A. Suresh’s old FB post flaying Satheesan resurfaces

An old Facebook post by A. Suresh, former personal assistant to the late communist leader and former Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, criticising Leader of the Opposition V.D. Satheesan has resurfaced and is being discussed after Mr. Suresh attended Mr. Satheesan’s Puthuyuga Yatra in Palakkad on Tuesday.

In a post dated July 11, 2022, Mr. Suresh had come down heavily on Mr. Satheesan for criticising Achuthanandan over his alleged participation in a programme linked to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). He had also taken a swipe at Mr. Satheesan for lighting a lamp before the portrait of RSS ideologue M.S. Golwalkar, remarking that he need not invoke Achuthanandan to defend his action.

Mr. Suresh further wrote that Achuthanandan, as a communist, did not belong to what he described as the Congress tradition of publicly denouncing the RSS while maintaining covert contacts with it during elections.

The post clarified that Achuthanandan had attended the release of a book on Swami Vivekananda, edited by P. Parameswaran and organised by the Bharatiya Vichara Kendra at Hasan Marakkar Hall in Thiruvananthapuram on March 13, 2013. According to Mr. Suresh, the communist leader had attended the event at the special request of poet Sugathakumari and maintained that it was not an RSS function.

Mr. Suresh also pointed out that Achuthanandan’s speech at the event had sharply criticised what he described as the RSS’s attempts to appropriate Vivekananda and had exposed the organisation’s communal agenda.

The post concluded by asserting that the Leader of the Opposition should at least recognise that a communist like Achuthanandan could not align with Golwalkar, who had branded communists as internal enemies and anti-national.