KR Gouri Amma, Kerala’s first woman minister, dies at 102

KR Gouri Amma, 102, the architect of land reforms in Kerala, its first woman minister and one of the longest-serving legislators, died at a private hospital in Thiruvananthapuram from age-related ailments, her family said on Tuesday.

She helmed the key revenue ministry and drafted the Kerala Agrarian Relations Act for ownership of land to peasants who tilled it after the first democratically elected Communist government assumed power in Kerala in 1957. Amma and T V Thomas became the first couple in a government when the two ministers in chief minister EMS Namboodiripad’s ministry wed the same year. Amma was a founding member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after the Communist Party of India (CPI) split in 1964 over ideological differences. Thomas remained with the CPI. The CPI(M) is said to have built a wall in the couple’s house before ideological differences had the couple part ways. Thomas died of cancer in 1977.

The stormy petrel of Kerala politics, Amma was a six-time minister, who was elected to the state assembly 12 times. Ahead of the 1987 election, the CPI (M) projected her as the chief ministerial candidate and coined a slogan in Malayalam that meant

“she is set to rule Kerala”. But after the election, the party named E K Nayanar as the CM. A sidelined Amma fell out with CPI (M) general secretary Namboodiripad and was expelled from the party in 1994. Amma then floated Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi and allied with Congress-led United Democratic Front. Amma was a minister in K Karunakaran, AK Antony, and Oommen Chandy-led UDF governments before she returned to the Left Democratic Front in 2016.

“She made seminal contributions in building the Communist movement & as an administrator. Let’s show respects, by pledging to build a more progressive society,” he tweeted.