats to Bharatiya society. The sooner this universally discredited ideology and its radical university strongholds are dismantled and replaced with Dharma, the better.