A tribute to Kerala’s tallest woman leader

History will be far kinder to Kalathilparambil Raman Gouriamma, the tallest woman politician Kerala has ever produced, than the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to which she devoted much of her life, even sacrificing her marriage to remain true to her ideology. She died on Tuesday at the age of 102. The state owes much to its first woman minister, not least for her passionate advocacy of its enviable land reforms. Few can match her record of 13 assembly election victories. Gouriamma, as she was known, was also a staunch and fiery advocate of women’s emancipation in an overwhelmingly patriarchal society.

The CPI(M) projected her as the chief ministerial candidate in the elections of 1987. Yet, at the moment of reckoning, it chose theoretician EK Nayanar over her, and with this, her disillusionment with the CPI(M) began. The final blow to the woman leader, who was as instrumental in building the party in Kerala as stalwarts such as EMS Namboodiripad and VS Achuthanandan, was her expulsion from the CPI(M) in 1994, a blow from which she never recovered politically. But true to form, she formed Janathipathya Samrakshana Samithi (JSS) taking on the formidable Left forces in the state. But, perhaps due to her mercurial temperament and inability to counter the CPI(M) politically, she came back to it in 2016. The party has since moved away from the ideological beliefs she held so dear. Kerala’s poor farmers and labourers owe a huge debt of gratitude to Gouriamma who rewrote the history of the state’s working class. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan’s tribute to her sums up her eventful life when he said modern Kerala’s history is Gouriamma’s biography.