A Role Model For Communists And Patriots

 Sitaram Yechury

Comrade AKG with Communist Party MPs in New Delhi in 1952

DURING the period of the early seventies, when my political awakening brought me irreversibly towards Marxism and the CPI(M), Comrade A K Gopalan, fondly called by all as AKG was one of the supreme leaders of the Party and its voice in the Parliament. To most of us, it was AKG’s voice that conveyed what the CPI(M) stood for. His stirring speech in the Lok Sabha against the imposition of Emergency in 1975, was for many of us, the battle cry for the restoration of democracy. His sterling quality to be present in any corner of the country, where people were in the midst of struggles against any form of exploitation, stands out as a guide to all mass leaders.

Much of AKG’s tremendous contributions to the freedom struggle and the Communist movement are well recorded and, hence, need no repetition.  P Krishna Pillai, EMS Namboodiripad and AKG constituted the Communist trimoorti of Kerala.  His pioneering role in the Gandhian Satyagraha movement; his transition from a Congressman through the Congress Socialist Party  to a Communist; his  championing of issues of social oppression; his heroic and dramatic escape from the Vellore jail are all experiences that continue to inspire even today.

At the outset, I must confess that my personal interactions with Comrade AKG have been very few and far in between.  This, however, never detracts from the fact that for various reasons, AKG was and remains a role model not only for Communists but for all Indian patriots.

There are three specific issues that I would like to emphasise to establish why AKG continues to remain a role model for the present generation of patriotic Indian youth.

The first was the manner in which he dealt with his own personal life’s contradictions. Many of us have passed through and continue to pass through  similar situations when a choice has to be made between breaking the  expectations of our families and our background and to plunge into struggles in the defence of people and the country.  In his own words, he says that “there was a conflict between two streams of thought”, the expectations of his family and of his middle class background and the uncontrollable urge to work for the freedom of the people, who “shuddered  under the  weight of oppression”. Having made the choice in favour of the latter, AKG says: “I would be a proud son of mother India who have taken up cudgels to fight for our freedom”.  There are many of us who go through similar conflicts in our personal lives. AKG shows us the way to resolve these and live the only life we have with our “heads held high”.

Very few of our generation remember that at the time of independence, AKG was in jail arrested by the rulers of independent India.  Of the total sixteen years he spent in jail, six were in independent India.  He celebrated India’s independence in solitary confinement in the big Kannur jail after nearly two decades of uncompromising struggles for independence. As he says: “A man who was secretary of the Kerala Congress and its president for some time and member of the AICC for a long time was celebrating August 15 in jail.”

On the occasion of Independence Day, the Madras government released all the political prisoners but AKG was not one of them. He was alone, inside jail, unable to celebrate the freedom he had so bravely fought for. 

And yet celebrate he did.  The next morning, he walked the length of the jail compound carrying a national flag that he had kept with him.  The flag was hoisted from the roof where all the prisoners had gathered.  AKG spoke to them of the meaning of freedom. 

Here was a person who could have occupied legitimately any position of high office but chose instead to carry on the struggle on the basis of his uncompromising commitment to the Indian people. The message was clear – while political independence was a significant achievement, the task remains to carry forward  the struggle towards the economic independence of all people which is possible only with the establishment of socialism. In today’s world, when politics has been reduced by bourgeois political parties to the status of a lucrative career associated with the spoils of office and brazen corruption, AKG’s  life stands out as a  shining inspiration to restore political morality.  This is the second reason why he continues to remain a role model. 

Finally, AKG’s ability, both in perception and in practice, in combining the issues of social oppression with those of economic exploitation and leading the people into struggle  has a significant relevance to the conditions  we live in today.  

AKG’s leadership of the Guruvayoor temple entry satyagraha has many lessons for all of us today.  Despite being seriously assaulted physically, AKG continued the struggle championing the right of the oppressed castes and dalits to be treated as human beings and allowed entry to the temple.  In India, social oppression is one aspect of the class oppression while economic exploitation constitutes in other part of the same class oppression and exploitation. No revolutionary movement for the overthrow of the ruling classes is possible without the Communists addressing both these aspects of social oppression and economic exploitation.  Bourgeois and ruling class politicians specialise in keeping the struggles against both these oppressions separated from each other.  They, thus, create conditions where the exploited will rally behind the Red Flag in struggles  but when it  comes to political expression or choice, the very same people may well choose to remain with their social grouping.   The task of the Communists is to integrate both these aspects of class struggle while the ruling classes seek to keep them separately. 

This is increasingly relevant in today’s conditions when a large mass of people participate in the struggles under the banner of the Red Flag on issues of economic exploitation but when political choice has to be made,  they tend to move with  their social moorings and vote  according to their social affiliations.  Such an apparent contradiction comes because the confidence that the Red Flag generates in the struggles against economic exploitation does not resonate to the same extent in some parts of the country in the struggles against social oppression. 

AKG’s life and work teaches us that for the advance of the Communist movement in large tracts of modern India which is gripped by a social consciousness dominated by communalism and casteism, such an integration of the struggles against social oppression and economic exploitation have to be undertaken urgently.

These are just but three aspects why, I think, that AKG continues to be a source of inspiration for the present generation of Indian youth, who are determined to safeguard our country and the people from the twin attacks of the communal forces and the economic policies of globalisation, liberalisation and privatisation.