VS: A Life Tempered with Fiery Struggles

It is not an easy task to describe the life of a revolutionary who strode across the political life of a nation for nearly a century. Undoubtedly, none can make use of the inexhaustible time before one’s birth nor the infinite time after death; rarely can one put the time between birth and death to create an indelible impact in the lives of people like Com.V.S.Achuthanandan could. Com.VS. Achuthanandan known as VS to his comrades, friends and political opponents passed away on 21st July, 2025 after eight and a half decades of politically active life.

The expanse of his political interventions spread across the last century ranges from struggles against feudal landlordism, caste oppression, British imperialism, the autocratic monarchy, capitalist exploitation, the ruling class onslaughts on the working people, state repression, authoritarian emergency, Zionist genocide in Palestine, communal fascists and the oligarchs in the neo-liberal era, violence against women, attacks on minorities, socially oppressed, environment, LGBTQ community, against proprietary software oligarchs like Microsoft, Coca Cola, the killer pesticide endosulfan, encroachments by real-estate mafia, illegal mining and much more.

Incessantly on the streets in struggles, the indomitable spirit of the individual, strengthened by the collective that he was steadfastly associated throughout his life ensured that it does not remain opposition for the sake of opposition; it led to creative solutions that have come to be part of the Left Alternative that Kerala has shown. The outpouring of millions to pay respects to the departed comrade is a testimony to the sheer range of his interventions, the fact that it touched the lives of the masses.

VS was born in a poor peasant family in Alappuzha in 1923. He lost his mother when he was merely 4 years old and subsequently lost his father when he was just 11. This forced him to quit his studies after finishing 7th standard in school. Circumstances forced him to work at a tailoring shop before he joined Aspinwall Company as a coir worker. His childhood was punctuated with the economic horrors of great depression, including days of hunger. Unemployment, acute economic exploitation of workers and peasants by feudal landlords and the capitalist sections, food shortages accentuated by hoarding and blackmarketing by traders, resultant high food prices rendering it inaccessible to the poor- all made life a living hell for the working people.

Social oppression faced by the Dalits and the backward castes in Kerala also was infamous. The struggles to earn a living, to ward off hunger and resist caste oppression began from his early childhood and this lived experience all through ensured that he remained steadfast to the basic classes and their cause.

Alappuzha was the epicentre of the modern working-class movement in Travancore. He organised the coir workers for their rights and it was here that VS was drawn to the Communist Party by the advanced proletarian elements in 1940. P.Krishnapillai, also hailing from Alappuzha who was the first Secretary when the Communist Party was formed in Kerala and an ace organiser recognised his talent in dealing with issues of the working class, his organisational abilities and drafted him for bigger responsibilities. He was sent to Kuttanad to organise the predominantly Dalit and backward caste agricultural workers. It is here that VS having little formal education sharpened his political and organisational skills emerging as a prominent educator, agitator and organiser.

He concretely applied Marxist Leninist principles to organise socially and economically oppressed agricultural workers and poor peasants against feudal landlords, a repressive state and against British imperialism. It is worth noting that in the pantheon of leaders of the Communist movement in India, especially of the CPI(M) who have passed away, ranging from the navaratnas who were in the first Politbureau till the present, E.Balanandan and VS emerged from the working class.

The revolutionary upsurge in Punnapra and Vayalar in 1946 and his role is legendary. He was one of the main leaders of the mass revolt of workers and peasants against the autocratic monarchy in Travancore and the Dewan C.P.Ramaswami Iyer’s proposal for an American Model independent nation outside the Indian Union. The Communist Party gave the clarion call “Dump the American Model in the Arabian Sea.” The uprising was suppressed using brutal force leading to the death of many but caught the imagination of the people, raised a class consciousness among the oppressed workers and peasants, emphasised the importance of worker-peasant unity and laid the ideological foundation for the rise of Left politics in the State.

It also set in motion the process through which the autocratic monarchy was ended and the new, united linguistic State of Kerala came into being. The expansion of the Communist Party on the basis of class struggles for workers’ rights and land rights, against imperialism and monarchy, numerous struggles like Kayyur, Karivellur and the confidence generated by the Punnapra-Vayalar struggle in no small measure contributed to the victory of the Communist Party in the first elections in 1957.

VS had to spend long time underground, faced arrests and torture many times. After Punnapra-Vayalar struggle in the police lock-up he was brutally tortured and pierced with a bayonet and presumed dead. The police sought to dispose him in the forest but a petty thief who noticed signs of life pointed it out leading to subsequent hospitalisation and return to active life. Three months into the Emergency, VS was arrested and remained in prison for its entire duration. The brutal torture that he had to undergo in police lockup made him deeply sensitive about the ruling class violence on working people in general and rural proletariat in particular. He steadfastly resisted state violence throughout his political life.

VS was elected to the State Committee of the united Communist Party in 1956 and to its National Council in 1958. He was the last of the surviving 32 members of the National Council who left to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He served as the Secretary of the Kerala State Committee of the CPI(M) from 1980 to 1991. He was elected to the Central Committee of the Party in 1964 and became a member of the Politbureau in 1985. He was relieved from the Central Committee, of which he had become a Special Invitee, due to age, in 2022.

He was elected to the Kerala assembly for seven terms. He served as Leader of Opposition for three terms where he stridently took up public causes like environmental protection, gender equality, wet-land conservation, tribal rights, better pay for nurses, transgender rights, and free software. His tenure as the Chief Minister from 2006 to 2011 was marked by several legislative and administrative measures for the welfare of the working people. He saw the Chief Minister’s post as an instrument of struggle rather than a seat of power.

He was organically linked to the revolutionary peasant movement. His writings and speeches detailed the ways in which the peasantry is looted by neo-colonialism. His contribution to the Golden Jubilee Series of All India Kisan Sabha on the Punnapra Vayalar and his writings clearly bring the role of the ruling classes and their compromise with imperialism. He led the working class and peasantry in Kerala when the Congress Government introduced the neoliberal economic policies. His trenchant critique of liberalisation policies in agriculture including “free trade” proved to be incisive in Kerala’s political economy.

His intervention against the India-ASEAN FTA is particularly worth mentioning today when we are faced with the prospect of a slew of unequal Free Trade Agreements that India is entering into. He met the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asserting the federal rights of States and opposed the unequal FTA. He was clear and far-sighted in pointing out that it would lead to price crash and push farmers in Kerala into extreme distress, indebtedness and destruction. Deeply concerned with ecological questions, VS consistently pointed the corporate greed to commodify nature. There were a series of incidents of patriarchal violence against women in the State in the late nineties against which he led a relentless struggle.

His tenure as chief minister saw creative interventions in the agrarian political economy. The violently executed liberalisation policies by the successive Congress and BJP led union governments resulted in severe agrarian distress and farm suicides. The LDF government led by VS initiated a Debt Relief Commission which would provide considerable succour to the peasantry. This was a pioneering model for the entire country and became a slogan of the peasants' movement across the country. His tenure also witnessed favourable policies for paddy cultivation with the best procurement support price in the country.

Prof. Prabhat Patnaik was the Vice Chairman of the State Planning Board, Prof. Utsa Patnaik was Chairperson of its Agriculture Committee and I was a member on the Committee which recommended a massive incentive of Rs.400/Qtl for paddy over and above the centrally fixed MSP. This trend was continued by the LDF Government which is even now providing Rs.2832/Qtl while centrally announced MSP is only Rs.2369/Qtl.

The legislation against conversion of paddy lands and wet lands is also a landmark Act passed during his tenure. The administrative measures and his political ideological struggles exposed the bankruptcy of neoliberalism. As a lifelong organiser of cooperatives, VS in his last years passionately wrote about the need to reorganise cooperatives as a bulwark against big business exploitation of the peasantry.

In his passing, the working people have lost their confidant and to fill the vacuum left by VS will undoubtedly be an uphill task. I have many memories of my long association with him. I remember fondly the last four decades from hearing his speech as a child, much bemused over his style of speech delivery, being a volunteer during the 18th Party Congress, being a part of the election campaign in Wayanad in 2006, interaction at the Kozhikode Party Congress and the Congresses that followed, as a fellow member of the Party's Central Committee and much more.

I was witness to the outpouring of love for him from young and old alike on many occasions before and the three days after his death till being consigned to flames at the memorial to the Punnapra-Vayalar struggle. His commitment to the liberation of the working people and steadfast position against corporate, communal, fascist forces will always inspire. The slogan that resonated through the streets of Kerala roughly translates as “Our Eyes and Our Heart VS; Who says he is dead? He is living in us”. The legacy of VS lives on!