People's Democracy

Perpetuating AKG’s Memory

  E M S Namboodiripad

Comrade EMS (left) with Comrade AKG

I AM among those who have had the privilege of working with the late A K Gopalan for the longest duration of time. My association with him goes back to 1932 when I met him in Cannanore Jail. He had already become a well-known leader of rank and file Congressmen and was held in great affection by all the satyagrahis who were lodged in the Central Jail, Cannanore.

Even before this, of course, I had seen him as the captain of the volunteers who were to offer satyagraha at the Guruvayoor Temple on November 1 (if I remember right), 1931. I was studying in college, but was very active in the national movement. I was keenly interested in the temple entry movement, of which Kelappan was the political leader and AKG was his ablest lieutenant. The huge demonstration organised in the temple premises in the evening preceding the starting of the satyagraha was a memorable occasion. That however did not bring me face to face with AKG, since I was a mere spectator, while he was the leader of the demonstration.

In less than three months after that, Mahatma Gandhi had come back from London “empty-handed”, since the Round Table Conference had ended in a fiasco and all his close colleagues  had already been clamped in jails. He too was taken from the ship straight to the jail. I, like many others, decided to leave my studies and join the Civil Disobedience Movement. After being kept in the Calicut sub-jail for about a week – a week which was memorable since it was there that I cam face to face with another life-long colleague of ours, the late Krishna Pillai (who was looked upon by us all as the leader and organiser of the emerging revolutionary movement which subsequently became the Communist Party), I was taken to Cannanore jail.

We were together in Cannanore Jail for about a month, but we were kept in separate wards, he being in C class and myself in A class. But during the evenings we had opportunity to spend some time together and AKG was always moving about with all others. After a month, I was taken to Vellore Jail and for a year and a half, we did not see each other.

Coming out of jail on various dates in 1933 and 1934, we started re-organising ourselves not only as Congressmen but as Socialists within the Congress. Those of us who had come to accept the vague idea of socialism happened to have a majority in the Provincial Congress Committee. There was therefore no difficulty in AKG becoming the secretary of the committee.

Ever since those days, I have seen him at close quarters and come to acquire respect for him as a dynamic mass leader as well as to bear love for him, discussing everything, including personal and family problems, which we have shared with each other. It will, therefore, be difficult for me to make a really objective assessment of AKG, the man and his qualities.

I may, however, bring out the essential qualities of AKG, the revolutionary. Like all revolutionary leaders of the people, he was at one with the ordinary men, women and children. Living their life, speaking their language, feeling one with them in all ways, he was their AKG. It was they, the fighting people, that made him “AKG”, just as it was AKG who moulded the people of Kerala that they are today. (This may also be true of Andhra, Tamilnadu, Bengal, Punjab, etc. In all these states those who have had the opportunity to come in contact with him have personal memories of AKG, the man and his activities. But wherever he goes, he identifies himself with the people there; he would once again go back to his Kerala and the people there would receive him as their own AKG). I cannot think of any other comrade who comes so close to him as a man of the people and being a man of the people, a revolutionary till the last breath of his life.

It was usual for him to admit that he was no theoretician. He claimed to be a man of action. That in one sense is true enough. I, however, cannot, divorce his quality as a man of action from the deep theoretical conviction which made it possible for him to become the most effective agitator, the most dynamic leader of mass struggles, the most scrupulous adherent of a regulated daily life (which would of course be disturbed the moment he came to learn of a struggle or an agitation which called him), the most efficient organiser and above all, the model revolutionary parliamentarian.

The 25 years of his life and work as an MP, merciless in exposing the ministers and bureaucrats, but the most lovable friend of even those  who are subjected to his exposure; the MP who opens his mouth only to bring out some burning problem of the people or the other and who is adept equally on the floor of the Parliament and outside, that marks him out from the ordinary run of MPs.

I had the sad experience of being with him (not continuously but with many breaks, since I was taken from his side by the various duties that had devolved on me), during the last days of his life, when we all felt that the end was inevitably coming. It was painful to see him struggling to give expression to his innermost desires, but unable to do so. (Even Comrade Susheela who was with him throughout and was able to guess his innermost thoughts and feelings, found it sometimes difficult to get at what he intended to convey). We knew that he was thinking (even when the process of thinking itself was becoming increasingly difficult) of the various problems which we were facing and had to solve without his personal advice and guidance.

I cannot but recall the last wish he expressed to me when he could talk audibly and that was his desire, after recovery, to cease his running about (as he used to do for a whole life-time) and remain in one place looking after the education of the younger generation in the principles of scientific socialism and in the experience of building the Party, building the mass organisations. I would therefore make a humble suggestion to all those who are keen on perpetuating his memory that they should concentrate on fulfilling his last desire.

(This article was published in the AKG Memorial Souvenir brought out by the AKG Memorial Committee, Mumbai in 1979.)