People's Democracy

50th Anniversary of First Communist Ministry

A Historic Landmark

EMS taking Oath of office as the Chief Minister of Kerala an 5th April, 1957 before the Governor B Ramakrishna Rao

Prakash Karat

APRIL 5, 2007 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Communist ministry formed in Kerala. As such, it is a historical landmark in the annals of the Communist movement of the country. The CPI alongwith the independents supported by it, won 65 out of 126 seats in the assembly. The success of the CPI in Kerala came in the background of the party increasing its number of seats in the Lok Sabha from 16 to 27 compared to the first elections held in 1952 and polling nine per cent of the vote. The Communists maintained their position as the major opposition group in parliament.

When EMS Namboodiripad took the oath of office as chief minister on April 5, 1957 it set in motion a progressive government, the like of which has not been seen since. Between April 5, 1957 and July 31, 1959 when the government was dismissed, the measures taken by the government had a far-reaching impact on both Kerala and national politics. The first Communist ministry put forth an agenda, based on what the Communist party saw as the steps necessary for advancing the democratic revolution. That is, completion of the anti-feudal tasks and laying the foundations of a socially just and democratic society.

During the short period of 28 months, the EMS ministry took pioneering steps for land reforms; enhancing minimum wages and initiating welfare measures for the working people; democratising the educational system and a pro-people police policy. 

Pioneering Land Reforms

The very first step taken by the ministry was an ordinance to stop evictions of tenants. This was followed by the agrarian reform bill. The Agrarian Relations Bill was the most important piece of legislation introduced by the EMS government. It was adopted by the Kerala assembly after intense discussions in June 1959. Before it could get presidential assent, the government was dismissed. When the Bill was returned with the president’s comments, the Congress-PSP ministry adopted the final version by significantly watering down the provisions in favour of the landed interests. Some provisions of the revised Act were struck down by the Supreme Court in 1961 and some others by the Kerala High Court in 1963. This illustrates how the higher judiciary sought to scuttle land reforms in the earlier period after independence. 

The Agrarian Relations Bill was not a revolutionary piece of legislation. It was within the framework of what the Congress party had promised the peasantry before independence. The modest reforms called for fixity of tenure for tenants, reduction in the rent, ensuring the right of tenants and making cultivating owners of the land by paying compensation to the landlords. The Bill further set 15 acres of double cropland as the ceiling of land ownership. This essentially democratic agrarian reform evoked strong opposition from the bourgeois-landlord combination.

Democratising Education

The other legislation, which incurred bitter opposition, was the Education bill. This sought to regulate appointments and conditions of teachers. Salaries of teachers were to be paid through the treasury. There was a provision of takeover of management of educational institutions, which violated the law. There was no proposal whatsoever for state takeover of the private educational institutions. Yet, the Catholic Church declared war on the government joined by caste and communal organisations that had a vested interest in education.

The Kerala Communist ministry experience underlined what the Communists had said at the time of independence. The bourgeoisie, because of its compromise with landlordism and feudal interests, had abandoned carrying forward of the tasks of the democratic revolution. If the whole gamut of legislations and measures taken by the first Communist ministry are evaluated, they were not, in any sense, socialistic in nature. They were democratic reforms governed by the Communist party’s vision of how to carry forward the democratic transformation of society – a task left unfulfilled with the acquiring of independence. 

New Police Policy

The EMS ministry pioneered a new democratic policy on the police. It declared that the police would not be used as an instrument of oppression of the working people who wage legitimate struggles for their rights. The police would not play its traditional role of coming to the aid of the capitalists and landlords to suppress the struggles of the working people. This also incurred the charge that the Communists were paralysing the police and replacing it with their “cadre raj”. As EMS Namboodiripad explained: “"The crux of that policy is that it is not the job of the police to suppress the trade union, peasant and other mass activities of any mass organisation, or a political struggle waged by any political party; it is the job of the police to track down and punish those who commit ordinary crimes." (‘Twenty-eight months in Kerala’, Selected Writings, Vol. 2, p.134) The police policy adopted by the EMS ministry became the model for the subsequent Left-led governments. The united front governments of West Bengal in 1967 and 1969 proclaimed this policy when Jyoti Basu was the home minister. There too, it caused consternation among the bourgeois-landlord classes. 

Welfare of Working People

The first Communist ministry established by its record that it is possible for a state government to implement measures to improve the living conditions of the working classes even if in a limited way. The Minimum Wages Act for the workers in 18 industries and for agricultural workers ensured a substantial increase in the wages of the working class, the Agriculturist’s Debt Relief Act provided substantial relief to the peasantry against rapacious moneylenders and the Maternity Benefit Act gave women their long-deserved rights. The National and Festival Holidays Act provided for seven paid holidays, including May Day. These and the setting up of welfare boards created the basis for a welfare state, which made Kerala unique in the provision of minimum wages, education and health facilities. This experience showed that within the limitations of the existing constitutional set-up, a state government with even limited powers, can work for the welfare and provide some benefits to the working people. The difference between Kerala and the other state governments projected the Communist party as the genuine champion of the people’s welfare. 

Decentralisation

When we look back at the performance of the first Communist ministry in Kerala, one is struck by how far-reaching its policies were. Even though many of the bills initiated by the government in the legislature could not be adopted, the policies that they set out became the guide for future action. For instance, the Panchayat Bill and the District Council Bill set out for the first time the task of decentralisation of powers. These met with opposition. However, what was initiated by the first Communist ministry was taken up by subsequent Left-led governments, which strengthened the panchayat raj system in Kerala. The EMS ministry also took up the issue of administrative reforms seriously. Democratisation of the administration and accountability of the administrative system have still proved illusory in the country.

The EMS government sought to seriously tackle the problem of food deficit in the state. It formulated the setting up of people’s food committees consisting of representatives of the people, which would supervise the public distribution system. This was attacked by the opposition as a means to raise funds for the Communist Party.

“Overthrow Communist Ministry”

The opposition to the Communist ministry became focused on the Agrarian Relations Bill and the Education Bill. The Congress and the PSP were joined by the Catholic Church and the Nair Service Society to fight these measures. The “vimochana samaram” (liberation struggle) was directed against the Education Bill, the Agrarian Bill and reservations. But in the second phase the aim of the struggle became to overthrow the government itself. 

The Congress party encouraged the combination of the caste and communal forces. It thus brought communal politics to the fore in Kerala. In the hatred for the Communist ministry, religion was allowed to enter into politics in a big way with the Church issuing pastoral letters calling upon the faithful to overthrow the godless Communists. 

The anti-Communist combine represented the ferocious face of the class struggle against the workers, peasants and the working people who supported the Communist government. Violence on a large-scale was unleashed. Special targets for attack were government schools, cooperative-run toddy shops, state transport buses – all which affected the vested interests. 1959 saw the tactic of attacking the police to provoke police firings. The deaths in such firing were then utilised to inflame the sentiments of their following and create the grounds for alleging a “breakdown of law and order” necessitating central intervention. What the die-hard anti-Communist forces sought to do after the Nandigram police action recently echoed these tactics. 

Misuse of Article 356

The manner in which Article 356 was invoked for the dismissal of the ministry in July 1959 became an unhealthy precedent. Since the report of the governor was to come only a day later by air service via Madras, the Intelligence Bureau was asked to get the report from the plane in Madras and communicate the contents by telephone to New Delhi. The entire report was dictated over the telephone. It was this report that was then used for the proclamation of the president’s rule. The manner in which the governor’s report was received and used became the undemocratic pattern for successive governments at the centre. It is after this experience that the struggle to stop misuse of Article 356 became an important demand of the democratic forces in the country.

Lessons from Dismissal

The dismissal of the EMS ministry on July 31, 1959 and the imposition of president’s rule helped to expose some illusions. The Congress party which had adorned the mantle of heading the freedom struggle and ushering in democracy was shown to be an anti-democratic instrument of the ruling classes. The class character of the Congress became starkly evident. For some others within the CPI who had harboured illusions that the Kerala victory of 1957 would pave the way for a smooth and peaceful path to socialism through the parliamentary route, the dismissal came as a rude shock. A democratic transformation, leave alone socialism, was not ensured by a succession of parliamentary victories. The realisation dawned that it was a more complex and difficult process, which would see an intensification of the class struggle before social transformation is accomplished.

An important lesson learnt at the all-India level from the ouster of the first Communist ministry was what the CPI(M) Programme had stated, that the threat to the parliamentary system and the democracy does not come from the working people but from the exploiting classes. When the people begin to use parliamentary institutions for advancing their cause and move away from the influence of the big bourgeoisie and the landlords, these classes do not hesitate to trample underfoot parliamentary democracy. The dismissal of the EMS ministry in 1959 was a signal reminder of this class truth. Later too, elected governments were dismissed and constitutional provisions manipulated to prevent Communist-led governments as in West Bengal. The resort to semi-fascist terror in West Bengal and Tripura with the brazen violation of all democratic rights are clear examples of the extent to which the bourgeois-landlord classes will go. That is why after the experience of the Kerala ministry in 1959, the Communist Party resolved that it is of vital importance that the parliamentary and democratic institutions are defended in the interests of the people against the onslaught of the ruling classes. The undemocratic attack on the first Communist ministry also illustrated the character of the Indian State – a state controlled and run by the big bourgeoisie and landlords, which cannot countenance any threat to its class rule. Even a democratically elected state government of Communists was seen as a potential threat to their class rule. 

US Role

The formation of the Communist ministry in Kerala drew the attention of US imperialism which had embarked on a cold war against communism. The US secretary of state, John Foster Dulles said at a press conference in September 1957 “Local election victories by Communists in India and Indonesia are a dangerous trend. It is a dangerous trend whenever Communists move towards political control”.

The subsequent development which led to the so-called liberation struggle against Communist rule found ready support from the United States of America. That the United States provided funds to the Congress leadership for the struggle to topple the Communist ministry were confirmed later. A later American ambassador to India, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his memoir, confirmed that the CIA gave money to the Congress leadership on two occasions to fight the Communists – the first time for Kerala during the first Communist ministry and a second time in the sixties for West Bengal.

Pathbreaking Role

The Communist Party of India gave a call for a countrywide protest against the central intervention on August 3, 1959. The city of Calcutta saw a one-lakh procession in protest against the dismissal – the biggest since independence – and a two-lakh rally. Tens of thousands of people marched to parliament on the opening day of the monsoon session. All over the country, democratic-minded people mobilised against the undemocratic attack of a popular government. 

BT Ranadive wrote in 1959 after the dismissal of the government: “The Kerala ministry was a voyage on uncharted seas. This was, perhaps, the first time in the history of the world Communist movement that the Communist Party had agreed to form a ministry under capitalism – with a bourgeois-landlord government controlling the centre and with effective economic power in the hands of a handful few. How was it possible? It was possible because it was the desire of the Kerala masses and masses elsewhere. It was possible because the immediate issue before the people was not the introduction of socialism – social transformation – but urgent social and economic reforms – including land reforms, honest administration and implementation of the rights given under the Constitution.”

The first Communist ministry could not complete its full term but its 28-month existence unleashed the powerful currents of agrarian reform and democratic transformation, the impact of which is still unfolding in our country today.