The supreme confidence, if not the menace, in the statements was unmistakable, as the leader of the Marad Arayasamajam, the Sangh Parivar's fishermen's organisation in the communally volatile Marad village in coastal Kozhikode, introduced himself to Frontline in his office in October 2003: "I was born here. I was brought up here. I am a fisherman and have been a member of the Arayasamajam from the mid-1970s. I have held all the important positions in the Samajam, except that of the president. I rose through the Rashtiya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS). When my work proved a hindrance for everyday RSS `shakha' activity, I joined the Bharatiya Janata Party, a party in which I have held several important local responsibilities. Now I am the secretary of the Arayasamajam. I have no hesitation in saying that all members of the Arayasamajam (the entire fishing community at Marad) are RSS supporters. Nobody sings a different tune here. Our activities are fully supported by our leadership."

For months on end, after nine fishermen, eight of them Hindus, were brutally done to death in a frenzy of communal revenge killings at Marad in May last year (Frontline, November 7, 2003), T. Suresh, the leader of the small Hindu fishing community in the village, literally became the face of the Sangh Parivar in Kerala, making demands, posing threats, rejecting proposals and keeping the State government machinery on tenterhooks before agreeing to proposals that eventually launched a peace initiative in the Muslim-majority village in north Kerala. The Muslim families that fled the village fearing reprisals have since returned and the tenuous peace holds. The Arayasamajam office in the village is a veritable fortress secured by Sangh cadre. During the strife it was the virtual government in the village, where political parties feared to tread.

The Arayasamajam leader and the men who surround him perhaps symbolise what the Hindutva combine is up to in Kerala.