Those of recent vintage might find it hard to believe. But for ten years after independence, there were only Congress governments as far as the eye could see in India.
The state bucking the trend finally emerged from the deep south. In 1957, after a historic election that spanned 12 days—from February 28 to March 11—Kerala saw Asia's first elected Communist government being sworn in.
Despite the election being only for 126 seats, it was spread over six phases with voting being held on February 28, March 2, 5, 7, 9 and 11.
Union Home Minister GB Pant betrayed the unease in the Congress ranks ahead of polls when he told the people of Kerala not to end up being isolated.
"If you don't care and if you don't return Congressmen in a majority, I am afraid that you will be handicapped in some ways," Pant was reported as saying at a rally in the state by our paper on February 27.
The Home Minister also expressed his surprise that a Muslim League, ousted in Pakistan, was in the fray in Kerala.
The counting was staggered like the polling and the first Communist win was reported on March 3. Ottasekharamangalam Janardhanan Nair, representing the then undivided Communist Party of India (CPI), clinched a win from the Neyyatinkara constituency.
By March 9, the CPI had forged a narrow two-seat lead over the Congress after 40 results were announced. From then on, there was to be no looking back.
On the same day, Ajay Ghosh, CPI general secretary, made bold to call the Congress a "declining force though it has not ceased to be a big force". He also expressed confidence that his party will seize power in Kerala, stating "the Congress is not going to have any majority in the State unless a miracle happens and miracles do not happen these days."
"The Congress propaganda that any leftist Government will create trouble for the Central Government is a mischievous lie. Despite a terrific campaign by the Congress leaders, the people of Kerala are voting for us because they know we are not out to create chaos," Ghosh added.
On March 11, EMS Namboodripad, the CPI's key leader, was elected to the Assembly from Nileshwar. Two notable women Communist leaders were also elected on the day—Rosamma Punnose from Devikulam, famous for its tea plantations and whose voters were "predominantly Tamil workers", and KR Gowri Amma from Cherthala. Rosamma Punnose went on to become the first to be administered the oath in the newly constituted Kerala Assembly later.
By March 14, it was clear that the Congress was in no position to win an absolute majority in the state.
Two days later, on March 16, there was a further jolt to the Congress as the former Chief Minister of Travancore-Cochin Panampilli Govinda Menon was defeated by CG Janardhanan of the Praja Socialist Party. It was a day when the Grand Old Party couldn't win a single seat.
In faraway Delhi, meanwhile, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was celebrating Holi, 'mobbed by enthusiasts' and having his face smeared with 'red, green, violet and golden colours'. Sanjay Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi also joined in the fun, squirting 'coloured water on all the revellers with water syringes and rubber bottles'. Nehru was reported as having played too with two tiger cubs that had been recently gifted to him. If the Prime Minister was worried in any way, he wasn't showing it.
In fact, the day saw the Centre advising the Governor of Kerala to invite the CPI to form the government. With eight seats still to be declared, the Communists had 55 MLAs and claimed the support of a further five Independents in the 126-member House. The deal was done, even in the eyes of the Union government.
Ajay Ghosh, for his part, sent a telegram congratulating the CPI on a 'magnificent victory' in Kerala. The Communists were looking ahead. MN Govindan Nair, MP and CPI leader, boarded the plane to Delhi to meet Ghosh and make plans for government formation.
Govindan Nair assured reporters in Delhi that the "Communist Party will not do anything beyond the framework of the Constitution". When asked whether the Communists whom the whole world will be watching will be content to do what other Congress governments are doing, Nair crisply replied, "If we did the same thing as they did, we shall meet the same fate as they did."
March 25 saw a three-day politburo meeting beginning in Ernakulam, with top leaders like SA Dange and Harkishen Singh Surjit in attendance. And on March 25, the 48-year-old Namboodripad was elected the leader.
On March 26, EMS staked claim to form the government. "Within three to four days of receiving information from the Governor to form the Government, I hope to finalise the list of Ministers for submission to him," he told the press.
Communist shaped by the Mahabharata and Les Miserables
EMS was a very interesting figure.
Born in a Brahmin family, he was taught the Rig Veda at a very young age. "For six years, I was made to repeat the shlokas of the Rig Veda. Six wasted years," he recounted later. He said he 'honourably' learnt it by rote, but forgot everything as he grew up.
"Let that not be repeated for the younger generation now," he prayed, underlining that there was little point in teaching such a classical work at an age when kids can't understand.
Vallathol Narayana Menon's translation of the Mahabharata, though, made a profound impression on him. "That was an experience for me. I was then about nine or ten years old. I read the whole book. It impressed me a lot," he remembered.
There was a third book that would shape him.
Nalappattu Narayana Menon's Pavangal, a translation of Les Miserables, Namboodripad would say was "one of the sparks that led him to Marxism".
That shift from the Congress Socialist Party to the CPI happened in 1939. In 1943, Namboodripad was elected to the Central Committee of the CPI. He would go on to give up all the land in his name, then valued at a princely Rs 1.8 lakh.
On April 5, 1957, this giant with a stammer that could not come in the way of his rightful rise, became the first Chief Minister of Kerala, which got an 11-member ministry.
First Namboodripad ministry and JFK's praise
In the two years and four months his government was in power, 88 bills were passed, with the monumental The Kerala Stay of Eviction Proceedings Bill, 1957 (Act 1 of 1957) that secured the right to land of tenants kicking things off. Issued on April 11, just six days after the government took charge the first bill prohibited evictions of "tenants, sub-tenants and occupants of homestead land on any ground including failure to pay rent".
EMS himself hailed the final land reform bill that was passed in 1959, saying it "ended the economic oppression and the socio-cultural domination by a small minority of the upper castes on the mass of the rural poor".
"Even if the Communist government had to its credit only the enactment of the Agrarian Relations Bill, its 28-month existence would find a place in the history of modern democratic Kerala," he went on to emphasise in his book The Communist Party in Kerala – Six Decades of Struggle and Advance.
Among those who had good things to say about EMS early into his tenure were future American President John F Kennedy. In an article he wrote for The New York Herald in October 1957, JFK dismissed the Congress in Kerala as "discredited by corruption, nepotism and inefficiency", while praising EMS for turning "over his considerable personal wealth to the party".
"Even his enemies are usually willing to give him full marks for honesty," Kennedy went on to write.
The EMS government was controversially dismissed on July 31, 1959. The CIA, British agencies, foreign plantation owners, then Congress President Indira Gandhi and home minister GB Pant are among those who have been suspected to have played a part.
In the 1960 election that followed the Congress party returned to power. But the CPI emerged as the largest single party capturing a 44 per cent share and winning 35 lakh votes (as opposed to 23 lakh in 1957).
"The result convincingly showed that notwithstanding the combination of all parties against it, notwithstanding the malicious and slanderous propaganda carried day in and day out by more than thirty daily papers against the Party, the Communist Party emerged stronger – much stronger than before in popular estimation," wrote Communist leader S Ramachandran Pillai in his assessment of the first EMS government.
It is a conclusion that cannot be swept aside when we consider how the Communists have continued to hold sway in Kerala till now.