Nayanar: Kerala’s longest serving chief minister

In I999 I was planning to launch a new daily newspaper in Malayalam, the language of the state of Kerala in southern India, that is akin to Tamil but not too close to that language, which is spoken by over 45 million Indians and is one of the oldest languages of the subcontinent. Malayalam is also the language of millions of Indians in the Gulf region including Saudi Arabia. Since we had also planned to print the newspaper in the United Arab Emirates, specifically in Dubai, the stage was set for the launch. But first I had to visit the state, meet as many people as possible, open offices and appoint staff. So I proceeded to Kerala and decided to pay a courtesy visit to the then Chief Minister E.K. Nayanar, who was one of the most renowned leaders of the state even though he belonged to the Communist Party ruling the state.
However, he was not the type of communist known in the Soviet Union or the die-hard Marxist-Leninist who ruled China. Like most Keralites he was moderate. There was freedom of enterprise and expression and there were political parties operating freely in the state. Kerala was part of India, which was not Marxist although during the time of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi, the country leaned rather heavily toward a controlled economy, which cost it dearly.
Having read about Nayanar I did not prepare myself for a confrontational interview as he was quite a moderate person and pleasant to talk to. So I decided to place the talk on the front-page of the first issue with him speaking to the Malayalis of the region.
He welcomed me warmly and sat back in his chair in a rather modest office which had nothing of the trappings of offices I had visited in other countries especially the Gulf where the offices of senior leaders and businessmen of all shades meant some of the finest furniture the market can offer, and even some of them were made to order.
Nayanar was born in 1918 and held the post of chief minister three times between 1980 and 200l making him the longest serving chief minister having served altogether 4009 days that, in fact, testified to his popularity.
Although his father, Govindan Nambiar, was a believer in feudalism, Nayanar took to Marxism under the influence of his cousin K.P.R. Gopalan. He was active in student politics and supported the admission of a Dalit girl to school. Dalits in India are the suppressed people or what the British called untouchables who were treated very badly by higher classes and persecuted widely in the countryside. I remember visiting a number of villages in Surat and seeing Dalits living in awful conditions not even permitted to drink water from the wells lest they would pollute them. The situation is much better now and there are Dalits in Parliament and one of the country’s presidents recently was a Dalit himself. But the discrimination still persists in one form or the other.
He was so reform-minded that he helped establish a library and named it Shri Harshan library, after Harshan, a member of the suppressed class, was tortured to death at the Kannur Central Jail for his participation in the national movement.
In his youth he organized several movements including the workers movement against dismissal of their colleagues for which he was jailed for several weeks. In one tragic incident he was declared a suspect in the death of two policemen although he was not involved. He went into hiding for six years. In another case he again went into hiding in forest areas. Later, as the chief minister he set up a government college in the same area in I981. It was later renamed E.K. Nayanar Memorial Government College. While in hiding he briefly worked as a journalist for a newspaper called Kerala Kaumudi.
During his terms as chief minister he introduced several reforms aimed at improving the workers’ status and alleviating their suffering.
In 2004 he died aged 85 leaving behind two sons and two daughters.

n Farouk Luqman is an eminent journalist based in Jeddah.