Namboodiripad - Kerala Society and Politics: An Historical Survey

Namboodiripad, E. M. S., 1909

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NUNC COGNOSCO EX PARTE

PROF. P. BANDYOPADHYAY

KERALA

E.M.S- NAMBOODIRIPAD

Thomas J. Bata Lib^y

PETERBOROUGH, ONTARIO

NATIONAL BOOK CENTRE

E.M.S. NAMBOODIRIPAD, 1984

First published 1967 by

NATIONAL BOOK AGENCY PVT. LTD.

Under title Kerala Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

Revised edition 1984 by NATIONAL BOOK CENTRE

i ' *-? * O i J ; N. , f.

Published by Rajendra Prasad for National Book Centre, 14 Ashoka Road, New Delhi 110001.

Printed at Progressive Printers, C-52-53 DDA Sheds, Okhla Industrial Estate, Phase I, New Delhi - 110020.

CONTENTS

political ground on which the central government dismissed the state government and ordered fresh elections.

The Communists are thus to be blamed for getting elected in the first instance : that has never happened in world history ! They are to be blamed for having been thrown out by a combination of mass upsurge from below and dismissal from above: it shows that the people are correcting a mistake committed earlier ! As for the Communists receiving more votes after than before the mass upsurge, that of course is of no consequence !

Ever since then, Kerala has attracted the attention of scholars not only in the rest of the country but even abroad. Lying before me are two books: The First Communist Ministry in Kerala, 1951-59, by G. K. Lieten, and Kerala : Yenan of India: Rise of Communist Power, 1937-1969, by V. M. Fic. This, however, is only a very small proportion of the number of books that have appeared from the pens of foreign and Indian authors. Scholarly articles on the subject have also been appearing in academic journals in India and abroad.

Going through this voluminous material, it can be seen that, with honourable exceptions, the authors invariably paint the Communist movement in dark colours. Not because all of them are anti-Communist by political conviction. They cannot but be directed towards anti-Communist conclusions because they are fed by the newspapers and journals published in Kerala and outside during the nearly half century that has by now elapsed since the Red Flag came to Kerala. Owned and run, as these publications are, by confirmed anti-Communists who have mastered the art of distorting facts and inventing lies in order to blacken the face of the Communist movement, they cannot but draw anti-Communist conclusions.

If one were to make a detailed analysis of the facts given, quotations cited and conclusions drawn in these writings, that itself would require an entire volume far bigger than is attempted here. Nor is it necessary for the simple reason that, if even a

RESEARCH vs REALITY 3

small fraction of all that is written were true, the Communist movement should have incurred the wrath of the people of Kerala and been wiped out of the political life of the state. In fact, however, the undivided Communist Party which was supposed to have been thrown out of power by the people in the liberation struggle and defeated in the following midterm elections secured nearly five per cent more vote's than that with which it was voted into an absolute majority in 1957.

What of the post-liberation struggle period ? In exactly seven years after the 1960 mid-term election, i.e., in 1967, many constituents of the anti-Communist Front joined the Communists against the Congress and the latter was reduced to a miserable minority of 19 in a house of 133. With all the zigzags in the fortunes of political parties since then, the CPI (M) today enjoys the position of the strongest political party in the state.

IT

A refrain that can be heard in the writings of these scholars, as well as in the remarks made by sources which are considered knowledgeable is this : the political life in Kerala is shaped by the ideology and organization of castes and religious communities. Every party, it is seriously argued, bases itself on one or a combination of castes and communities. For instance, it was said in 1957 and the following years that the Communist Party was essentially a party of the scheduled and backward Hindu castes; the Congress, on the other hand, had the support of the Christians, while the Muslim League by definition had the support of the Muslim community. All the subsequent developments in the political life of the state are sought to be explained on similar lines. One is shocked at the shallowness of thinking shown by those who claim themselves to be scholars of social science, who are reduced to such theoretical positions,