V.S. Achuthanandan: a mass leader moulded by Alappuzha

It was a long journey from Punnapra village in Alappuzha district of Kerala to the corridors of power in Thiruvananthapuram, and from Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan to ‘Comrade VS’.

Mr. Achuthanandan, fondly called ‘VS’ by the masses, lived a full life marked by struggles, victories and a few setbacks. For him, Alappuzha was not merely his birthplace, but the crucible of resistance from where he rose — as a labourer, trade unionist, revolutionary, freedom fighter, and politician. It shaped him into one of the preeminent communist leaders and laid the foundation for his emergence as a values-based mass political leader in Kerala.

Mr. Achuthanandan lost his mother at the age of four and his father by eleven. He dropped out of school in Class VII and joined a tailoring shop run by his elder brother, Gangadharan. A few years later, he became a worker at Aspinwall Coir Factory, meshing coir – an experience that would prove transformative. The young Achuthanandan showed early signs of leadership by organising fellow labourers at the factory.

In 1940, while working at the factory, he joined the Travancore State Congress. That same year, driven by a desire to fight for the rights of workers and peasants, he joined the Communist Party at the age of 17.

Soon after, he was assigned by party leader P. Krishna Pillai to Kuttanad for political activity. There, in a region plagued by a semi-feudal agrarian system and deep caste prejudices, he began organising agricultural labourers. Under the aegis of the Travancore Karshaka Thozhilali Union, founded in the 1940s by the Communist Party of India, workers waged a series of bold struggles for basic rights, better working conditions, and higher wages — often in the face of brutal repression by landlords and the police. His time in Kuttanad cemented his status as a trade union leader.

These labour struggles, along with the land reforms that followed, helped transform adiyans (labourers) into a new political class that would become the backbone of the Communist Party in the later years.

Working-class leader

Alappuzha was also the stage for Mr. Achuthanandan’s next significant chapter as a working-class leader in 1946. At the time, dissent was growing against the Maharaja of Travancore and his Diwan C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who were toying with the idea of keeping Travancore as an independent State outside the Indian Union, modelled on the American presidential system. The Communist Party strongly opposed the move and Mr. Achuthanandan was tasked with organising resistance.

Drawing on his influence among workers across the region, Mr. Achuthanandan played a key role in rallying labourers for what would become a massive uprising. Armed only with areca nut staves and choppers, they fought courageously against government forces equipped with guns. Hundreds lost their lives between October 23 and 27, 1946 in what would come to be known as the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising — a defining moment in Kerala’s communist movement. He was arrested on October 28 and was subjected to severe torture in the lockup at Poonjar. He was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in the uprising.

He had spent a total of five years and eight months in jail and lived underground for four-and-a-half years during the course of his political life.

“Mr. Achuthanandan came from a humble background and his early life was filled with struggle. He spent a good part of his life in Alappuzha as a trade union leader, organiser of coir and agricultural workers, and a leader of the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising. He entered politics by participating in the freedom struggle. It was from Alappuzha that he began his parliamentary politics in 1965. In 1957, he was the district secretary of the Communist Party in Alappuzha — the party had recognised it as a district but the revenue district was formed later that year — when the first-ever elections to the Kerala Assembly was held. VS, who was in-charge of elections for the Communist Party in Alappuzha, was able to get most number of communist representatives elected to the Assembly that year,” says P. Jayanath, a senior journalist and author of a biography on Mr. Achuthanandan.

Mass movements

In 1970’s and 1980’s, Kerala witnessed the land grab agitation and anti-reclamation stir. Mr. Achuthanandan spearheaded the struggles from Alappuzha by launching the anti-reclamation stir against the conversion of paddy fields. His mettle to organise mass movements anchored from Alappuzha solidified his image as a leader with pan-Kerala appeal.

However, his deep political ties to Alappuzha met an abrupt end when he lost the 1996 Assembly election in the Mararikulam constituency. His defeat in Mararikulam was attributed to infighting in the Communist Party of India (Marxist). “VS rose from the grassroots, but he was a hardliner too. In the 1996 elections, disillusioned CPI(M) activists voted for me,” P.J. Francis, who defeated him in Mararikulam, had told The Hindu in a 2021 interview.

In the later years, the veteran communist took up a range of social and environmental issues across the State. Yet, it was in Alappuzha that his foundational struggles took place — struggles that not only changed his life but also transformed society around him. They remain forever etched in the annals of Kerala’s political history.