He survived a bid on his life and enjoys a mass following that not many CPM leaders in the state can match. Within the party, P Jayarajan’s story is quieter but telling. With the CPM in the midst of a churn following a heavy defeat in the assembly elections, the Kannur strongman speaks to TNIE on the reasons for the loss, the Sangh Parivar’s growing influence in the state, and what the party needs to do to bounce back in the electoral arena. Excerpts
The CPM, or the LDF, has just faced a defeat. What exactly went wrong? Where did the lapses happen?
Rather than lapses within the party, this was a concerted and deliberate effort by right-wing forces in Kerala to defeat the Left. In the first election after the formation of Kerala in 1957, the undivided Communist Party got 35.7% of the votes. In the 114-member assembly, the party won 60 seats. They came to power because the Congress, PSP, and the Muslim League fought the elections separately.
Before coming to power, there were class struggles and workers’, farmers’ and teachers’ protests. Intense class struggles happened in northern Kerala, in places like Kayyur, Karivellur, Kavumbayi, Munayankunnu, and Padikunnu, as well as in Punnapra-Vayalar. The 1957 victory was the culmination of those struggles.
In 1959, all reactionary forces united to bring down the EMS government. Caste organisations and religious leadership directly stepped in to organise the Liberation Struggle (Vimochana Samaram). Following this, the central government dismissed the EMS government. When elections were held in 1960, the Communist Party’s vote share actually increased to 39%, but their seats fell to 29. When right-wing forces unite in Kerala, the seat count drops even when the vote share rises.
If we analyse the current situation, after several decades we had a ten-year rule by the Pinarayi government. During its first term, neoliberal policies were replaced by alternative policies based on a new development model. That government handled unprecedented crises – Nipah outbreak, floods, and Covid-19 pandemic – with great willpower and provided wide-ranging support to the people. Consequently, the Left achieved continuous rule, winning 99 seats in 2021. This provoked right-wing forces. And the efforts they began from that point culminated in the complete consolidation of right-wing forces in 2026.
Can we consider the latest result as a second Liberation Struggle?
Certainly. What we are seeing now is essentially a new version of the 1959 Liberation Struggle. It was highly planned.
Why couldn’t it be foreseen?
That’s why we say it is our weakness. To illustrate its character, read Father Vadakkan’s autobiography. Father Vadakkan was the primary orator who mobilised anti-communist forces back then. His autobiography, Kuthippum Kithappum, clearly explains how he generated anti-communist fervour among religious believers and brought them out. Another person who played a significant role was Lonappan Nambadan. Angamaly was the centre of agitation.
Similarly, when the LDF government got a continuous term, various communal forces in Kerala essentially became the foot soldiers of the right wing. They managed to create immense public resentment against the Pinarayi government. Among Muslim minorities, a strong message of Muslim consolidation was widely spread.
The SIR was a major factor that accelerated this. It effectively worked to shift the Muslim community’s votes towards the UDF. The Muslim League and Jamaat-e-Islami played a major role in this. Welfare measures were declared and implemented on a large scale. Development activities worth over `1 lakh crore happened in Kerala... no one can deny all these. But right-wing forces did not focus on that. Frankly, the Left was unable to properly assess and counter this, and that remains our shortcoming.
But wasn’t there also a deliberate attempt to misguide the Muslim community and consolidate votes against the party? A similar consolidation happened among Christian and Hindu sections...
The initial proactive effort was started by the League and the Jamaat. That happened in the Christian section too. After 2019, a specific organisational initiative called CASA, the Christian Association for Social Action, became active. It aimed to first build a Christian sentiment and an anti-Muslim sentiment, and later, specifically, an anti-Left, anti-Communist sentiment. Among the Hindu masses, they campaigned that Left rule in Kerala is anti-Hindu, thereby pushing Hindu consolidation in favour of the right wing. The Sabarimala issue was actively used for this purpose.
But the question remains, why couldn’t this be foreseen?
We cannot say nothing was seen. But it could not be overcome. That’s the point. We emphasised mainly on development achievements and welfare measures. The important lesson here is that political shifts cannot be brought about solely through developmental and welfare activities. Votes are not won on that basis alone.
Statements from many CPM leaders continuously came out in ways that alienated the Muslim community as a whole. Isn’t there a problem in ignoring that and attributing everything to Muslim consolidation?
What needs to be understood here is that they had already made a decision and were working to implement it. Without fully grasping that, certain reactions did occur from the Left’s side.
People from various sections — Jamaat, Mujahids, Samastha -- vote for the Left. Doesn’t a generalisation lend credibility to the accusation that a campaign of “Left Hindutva” has emerged within CPM?
LDF received around 85 lakh votes. Among those voters are Hindus, Muslims, and Christians, believers from all communities. But a major shift occurred as a result of the activities conducted by communal forces, pulling votes back towards the right wing... an intervention made with single-minded eagerness to return to power worked as a powerful undercurrent.
Did the party fail to distinguish between believers and communalists, and where to draw the line? Also, a soft approach was taken towards Vellappally Natesan to appease the Hindu community...
The trends and shifts in Indian politics will naturally affect Kerala as well. Kerala is not an isolated island. What is happening across the country is the invasion of Hindutva politics. Planning for this in Kerala started a long time ago, but it has not succeeded here because of a strong Left base. What sustains that base is the ideological strength of the renaissance forces. The philosophies of Sree Narayana Guru were the biggest bulwark against Hindutva politics entering Kerala. The attempt to dismantle even that is now under way.
Recognising that communal forces have been working steadily to establish dominance, the CPM’s last party congress put forward a new approach -- to bring and organise believers against communalism. This applies to Muslim and Christian communities as well. But compared to the Hindu community, they are organised religions with centralised texts — the Quran and the Bible. The Hindu community does not have such a centralised structure. Here, caste is the defining issue. That is precisely where the BJP has placed its slogan, very systematically: ‘From Nayadi to Namboothiri, all must unite.’ This is a cleverly crafted message. When Mahatma Gandhi visited Kerala in 1927, he expressed a desire to see a Nayadi person closely. But none came forward. The Nayadi were so marginalised that even their presence was considered polluting.
Today, the BJP tells a person from the Nayadi community that they are becoming empowered, that they are gaining strength as a Hindu. This creates an ego-driven consciousness, a precisely executed social construction. It applies across all sections, among Ezhavas, and in Malabar, among the Thiyya community. They feel they are becoming empowered. While Sree Narayana Guru created a social consciousness that transcended caste, today’s caste organisations are acting in ways that narrow people’s identities.
But a leader like P Jayarajan knows there are other reasons as well. Over the past five years, several incidents within the party and government created public dissatisfaction, which even influenced candidate selection...
The strength of the right wing in Kerala is the primary reason. We must not underestimate it. Where is the main source of opinion-building for the right wing in Kerala? The newspapers. They carry out organised propaganda. Take the healthcare sector. Kerala’s public healthcare offers facilities unmatched anywhere else in India.
During Covid, Keralites wanted to return home because the care available here is unavailable elsewhere. Public healthcare improved significantly under LDF policy, including a 500-crore investment to start an organ transplant centre in Kozhikode. But how did right-wing media narrate the state of healthcare? They focused on isolated incidents... a pair of scissors left inside a patient during an operation... exaggerating such incidents to build a particular public perception.
At the same time, we failed to recognise this properly and counter it. There were also some shortcomings in candidate selection. But to say that these alone explain why the LDF was confined to 35 seats is incorrect.
You mentioned that newspapers always had this right-wing bias, yet the Left won in 2006 and 2021. And how do you explain the losses in party strongholds like Payyannur and Taliparamba?
The defeats in Payyannur and Taliparamba require special evaluation, and the party has decided to examine them closely. But it would be incorrect to say the broader setback across Kerala happened solely because of those defeats.
Even Dharmadam, the constituency of Pinarayi Vijayan, saw a significant fall...
That’s part of what I said earlier. A general trend emerged in favour of the right wing.
Is there a concern this trend might repeat in 2031?
Definitely. That’s an anxiety I share as a political worker. We have the Bengal experience before us. In Kerala, they have now secured three seats. We must not underestimate Sangh Parivar. They are massive intellectual centres with highly systematic planning. RSS started its first sakha in Kerala in 1942. Why didn’t Kerala then become like Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra? Kerala has unique characteristics.
In the first chapter of my newly released book Sanathanikalude Hindutva Vazhikal, I’ve written about what I call ‘Repetition of the Grand Design’. The term ‘grand design’ was used by former Kerala Kaumudi editor M S Mani. It referred to capturing Sivagiri. The head of a mutt came to Kerala and approached Saswathikananda, saying: “If we unite, we can conquer Kerala.” But Swami Saswathikananda’s response was clear: “We are Sree Narayana followers, we have our own path, and we cannot align with your ideology.” That held the line.
RSS has also made physical attempts to establish dominance in Kerala. In 13 of the 14 districts of Kerala, there have been physical clashes between CPM and RSS. Let me ask, why doesn’t RSS target Congress, which claims to be secular? Why didn’t they target Muslim League? They targeted CPM. As RSS pracharak P Narayanan wrote, workplaces where labourers unite are communist nurseries. They launched attacks against labour institutions and factories.
In 13 districts across Kerala, 215 CPM workers have been murdered by RSS. That was not random. It was a precise plan to physically destroy CPM and establish ideological dominance. Despite all of that, they did not succeed. That resistance played a crucial role. They have made some gains — and that is what the three assembly seats indicate. 2031 is their target. The Left in Kerala must take responsibility to defeat their plan of building from those three seats.
What steps will the Left take over the next five years to counter BJP?
Mainly, guiding believers against communal animosity... that’s the direction. In my book, I mention the ‘Bhagavata Sapthaha Yagnam’, religious discourses conducted by certain Swamis in Kerala. In one such ongoing discourse at Chirakkal Temple in Kannur, a Swami recites two verses from the Bhagavatam and then speaks about Pinarayi Vijayan and the communists. The women attending themselves questioned this, asking what communists had to do with Bhagavatam. It is a meticulously planned effort to create the impression that being Hindu requires unification against a common enemy. A change in consciousness is needed.
It was during your time as Kannur district secretary that practical steps were taken in that direction. CPM celebrated Hindu religious beliefs and festivals. But there was heavy criticism — inside and outside the party — that P Jayarajan was playing “soft Hindutva”. And you organised a Shobha Yatra...
We organised a Sree Krishna Jayanthi Shobha Yatra and similar events to draw people who were going to RSS branches towards us. Strictly speaking, this format became widespread after 1977. It started in Kozhikode and spread to other cities. We tried to make people aware of its history.
The Guruvayur temple is a Sree Krishna temple. Until the 1930s, backward castes had no entry there. Even Mannathu Padmanabhan had noted that even Nairs were denied entry. So bringing the Sree Krishna idol out in a procession at a time when entry was restricted for these caste groups is, strictly speaking, a political act.
We organised a cultural procession to assert that. It wasn’t a programme formulated by me personally, but decided by the party’s district committee. It was not about dressing up as Sree Krishna. There were various representations... Maveli, traditional folk arts, Sree Narayana Guru, different religious priests, the avarnas, and Changampuzha’s “Vazhakkula”, presented on floats. It was never an imitation of the RSS Shobha Yatra. Instead, it was a cultural procession with a distinct message. That procession rattled RSS organisers. I could see that their leaders suffered a metaphorical heart attack. They stepped back. The reason it couldn’t be continued was that it didn’t expand statewide.
Was that because of criticism within the party? The entire burden of the “soft Hindutva” charge fell on you...
In Kannur, we also run a cultural movement for Muslim minorities, in the name of Moyinkutty Vaidyar, the Mappila poet. There are cultural organisations in the names of many prominent figures. So this is not a soft approach towards any community. It is about gathering believers against communalism. Today, the party at the national level has put forward the same position.
The problem is the perception that believers are second-class citizens within the party. Can a party member who is a believer get the same position as a non-believer?
That’s a propaganda line designed to mislead. Former MLA K T Jaleel and his wife Fathima Kutty took CPM memberships. Both are practising Muslims. There was strong opposition from Muslim political circles, mainly the League.
Specifically, can a practising Hindu, Christian, or Muslim reach the party state committee or secretariat?
Of course. T K Hamza was a state committee member and a practising Muslim. He stepped down due to health issues.
And a practising Hindu, someone who regularly visits temples? Given that we live in a society where a vast majority of the people are believers, how much can a party grow if it doesn’t elevate believers to top positions?
There is no obstacle whatsoever for a person who goes to Sabarimala or visits temples regularly to obtain party membership. But when we speak of a communist leader, someone who should strengthen the ideological dimension based on Marxism-Leninism, that leader must be a participant in the class struggles of the people. Marxists have a precise philosophical perspective on the universe, dialectical materialism.
At the same time, at a political level, the Communist Party unites people of diverse beliefs. In elections, in farmers’ struggles for minimum support price, in labour movements, we don’t check whether you go to a church, mosque, or a temple. That’s the nature of the party’s political work. Propagating atheism has not been a part of the history of the international working-class movement.
Even during Marx’s time, there was a leader called Bakunin who made atheism a plank of his revolutionary agenda. Marx himself opposed this. A communist can be a believer, can take party membership, and can become a leader.
The best proof that believers don’t get full acceptance within the party is the debate over Mathai Chacko’s final sacramental rites. The party itself came out with a clarification...
Mathai Chacko himself stated clearly while he was alive that he did not want religious rituals performed for him. Many people make that choice and tell their families not to adopt religious customs at their funeral. We offered him final respects according to his own expressed wishes.
In Kannur, perhaps the most popular leader after Pinarayi is P Jayarajan. Yet there’s a sentiment that the party doesn’t regard you in that manner...
I see that as part of an attempt to create ideological confusion among party members. I am currently a member of the CPM state committee. That itself is the most important position in my political life. I came from a very poor family and have risen through various levels of the party. I do have personal desires... I want to become a politburo member, I want to become All-India secretary, I want to reach the state secretariat. But in a democratically functioning party, committees discuss and decide each comrade’s position. There’s no point in personal desire alone, and no point in distress over it.
It is said that P Jayarajan’s popularity made at least some leaders uncomfortable...
That’s your interpretation. The respect people show me has come from certain circumstances. One is the incident during Thiruvonam in 1999 when RSS workers entered my house and tried to kill me. Comrades naturally have regard for someone who survived an assassination attempt. That has created a certain standing. Many comrades who have faced similar persecution — like Pushpan, who was a living martyr for decades following the Koothuparamba firing — receive the same affection.
Criticisms were reportedly raised within that you were growing above the party. There was the police station march, social media songs, the ‘PJ Army’...
A song has been sung about me for 17 years. Even now, no one has ever said it was written or sung at my instigation. I have never adopted the method of paying for flex boards or organising victory slogans the way some Congress leaders do. It is a fact that some misunderstandings have arisen. Certain things just happened, boards appeared with various descriptions. None of this was instigated by me for personal reasons.
Has intra-party criticism and self-criticism been genuinely active over the past ten years?
Criticism and self-criticism is a quality other parties lack and one that must exist within the communist movement. As a general principle there was a shortfall in that. When I say shortfall, I’m referring to what I would call the organic character of the Communist Party. There was a drift from that character. After the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, we felt there was a need for introspection. We had lost our connection with the party’s grassroots — that was the general observation. Then came the setback in the 2025 local body elections. Now this.
The question arises from that background. The Communist Party’s connection with the people... with families... needs to be solidified. We examine these shortcomings whenever we get the opportunity and will continue to do so.
TNIE team: Cithara Paul, Anil S, K S Sreejith, Aswin Asok Kumar,
Albin Mathew (photos)