96-year-old CPM matriarch returns home 21 years after her expulsion

K R Gowri Amma, the stormy petrel of the Communist movement in Kerala, is 96 years old. She can hardly speak due to physical infirmities. She has lost her vote-catching ability as proved by her defeat in the last Assembly election in her home constituency of Cherthala. She has lost her charisma as proved by the recent by-election in Aruvikkara Assembly constituency in which the Congress candidate won hands down, despite campaigning by Gowri Amma for the CPM candidate.

Then what’s it that prompted the CPM leadership to welcome Gowri Amma back into the party fold? Is it to correct a wrong committed by the party 21 years ago by expelling her from the party? Is it a course correction to stem serious erosion in the party’s pan India support base? Or is it born out of the party’s reckoning that Gowri Amma could still bolster the electoral prospects of the party in the next State Assembly election hardly an year away?

It is too early to say what impact Gowri Amma’s reentry into the CPM could really make. Yet, it’s a landmark event in the state’s political history, for Gowri Amma is a rare political phenomenon and few could claim such a chequered and illustrious legacy as her.

Gowri Amma is the lone surviving member of the first Ministry in Kerala headed by E M S Namboodiripad(1957-1959). A double graduate, a rare distinction especially for a politician in those times, Gowri Amma was elected twice to the erstwhile Travancore Legislative Assembly and 11 times to the Kerala Legislative Assembly. She became a Minister six times in the Governments led by both the Communist and Congress parties.

As the Minister for Revenue in the first communist Ministry, Gowri Amma pioneered the revolutionary land reforms act that conferred land ownership rights on tenants and virtually abolished landlordism in the state.

In the formative years of the Communist party in Kerala, she was subjected to police brutalities and jailed on a number of occasions for political activities. Her marriage to veteran Communist leader T V Thomas and their separation after the split in the Communist Party were momentous events in the political history of Kerala. The split in the Communist party in 1964 saw Gowri Amma joining the CPM and Thomas remaining with the CPI.

Though she had a history of supreme sacrifices to the party, she was expelled from CPM in 1994 on charges of anti-party activities. After her expulsion from the party, she dealt a crushing blow to the CPM by forming a new party, Janathipathya Samrakshana Samithi(JSS), and becoming a Minister in the Congress-led Government.

Of late, she felt increasing isolated and sidelined in the UDF, which prompted her to mend fences with the CPM leadership. Her eventful political career will turn a full circle on August 19 when CPM gives party membership once again to the communist stalwart and her party formally merges with the CPM.

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