Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] veteran, freedom fighter and former Chief Minister of Kerala, V S Achuthanandan, turned 101 on Sunday.
Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan complimented, “Dear Comrade VS”, as Mr Achuthanandan is popularly known, for crossing the centennial mark.
Mr Achuthanandan’s momentous life is a story of astonishing resilience and fortitude.
A fighter, Mr Achuthanandan seems unwilling to surrender to the inexorable march of time. He entered hospice care in 2019 after suffering a stroke. Mr Achuthanandan is convalescing at his son V. A. Arun Kumar’s house at Barton Hill in Thiruvananthapuram. Doctors have barred visitors, given his advanced age and the threat of infection.
Mr Arun Kumar told reporters that Mr Achuthanandan kept abreast of political developments. He had newspapers read out to him daily and watched television news.
Mr Achuthanandan, an iron-jawed dogmatic communist, was a towering and fiery presence in Kerala politics for decades.
He rose above the cut and thrust of provincial politics by emerging as a zealous advocate for underdogs, a staunch anti-corruption activist, and a champion of sexual minorities, gender equality, environmental protection, and free software.
Mr Achuthanandan was born into a family of agricultural workers at Punappara in Alappuzha in 1923. He lost his parents early, his mother to smallpox.
Pioneering communist leader P. Krishna Pillai initiated him to the freedom movement at 16.
Mr Achuthanandan’s odyssey from a young freedom fighter to Kerala’s Chief Minister has been a harrowing story of personal trials and tribulations.
Mr Achuthanandan was on the frontline of the storied armed struggle against feudal landlords and colonial serfdom in Alappuzha. The uprising led to the police firing that killed scores of communist revolutionaries in Punnappara and Vayalar in 1946. Mr Achuthanandan was arrested, brutally tortured in police custody and left for dead.
In 1964, Mr. Achuthanandan left the Communist Party of India’s (CPI) national council to become one of the founding members of the breakaway CPI(M). He is the only founding CPI(M) member still alive.
The veteran politician was also a crowd-puller. His rallies were magnets for the public, keen to listen to his distinctive oratory style, marked by a rustic drawl bristling with biting and often sarcastic humour.
Mr. Achuthanandan, who had officiated as CPI(M) State secretary, was not always a stickler for party discipline.
In 2007, the CPI(M) ejected him from the party’s Polit Bureau for defying the CPI(M) State secretariat.
Published – October 20, 2024 05:40 pm IST
