In the late 1990s, visiting the home of the minor survivor of sexual abuse in Idukki’s Suryanelli, VS Achuthanandan patiently heard the family out, before taking one lakh rupees he saved up from his pension, and handing them. When they seemed reluctant, he asked them to consider this as coming from the child's grandfather.
“The life of a century that VS lived is not just the history of an individual or a Communist leader. His life was the history of Kerala’s evolution itself,” wrote women's rights activist Suja Susan George, recalling the incident after VS' passing. She detailed how he had himself reached out to her back then to learn more about the Suryanelli case and then visited the survivor's house with her. Suja stood outside the family’s modest home when this touching exchange took place inside.
Without grand pronouncements or making a show of it, VS Achuthanandan, Kerala's one-time Chief Minister and beloved Marxist, who passed away on Monday, July 21, quietly stood with women in various forms of distress throughout his active years. The centenarian, who was 101 when he passed, known for his ringing speeches, did not make a big deal of these silent gestures. But his thundering slogans about the equality of all humans were played and replayed on Monday evening, like a reminder for the harsh times we live in.
The late CPI(M) leader was more about action than words when it came to expressing solidarity with women pushed to the margins. In 2009, while he was the Chief Minister, the government of Kerala decided to reserve 50% of all seats in the local bodies for women. Five decades earlier, in the 1950s, he famously forayed into Idukki to campaign for Rosamma Punnose, the candidate of the undivided CPI, for her election from Devikulam– which she won.
VS’ actions were often unpredictable, and he’d make his move without a lot of noise. In 2015, when the Pembilai Orumai protest broke out in Munnar of Idukki and women plantation workers demanded better wages from the Kannan Devan Hills Plantations, VS moved into their midst at his advanced age of 91. This was a time when no party came forward to support the cause.
Surrounded by the protesting women labourers, VS said, "Concerned about the union leaders who were acting in the interest of the organisation, you have taken up this strike to oppose their approach. To protect the rights of the workers, you, the workers, have taken the lead in the strike. I congratulate you.”
Later, in 2017, when CPI(M)’s then Minister for Power, MM Mani, made insipid, obscene remarks about the women labourers, VS came down heavily on him. While Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and other senior leaders delayed responses, VS promptly said, “A true Communist will never insult women.”
Standing with survivors through and through
In November 1970, when VS was a legislator in the Opposition, he moved an adjournment motion in the Assembly to present the case of four women farm workers sexually assaulted by eight police men in Alappuzha’s Nehru ward. VS had received a telegram about it the previous night at one in the morning and immediately left for Alappuzha to speak with the survivors. He travelled back within hours to present the incident before the Assembly, something several political observers say the state may perhaps have buried if not for VS.
He had, for the longest time, fought alongside the Kozhikode-based NGO Anweshi to bring justice to the survivors in the ice cream parlour sex scandal, which dates back to the early 1990s. He moved petitions accusing the Congress-led state government of protecting the accused, since a Minister-- PK Kunhalikutty of the Muslim League-- was involved in the case. K Ajitha of Anweshi said that he was the only [political] leader to have stood with Anweshi till the end of his life, in their fight for justice.
In 2017, when he was 94 years old and his health was not at its best, VS sat among women's rights activists to speak for 'Avalkoppam'-- a movement to support the survivor in the 2017 actor assault case, allegedly orchestrated by popular star Dileep. "Some politicians and film personalities are not with the survivor, but with the assaulter. But I will be with her till she gets justice," VS declared.
He also visited the mother of the Dalit victim of rape, who died at her house in Perumbavoor in 2016. "I could not stand to see the suffering of that mother, who worked as a daily wage laboure,r to educate her daughter. I struggled to find words to speak to her," he said.
VS was also one of the few to express his indignation with popular actor Jagathy Sreekumar, who was accused of sexual assault in a scandal in 2007. Achuthanandan refused to offer ponnada– a decorative shawl- to honour the actor at a public event, a gesture very few politicians take even today, when women have come out with much more revealing experiences of sexual harassment from the film industry. Sreekumar was later acquitted by a special court.
Popular opinions appeared to not hinder the CPI(M) veteran from taking actions that he thought were most just.
Humanity above everything else
One of VS’ most discussed public appearances came in 2012, a little after the murder of TP Chandrasekharan, a CPI(M) loyalist who had left the party and formed the Revolutionary Marxist Party(RMP).
Chandrasekharan and RMP were a major impediment to the CPI(M) in Vadakara, grabbing a good portion of the party’s vote share. When he was murdered, word was strongly out about the involvement of the CPI(M). While everyone, including Pinarayi Vijayan, reduced Chadrasekharan to a political renegade, VS stood apart.
He visited Chandrasekharan’s wife, KK Rema her home in Kozhikode’s Onchiyam on the day of an anticipated bypoll (in Neyyatinkara), letting her take his hands in hers as she broke down before him. The visit and the photograph of a weeping Rema, comforted by an ageing Achuthanandan, became a defining moment in Kerala’s politics.
While the CPI(M) would be on the defensive for years on end about Chandrasekharan’s predicament, a court later convicted three local CPI(M) leaders, among others, for the murder.
Rema, posting her tribute to VS, remembered VS for his rebellion and how, in a party like the CPI(M), where organisational decisions are the gospel truth, exceptions were allowed for only one person—VS Achuthanandan.
It was not often that a hardcore party member stepped out of line, went against the diktat. VS, known to hold the party above everything else, having embraced Communism at a young age and nearly died for the cause, still appeared to melt before humane causes. He was not afraid to rebel against leaders within the party if he thought their stance was unjust, and went out of his way, unmindful of ill health or age, to make amends in his own way.
Like KK Rema wrote, with VS’ passing, only the leader, fighter and hero of struggles is saying goodbye. His ideals, stances, and convictions will never fade away.