Kerala Left icon’s legacy
The centenarian Communist leader K.R. Gowri Amma who passed away earlier this week was a product of, and represented, the essence of the renaissance values Kerala had nurtured in the early 20th century. Her call was to use those progressive and revolutionary values to the benefit of the working class and the downtrodden, and she did it quite successfully. Kerala's land reforms are one of the legacies she has left behind.
That Gowri Amma was the first woman law graduate in her community was made possible because of the ideals of social reformer Sree Narayana Guru who emphasised the role of education in the emancipation of the subaltern classes. A successful lawyer, she later embraced the Communist ideology and there was no looking back. The fiery leader was subjected to police brutality during 1948-52 when the Communist Party was banned. She was elected to the Thiru-Kochi Assembly in 1954 and then to the first Kerala Assembly in 1957.
It was Gowri Amma as revenue minister in the first EMS ministry who moved the path-breaking Agrarian Relations Bill, 1957, which began the process of land reforms in the state. The ministry did not survive the combined assault of the reactionary forces but the ideals behind the bill did. True, it took another 13 years for Kerala to initiate land reforms but the egalitarian push that made the bill possible was too strong to be put under the carpet.
Gowri Amma was part of four more ministries in Kerala, thus actively contributing to the evolution of the state to its present form. She held on to her beliefs, political as well as personal, leading to her ouster from her party, the CPI(M), in 1994. She, along with her political outfit, later sided with the Congress-led United Democratic Front. Her spirits had returned to the Communists towards the fag end of her life, and her body has now joined those of the martyrs of Punnapra-Vayalar uprising and her husband and Communist Party leader T.V. Thomas at Valiya Chudukad, Alappuzha. Rest in the right company, comrade!