‘What made EMS different was his critical consciousness’

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Writer and critic B Rajeevan said that E M S Namboodiripad had the quintessential quality a communist leader must possess, which is critical consciousness. “Usually when someone is asked to define the qualities of a communist, one would say they should be ready for making sacrifices or they should be committed to a cause and so on.So are terrorists and right wing activists. What makes a communist different is his willingness to criticise anyone and everyone, including himself. EMS had this quality,” he said while delivering a lecture on ‘The Political Identity of EMS: Some thoughts’.
The talk was part of the lecture series ‘NavaKeralam 60’ organized by the Institute of Sustainable Development and Governance (ISDG).
The lecture series is organized as part of the 60th anniversary celebrations of formation of Kerala. Talks will be delivered on prominent personalities in the socio-cultural sphere such as EMS, C Achutamenon, O V Vijayan, Kamala Das, Aravindan etc. Historian K N Panikkar inaugurated the lecture series.
Rajeevan said that EMS had later admitted that the party took a wrong stand at the time of Quit India Movement. “While all other Communist leaders continued to defend the party’s stand, which was to support Britain as it was with USSR during the World War II and to take a stand against Quit India, EMS said that party was wrong. That is in fact in tune with the stand of Lenin, who earlier stated that communists must take stand in favour of their motherland,” he said.
Rajeevan said that EMS took a middle path at the time of the second party congress at Calcutta, where the party was divided on whether to support Chinese stand or Russia’s revolutionary stand. Even during the crisis in party in the 1960s, EMS criticised the right wing and left wing groups in the party.
Though his book ‘Mahatma and his isms’, EMS corrected party’s stand that Mahatma Gandhi was a representative of India’s bourgeois, he said.
Rajeevan said that followers of EMS, sadly, are not following his critical approach to issues.
K N Panikkar, in his inaugural speech, said that the values of renaissance are getting eroded in today’s society. He said that need of today is to develop a new value system.