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Thiruvananthapuram: K R Gowri Amma (102), who died of old-age related health problems in a hospital here today, had been the most assertive personality of modern Kerala, and also the victim of a male-dominated polity.
The lone woman member in Kerala’s first Communist ministry (1957-59), led by EMS Namboodiripad, later in her pretty long public life, marked by self-assertions and sacrifices, Gowri Amma had also been the subject of sectarianism and factionalism of the CPI (M).
She missed, rather she had been denied, the historic opportunity to become the first woman CM of Kerala in 1987, due to the machinations of the bigwigs of the male-dominated party, who saw her far too aggressive and independent, to be subservient to the diktats of the organizational bosses. They then chose a more pliable E K Nayanar for the top post.
In 1987, the CPI (M) had led the LDF to the polls tacitly spreading the impression that Gowri Amma would be made the chief minister if the coalition wins. Her popularity and backward class status considerably contributed to the victory of the front. But the promise was breached.
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Though Gowri Amma was visibly angry at the humiliation heaped on her, the party leadership somehow assuaged her and persuaded her to take a cabinet berth. This, however, hurt her self-respect and marked the beginning of her gradual alienation and eventual expulsion from the party, to which she had been one of the most popular leaders after the 1964 split in the CPI.
After breaking ranks with the CPI(M) in 1994 following a series of tussles with the leadership, she floated an outfit called Janadhipatya Samarakshana Samithi (JSS), which became a junior partner in the Congress-led UDF for a while. In her sunset years, Gowri Amma largely kept away from active politics, shedding much of her gripe towards the CPI (M).
Kalathi Parambil Raman Gowri was born in a well-to-do backward class Ezhava family in Cherthala, Alappuzha, famed as the cradle of the labour movement in the country. She was one of the first law graduates from her community. Shortly after settling down to a promising practice in her home town, young Gowri took her plunge as a Communist activist, which then meant wading into a life of sufferings and torture, which many of those fired by revolutionary zeal bore with fortitude, with the hope of building a brave new world.
The party, which chose the path of parliamentarian democracy after a few ill-planned uprisings on the eve of independence, initiated her into electoral politics, first in the erstwhile Travancore-Cochin state, and then to the Kerala Assembly following the state formation in 1956.
Gowri Amma shot to fame as she became the Revenue Minister in the 1957-59 Communist government, in which she took a lead role in drafting and piloting the path-breaking agrarian reform legislation before the ministry was dismissed by the Centre. It was during this time that she married the party leader and ministerial colleague T V Thomas, who also hailed from Alappuzha.
When the Communist Party split in 1964, Gowri and Thomas chose different paths, which seriously ruptured their married life. When the CPI(M) returned to power in 1969 heading a coalition ministry under EMS Namboodiripad, she was again made a minister. Thomas was also a member of the ministry as a nominee of the CPI. She was also inducted in all the CPI(M)-led ministries before she fell out with the party.
Though Gowri was not officially restored to the party, there has been a silent admission in the ranks that she was denied justice, but she would remain an enduring presence in the Communist lore of Kerala.
