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‘End of an era’ could be a cliché as far as obits go. Yet, for Velikkakath Sankaran Achuthanandan, nothing could be more apt. Not just because the former Chief Minister of Kerala was the last survivor among the 32 founders of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) who walked out of the Communist Party of India's National Council in 1964 to form the new party. But he was also the last of India’s Communist titans who had carved a niche for themselves in the country’s political history through their struggles, sacrifices, integrity, and deep commitment to the downtrodden.
Indian Communists’ first generation had fought every form of authority; feudal, royal, colonial, and independent India’s ruling elite as well. But the movement is pockmarked with many ironies. Prominent among them has been the patrician root of most leaders of the avowedly proletarian movement. The Politburo was long dubbed the 3B club – Bourgeois, Brahmin and Bhadralok. The supreme body has long been dominated by members – mostly male – from the dominant castes, or English-speaking intellectuals who learnt Marxism from the elite universities of Oxford, Cambridge or Edinburgh.
Here is where VS, as he was known, was so different. In life, he had topped only in deprivation. He was neither upper class nor upper caste. He was orphaned before reaching 10 years of age, which forced him to drop out in Class IV and become a child labourer. The battle-scarred VS was no armchair revolutionary, as he was baptised in militant uprisings like the Punnapra Vayalar revolt of 1946, Kerala Communists’ most legendary chapter in which hundreds of poor peasants were killed in police firing. Though VS managed to save his life by a whisker, he was soon hounded out and tortured brutally.
Achuthanandan at 23 had participated in the Punnapra Vayalar struggle as a young revolutionary fired by the urge to create a new world. But even while he was negotiating his nineties, the fighting spirit had not died down in him. The veteran personally kept fighting protracted legal cases against corrupt politicians, long after his own party had ceased pursuing them. He fought the sensational corruption case against former Chief Minister K Karunakaran for about two decades. He waged a war up to the Supreme court in the sexual harassment case involving PK Kunhalikkutty, Muslim League leader and former minister. He got R Balakrishna Pillai, a veteran Kerala Congress leader, behind bars in a corruption case that had lingered for 20 years. Even a few days after he turned 96 years old, VS filed a petition in the state High Court against former Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in a case related to a land scam.
But what made him most unique was his courage to fight even his own party and its leaders when he found them faltering on principles. His fights against the party's unprincipled alliances or its corrupt trade union leaders, and later Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in the Rs 350 crore SNC Lavalin scam, were legendary.
This had often made him pay heavily. He faced the first disciplinary action in 1964 for organising a blood donation camp inside the jail for Indian soldiers fighting the Chinese army. He was under detention along with many other Communist leaders for their alleged pro-China stand. The blood camp was later seen as a violation of the party’s official line to stay neutral on the border dispute between India and China. As disciplinary action, VS was banished from the party’s state level leadership to slog at the district level. It then took more than a decade for him to return to the state level. But it was only the first among the long list of punitive actions he faced from the party during his long political career.
The last was in 2009 when he was dropped from the Politburo for openly accusing his bête noir, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, of having been involved in the SNC Lavalin scam. He was never re-inducted to the supreme body which he had entered in 1985.
Nevertheless, it is right that VS’s battles were not always driven by high moral principles alone. He was known for his penchant for power struggles, personal likes and dislikes, factionalism etc. In spite of his image as an anti-graft warrior, his critics cite his turning a blind eye to his son’s alleged irregularities. VA Arunkumar, his son, had faced several allegations ranging from corruption charges to an undeserved promotion to the post of additional director in an autonomous institute under the government of Kerala.Kerala CPI(M) had witnessed the worst form of factionalism during the last two decades in which VS had the most prominent role, although he was at the receiving end for most of these years. His worst moment came during the 1996 Assembly elections when his rivals had defeated him in a red bastion and denied him Chief Ministership.
This shocker made him livid and he re-worked his strategy to get even. The first clever move was to split his rival camp. He played a masterstroke and got the powerful Kannur faction led by Nayanar and Pinarayi Vijayan to join him. This led to VS taking over the party by 1998, decimating his opponents which included even titans like EMS Namboodiripad and E Balanandan.
But soon, the power equations took another turn with Nayanar and Vijayan leaving him in the lurch to dominate the party on their own. This kicked off the protracted war between VS and Vijayan. Although VS had emerged in this war as a popular moral warrior for those outside the party, Vijayan, with support from party General Secretary Prakash Karat successfully got him marginalised inside the organisation. Despite being CPI(M)’s most popular face and biggest vote catcher, VS was initially denied a party ticket in both 2001 and 2006 to contest elections. Only a massive popular upsurge on both occasions made the CPI(M) central leadership swallow the decision and field VS.
Achuthanandan fell out with Karat during this period as he believed he was partial to Vijayan. This also made VS move closer to Sitaram Yechury, who always considerate towards the veteran. On many occasions Yechuri had even shielded VS from the wrath of the leadership. This made the Vijayan faction turn against Yechuri, which caused the Kerala CPI(M) to oppose him in his ongoing tussle against Karat on the issue of alliance with the Congress to fight the BJP. VS was the lone Yechuri supporter from Kerala.
VS never had the theoretical prowess of EMS Namboodiripad, the mass appeal of AK Gopalan or the oratory skill and sense of humour of Nayanar. Yet, in the past three decades, no leader of any party in Kerala could match Achuthanandan’s popularity. The reason is simple: at a time when public life was fast losing its ethical values, Achuthanandan was seen as the last link to a golden past of selfless leaders. VS has also the unique distinction for having brought to the agenda of political mainstream issues of ‘micro politics’ like gender, environment, tribal rights and even problems of proprietary software etc.
For the Indian Left, the loss of one of its last titans and the most popular faces could not have come at a more inopportune moment. For, never in its history has the Left passed through a worse crisis than this with its hegemony reduced to one state and its Parliamentary presence touching an all time low.
MG Radhakrishnan is former Editor, Asianet News.
Views expressed are the author’s own.