13 June 1909 - Birth, Elamkulam

19 March 1998 - Death, Thiruvananthapuram

WWII CHINA STALIN BANDUNG USSR

1939 -1945 1949 1953 1955 1991

_______________________________________________________________________

REVOLT TILAK ERA GANDHI ERA CPI BANNED INDIA/PAKISTAN REP. CPI (M)GS

1857 1890-1920 ‘31 1934 1947 ‘50 1979-’92

_________________________________________________________________________

K-EMS

M Malabar Rebellion

STS CSP CPI 1st C POLIB-SG CM CPI (M) CM 9thP CPI (M)

1921 1934-1938------1943----‘53-‘54-‘56—’57-‘9--‘64----’67-‘9--------------------------‘96------------------

1 1935-1936

Peasant mov./union

STS Saint Thomas School/CSP Congress Socialist Party/Communist Party of India

CONTEXT

● Three previously separate states (Malabar, Cochin, and Travancore) is part of the
context
● Feudal Malabar
● Namboodiris were located at the apex of the caste hierarchy.
● Playing the role of priests (traditional intellectuals, in Gramsci’s analysis),
● Namboodiris practised very strict marriage and inheritance laws
● Marriage reform
● Gender issues were direct to the core of land control
● Only the eldest son in a family could marry within the caste, and thereby, only his sons
could inherit the land. This was a way to keep control of land consolidated within
families. As a result, most Namboodiri women were unable to marry and were forced to
observe a form of social isolation
● Malabar rebellion: women rights and abolition of poligamy
● India’s freedom struggle shaped the course of EMS’s life
● To link the struggle against feudalism and feudal landlords (janmi) within India to the
struggle against British imperialism
● WWII communist alliances period of the communists’ greatest isolation from the masses

ORGANIZATIONS/MOVEMENTS

● Yogakshema Sabha, the main Namboodiri organization for social reform

● Congress and Khilafat movements
● Civil Disobedience Movement (1931)
● Second Civil Disobedience Movement (1932)
● Congress Socialist Party (1934) was a socialist group within the Indian National
Congress (who were the primary political party in British India fighting for national
independence, and which had a cross class basis
● Prabhatham [‘The Dawn’] organo del CSP 1934-35 1938-39
● All Kerala Conference of Trade Unions, which took place in 1935 in Calicut
● As the joint secretary of the South Indian Federation of Peasants and Agricultural
Labour, EMS helped form the All Indian Kisan Sabha (All India Peasants Union) in 1936
● CPI organ New Age
● (I propose that in organizations we differentiate his organizations at the head of Party
Organs as it was from The Dawn and New Age due to the impact it has on praxis, it is
not the same to be the organizer of a party that runs the information device and with
great potential for education, agitation and mobilization)