In 1936, when the Travancore Labour Association in the Alappuzha district celebrated its 12th anniversary, the hammer-and-sickle flag of the Communist Party rose for the first time in Kerala. Senior leader VK Velayudhan raised the flag at the Aresseri ground in Alappuzha.

This was 28 years before the split of the Communist Party of India. The incident is recorded in the publication of the 50th-anniversary celebrations of the Travancore Labour Association, a coir factory workers’ union. Journalist Saju Chelangad found the information with photos among the old collections of his father, Chelangad Gopalakrishnan, historian.

It is also recorded in the biography of VK Velayudhan – Sentinel of Social Justice – by historian MK Sanoo. “As a leader of the labourers, (mostly oppressed castes) it was he (Velayudhan) who hoisted the Red Flag, emblazoned with hammer and sickle, for the first time in the soil of Kerala,” says the book.

Saju shared both photos and details of the event, which was reported in an article by KK Kunjan, a senior leader of the Travancore Labour Association. It was the first workers’ organisation in Kerala, writes Saju.

The association was created after coir workers were unhappy with organisations like the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana in addressing their grievances. Joseph Tharamangalam, in his book Agrarian Class Conflict, writes that the Travancore Labour Association was founded by a yard superintendent and foreman called PK Bava, popularly known as Vadappuram Bava, in 1922.

Kunjan's article was about the founder of the organisation, Vadappuram Bava and the reasons that led to the formation of the Travancore Labour Association in 1922. The day the red flag rose, R Sugathan, one of the early trade unionists in the state, was selected as the general secretary of the association. Other pioneers of the Communist movement in Kerala — P Krishna Pillai and EMS Namboothiripad — were then members of the Congress Socialist Party.