The death of Velikkakath Sankaran Achuthanandan, who is fondly called VS, marks the end of an era in the political history of Kerala. He breathed his last at the state capital on Monday.
V.S. Achuthanandan's birthday falls on the same month the anniversary of the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising is observed. The former Kerala chief minister was born on October 20, 1923, while the 1946 agitation occurred from October 24 to 26. Interestingly, it was after the Punnapra-Vayalar anniversary in October 2019 that the veteran CPI(M) leader fell ill and bid farewell to public life.
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Achuthanandan was very much part of this uprising against C.P. Ramaswami Iyer, then-Prime Minister (Diwan) of erstwhile Travancore princely state. Named after the places where the agitation began and ended, it was the Punnapra-Vayalar that made Achuthanandan a staunch communist. CP's police tried to suppress the agitation but angry workers stormed the police camp in Punnapra on October 24, 1946. The police gunned down 29 people.
Two days later, on the 26th, the workers demolished the wooden bridge in Mararikulam to stop the Travancore army from proceeding to Vayalar. Six of these workers were shot dead. On October 27, the army massacred more than a thousand agitators in Punnapra and Vayalar.
Achuthanandan, who was just 23, was instrumental in inspiring the workers to continue their fight. Police launched a manhunt for him and later arrested him from a beedi labourer's house in Poonjar, Kottayam, on October 28.
Travancore police brutally tortured him in the lock-up. They beat him up with lathis and stabbed him with a rifle bayonet. They thought he was dead and asked fellow prisoners to bury him. However, the inmates later realised he was alive and brought him to hospital. Achuthanandan later went in hiding and remained so until India became independent.
The uprising moulded him into a working-class leader in Alappuzha and soon he was noticed by none other that P. Krishna Pillai, one of the founders of Communist Party of India. Pillai tasked him with organising farmers in the Kuttanad region where they fought against low wages and caste discrimination.
After the formation of the state of Kerala in 1956, Achuthanandan, as district secretary, was instrumental in bagging maximum seats in the assembly election from Alappuzha. He was one of the 32 communist leaders who walked out of the national executive of the CPI in 1964, splitting the party forever. He served as the Kerala chief minister from 2006 to 2011 and was the opposition leader for 15 years.