People's Democracy

COMRADE I C P Namboodiripad, who had been in the frontline of the freedom struggle and was one of the leading organisers of the communist movement in Kerala, died at the age of 91 at a private nursing home in Palakkad at 7.15 p m on Sunday, May 27. He was admitted to hospital due to a urinal disturbance. But, later due to a strong cerebral hemorrhage, Comrade ICP left this world, which he wanted to change. He was freedom fighter par excellence, a communist leader and a member of Deshabhimani editorial board for a pretty long time.

Comrade ICP belongs to a generation of great leaders who sacrificed many a thing of beauty and pleasure in this world for the sake of the millions of people whom they wanted to liberate from the yoke of feudalism, imperialism and capitalism. He did not confine his activities to politics alone. He believed that a communist is bound to reform the society in which he lives and works while he fights for the emancipation of the oppressed classes.

He always tried to put his words to practice and proved that it is indeed possible. His progressive ideas were not so palatable to the then Kerala society, especially the Brahmin society. He worked in the movement to "convert the Namboodiri into a man." He was a member of the Namboodiri Yuvajana Kshema Sangham. This organisation planned a play written by the late reformer V T Namboodiripad. ICP was one among those who had planed and worked to stage this play in the organisation’s conferences. The wave of opposition they had to face from the conservatives and the organised orthodoxy had no limits. ICP dared to stage the play in connection with his marriage. This gave a shocking blow to the Brahmin community.

The play and the organisation encouraged widow remarriage and inter-caste marriage. ICP set a model by arranging for widow marriage and inter-caste marriage in his own "illam" (Brahmanical residence). His sister Uma was a widow at that time. He gave her in marriage to M R Bhattathiripad. This was the first widow remarriage in the history of Brahmin community in Kerala. His youngest sister Priyadatta was given in marriage to Comrade Kallat Krishnan who belonged to the backward Thiyya caste. A daughter of Uma, in her first marriage, was married to a Muslim youth from Madurai. The next daughter was given to a Kshatriya boy from Punjab. The eldest daughter of ICP was married to Pisharody young man. The second daughter married a Thiyya youth. This is ample evidence to prove that the word and the deed were the same for the leaders of the progressive movement in its early years. They created an atmosphere of renaissance in Kerala.

ICP was an epitome of these values, which the real genre of revolutionaries should always maintain. With his demise, one of the greatest sons of Kerala in the line of Comrade EMS and others has been lost to this soil and this culture.