THE Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) condemned yesterday’s salute by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fellow Hindu chauvinists who had murdered one of its activists.

Mr Modi applauded volunteers of the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the parent organisation of his ruling BJP party, on the Hindu festival of Vijayadashami.

He tweeted his comments ahead of a visit to Uttar Pradesh state capital Lucknow, which BJP members had plastered with posters celebrating last week’s army raid into Pakistan in pursuit of Kashmiri separatist guerillas.

On Monday, RSS thugs brutally murdered CPI-M local committee member K Mohanan in Kannur, Kerala province.

The party reported that a “group of heavily armed RSS goons” had stormed into the cafe where the 52-year-old worked and hacked him to death. He received 30-40 stab wounds.

The murder coincided with BJP supporters marching to the CPI-M head–quarters in New Delhi to protest against alleged attacks on RSS militants in Kerala.

It was the second murder this year of a CPI-M member in the Dharmadom constituency represented by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

The RSS attacked a communist victory procession after Mr Vijayan’s election in May, killing one party worker.

The party said six of its activists had now been killed and some 300 injured in RSS attacks since the election of Kerala’s current Left Democratic Front government in May.

The CPI-M said 35 party offices had been destroyed and 80 houses of activists damaged in the violence.

“The sheer volume of these concerted and planned attacks exposes the perfidy that the BJP is resorting to,” the party said.

In an article for the NDTV website yesterday, CPI-M politburo member Brinda Karat, a former upper-house member, attacked Mr Modi’s pronouncements.

She said the RSS and BJP’s “cultures of hate” had been “exported to all corners of the country with state patronage.”

Ms Karat added that the intolerance of Mr Modi’s party, under whose government India has seen a string of lynchings of people accused of eating beef, “mocks the image of India as a tolerant, ancient civilisation.”