Theeyoor Chronicles Page 21
Like many readers of the original Malayalam text, my main fascination with the novel is the unobtrusively made point that history, like fiction, myth and folklore, is discursively produced. Unlike the historian in the novel – Wardha Gopalan who writes The History of Theeyoor which is a sourcebook for the narrator/journalist – N. Prabhakaran has no problems creating a cohesive narrative out of the lives of a range of ordinary people and their experiences. Fascinating, too, for me as a translator, was the narrative style that is documentary in tone and character, at once history and fiction, at once journalistic reporting and storytelling. In the translation, I have tried to keep as close to this as possible, because the style of storytelling in this novel is as important as the story that is being told.
I am grateful to N. Prabhakaran for trusting me with the translation, for reading and commenting on the several drafts, and for providing the information for the note on the political background. A huge vote of thanks to Rahul Soni, our editor at HarperCollins India, who, as usual, worked with me with his trademark eye to detail, generosity and patience. Thanks, also, to Adley Siddiqi, Shefali Jha and Niranjana R. Nair for reading and commenting on the manuscript.
Political Background
N. PRABHAKARAN AND JAYASREE KALATHIL
The Congress in Kerala and the Hunger March
In Kerala, it was the socialists within the Congress who were the first to form a group. By then, Congress socialists had already begun to organize at a national level. At the Patna caucus of the party in 1934, Jayaprakash Narayan was elected as the general secretary and E.M.S Namboodiripad as one of the joint secretaries of the Congress Socialist Party. C.K. Govindan Nair was elected as the president and Krishnapillah as the secretary of its Kerala wing.
It was among agrarian workers and teachers that the Kerala wing began its work. In 1936, A.K. Gopalan (known popularly as AKG) organized the poor and destitute farm workers and unemployed youth in and around Kannur and marched to Madras. This march became famous as the Pattini Jatha – the hunger march. Harijans (previously ‘untouchables’) were prohibited from walking the road in front of the Kandoth Koormba temple in Payyannur, and a local feudal landlord had made an effort to instigate enmity between the Harijans and the Ezhava community who looked after the temple. AKG, P. Krishnapillah, K.A. Keraleeyan, T.S. Thirumumbu and others tried to organize people against the practice of untouchability in Kandoth. They were set upon by a gang armed with wooden batons. The attack was so severe that a rumour spread that AKG and Keraleeyan had been killed. [Incident mentioned in the chapter ‘Incomplete’.]
Formation of the Communist Party and the Morazha Incident
As the twentieth century unfolded, all across Kerala, agrarian workers were being oppressed and attacked by feudal landlords. Calls of protest against this began to sound in northern Kerala. In July 1935, in a meeting of agrarian workers that took place in Naniyoor, a collective titled Kolacheri Taluk Karshaka Sangham was formed with Vishnubharateeyan as its president and Keraleeyan as the secretary. Similar collectives began to form in places like Karivellur. These and the 1936 hunger march invigorated the sector and their protests, and in 1937 the meeting of the Akhila Malabar Karshaka Sangham took place in Kozhikode.
Writer K. Damodaran had by then become a member of the newly formed Communist Party of India while studying in Varanasi. In 1937, he returned to Kozhikode with the party’s central committee members, S.V. Ghate and P. Sundarayya. The first cell of the CPI in Kerala was formed there with members such as P. Krishnapillah, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, K. Damodaran and N.C. Shekhar, although all of them would continue working within the Congress Party. It would be another two and a half years before a state-wide group of the Communist Party would be formed in a secret meeting in Parapram near Pinarayi. On 26 January 1940, the formation of this group was publicly announced through writing political slogans on walls across Kerala. [This is the incident in the novel that leads to Achuthan earning his nickname ‘Sickle’.]
Even after this incident, communists in Kerala did not completely end their association with the Congress. The differences of opinions between the two parties came to a head and became openly expressed enmity only around the Second World War. The communists saw the Second World War initially as a war between imperialist powers, and chose to strengthen their struggle against imperialism. The war brought untold misery to the people, hunger, famine, unavailability of essential commodities, along with new laws that curtailed civil rights. The Kerala Provincial Congress Committee (KPCC) called for a day of protest against imperialism on 15 September 1940. The Akhila Malabar Karshaka Sangham joined the call and decided to organize rallies and demonstrations about the demands of farmers and agrarian workers.
The events were to take place in Keecheri, but it was moved to Anchampeedika in Morazha village following an order banning public assembly. Demonstrators moved towards Anchampeedika, led by K.P.R Gopalan, and by 4 p.m., a public meeting presided by Vishnubharateeyan began. The Valapattanam police sub-inspector Kuttikrishna Menon and the Thaliparamba magistrate arrived at the scene and declared the assembly illegal. When the protesters refused to disband, the police unleashed a violent attack, and the protesters retaliated. Kuttikrishna Menon died at the scene from a fatal head injury, and a head constable Gopalan Nambiar died later at the hospital. This event would be known later as the Morazha Incident. It led to the arrest of K.P.R Gopalan, who was sentenced to death. It was only after the direct intervention of Mahatma Gandhi that the British government reduced the sentence to imprisonment. [The novel references these incidents through the eyes of Sickle Achuthan as he participates in the event with his friends Kunjiraman and Chandutti.]
The Communist Party in Kerala
The protests against imperialist and feudal oppression continued under the leadership of the communists. On 27 March 1941, the police attacked some members of the farmers’ collective, which led to strike action on 28 March in Kayyur. A policeman named Subbarayan, under the influence of alcohol, faced the strikers on his own and unleashed a string of abuse. In the ensuing altercation, the policeman took off in fright, accidentally fell into the Karyankode River and drowned. The criminal case following the incident found four local activists – Madathil Appu, Podavara Kunjambu Nair, Koithattil Chirukandan and Pallickal Abu Bakr – guilty of murder, and they were hanged at the Kannur Central Jail. The death sentence given to the four comrades instigated deep-seated hatred and enmity towards the British colonial government amongst communists across the nation. Resistance actions and peasant agitations in Telangana, Tebhaga, Punnapra–Vayalar and Karivellur increased popular support for the Communist Party.
By the time of independence, the differences and enmity between the communists and the Congress had deepened beyond reconciliation. The communists were dissatisfied with Mahatma Gandhi’s leadership and with some aspects of the struggle for independence, although they cooperated fully with anti-British actions and the Salt March. They saw independence as a mere transfer of power from white masters to black masters, and independent India as a half-colony of the British.
The second national congress of the Communist Party of India took place in Calcutta on 28 February 1948. B.T. Ranadive was the party secretary. At the congress, the ‘Calcutta Thesis’ concluded that it was time to consolidate the party beyond differences between various strains of thought and make it a truly revolutionary party that could lead the people of India. The thesis resonated widely within the party’s membership, leading to anti-government propaganda and action, including armed struggle. The situation became such that being a communist was considered tantamount to being anti-national. Communist sympathisers were denied jobs through police verification procedures; several leaders had to go underground. Still, despite such pushback from the state, the party and its ideology survived because of its tireless work among wage labourers and agrarian workers. This affinity with the Communist Party was clearly visible throughout the 1940s and 1950s. When villages were ravaged by the cholera and small
-pox epidemics in the 1940s, it was the communists who worked among ordinary people, caring for those affected and trying to control the spread of the disease. [These incidents are referenced in the novel through Sickle Achuthan’s diary entries]
In Kerala, the Communist Party went from strength to strength until, in 1957, with a clear majority, it formed the first state government under the leadership of E.M.S Namboodiripad. EMS was the first chief minister of an Indian state who did not belong to the Indian National Congress. However, in 1959, with the Vimochana Samaram (liberation struggle) – an organized backlash against the Communist Party, led by the Congress and the Indian Union Muslim League – prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru dismissed the government.
Regardless, until 1964, the Communist Party continued to be an influential political organization although there were clear signs of disagreement and discontent within its ranks, not just in Kerala but at the national level. One faction, led mainly by S. A. Dange, wanted to renew alliances with the Congress Party, especially given that Nehru’s relationship with the Soviet Union was strengthening day by day. As the differences of opinion within the Party began to come out into the public, the Indo-China war of 1962 took place, and many leaders who resisted Dange were arrested. Dange had made his anti-China thoughts public, but there were others in the Party who did not share his views.
It was not until the end of 1963 that the imprisoned leaders were released. By then, the rift within the Party was beyond repair, and in 1964, the Party split into the CPI (Communist Party of India) and the CPI (Marxist). In Kerala, under the leadership of EMS and AKG, the CPI (M) began to grow from strength to strength. They – the Marxists, as they were known – were seen as the rightful proponents of communism; the others – the CPI – were seen as revisionists who leaned right and supported the Congress. The result was that, in many rural areas, CPI followers were isolated and ridiculed.
The peasant revolt in Naxalbari in 1967 was a moment that invigorated the left-leaning youth across India. A cadre of young people from within the CPI (M) detached themselves and organized separately, preparing for an armed revolution to annihilate the feudal class. The Naxalite movement began to find purchase in Kerala from 1968 onwards. The attacks on the police stations in Thalassery and in Pulpally, where two policemen were killed, were important landmarks in this history. K. Ajitha, A. Varghese and Philip M. Prasad were among the leaders of the Naxalite movement in Kerala. During the late 1960s and the first half of the 1970s, the movement found popularity within the cultural milieu of Kerala, attracting many young writers and artists. [This forms the basis of the story of Kunjigovindan and his friends, and the letter Sickle Achuthan writes to Kunjigovindan.]
The BJP in Kerala
The Bharatheeya Janata Party (BJP) has been active in Kerala right from its beginnings, and before that, the Janasangham, its precursor. During the Emergency rule from 1975 to 1977, the Janasangham and the Rashtriya Swayamsevaka Sangham (RSS) were active and many of their leaders arrested. In Kerala, the main political enemy of the BJP was the communists – the undivided Communist Party in the early years, and following the split, the CPI (M). From around 1964, isolated altercations between the BJP/RSS and the CPI (M) took place, and by 1970 these were regular occurrences in the political scene of northern Kerala.
The beedi-making sector was one of the main loci of these altercations. The leftist government of Kerala produced an ordinance in 1968 to protect the rights of beedi workers and to ensure that The Beedi and Cigar Workers (Conditions of Employment) Act, 1966, was adhered to. To escape the new rules, the businessmen from Karnataka who controlled the beedi industry moved to Mangalapuram, just outside the boundary of the state of Kerala. The RSS arranged for beedi workers to work from home and set up depots to transport the beedis to Mangalapuram. In doing so, the RSS successfully dismantled the hold of the Marxist Party among the beedi workers who, until then, had worked in collectives. Kannur district had a large number of beedi workers. The Marxist Party accused the RSS of turning workers into daily wage labourers with no access to job protection or other benefits, which led to direct altercations between the two parties. In 1969, under the leadership of the CPI (M), and with direct support from the state government led by EMS, the cooperative Kerala Dinesh Beedi was formed with the specific purpose of supporting beedi workers who had become unemployed or were being exploited by the industry.
This paved the way for years of altercations between the two parties. These altercations were particularly violent, and many people have been killed over the decades. Attempts were made to portray these as a communal issue rather than an issue between two political parties. Indeed, the BJP and the RSS played an important part in promoting Hindu fundamentalism in Kerala. RSS volunteers from Kerala are known to have taken active part in the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya on 6 December 1992. [Incidents referenced in the stories of Amu Jinn and Ramachandran]
N. Prabhakaran in Conversation with Jayasree Kalathil
JK: Theeyoor Chronicles starts with the premise of a journalist investigating the large number of suicides and disappearances in a village. What it then does is to tell the story – or a kind of people’s history – of the village itself. How did you arrive at this idea of journalism turning into history?
NP: The idea occurred to me quite unexpectedly. I wanted to have a different beginning for the novel, and pondered over a variety of possibilities. Journalism was not totally strange to me, and most probably that might be why I ended up choosing the premise.
JK: For readers who know northern Kerala, Theeyoor, the fictional location of the novel, would feel familiar. How did the location of this story come about?
NP: Theeyoor is the fictional name I have given to my native village, Eripuram, in Kannur district in northern Kerala. Eripuram is adjacent to Madayipara – Theevappara in the novel – a vast, flat-topped, rocky area well known for its biodiversity. Nature lovers in northern Kerala visit the place in all seasons. The literal meaning of Eripuram is ‘the burning city’. During the Sangam Age, Eripuram was known as Maripuram. Palikan, a king of the Mooshaka dynasty which ruled the region around Ezhimala in present-day Kerala, burnt Maripuram down when the local chieftains rose against him and took over some parts of the region. After the incident, the place began to be known as ‘erinja puram’ or ‘the city that burned down’, which eventually became Eripuram. This history of the place was in my mind when I created the novel’s location and gave it the name Theeyoor, which also means ‘the land of fire’. If we were to locate Theeyoor in present-day Kerala, it would include Madayipara and all the villages around it.
JK: History writing is often a space of grand narratives presented as ‘truth’, and truth not just in terms of being factual but in terms of grand ideas of nation states, a verifiable and almost unquestionable narrative of the past. The assumption being that history, in itself, is truth. One of the things I found most interesting in translating this work is that you, without being obvious about it, ask questions or ‘trouble’ the idea of truth itself. At the beginning of the book, the narrator says that the book is based on the research he did, material from Wardha Gopalan’s The History of Theeyoor, information supplied by the retired schoolteacher Sadanandan maash and so on. Towards the end of the book, the narrator also says that he has taken the liberty to imagine certain events. This mixing of ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ is accepted as the realm of literature, while often it is maintained that history does not engage in a process of selective inclusion/exclusion or of imagination. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
NP: The history that acts as background material in a novel cannot be and need not be history proper. At the same time, I don’t like to entertain the idea that history as a whole is a construct, or that there is no such thing as historical fact. But when using history to create fiction, my aim as a writer was not to present an authentic history of the area where my characters live. I wanted to explore how the emotional world and intellectual life of the characte
rs are moulded by the history and the geographical features of the area.
JK: The style of the novel is that of a documentary. In documenting the history of a place, you have focused on the life stories of individuals. However, what emerges forcefully, alongside their stories, is the sociopolitical history of northern Kerala and of India more generally. Events from this history anchor their stories. This idea that history is inevitably local, in the sense that it cannot be told separately from the people, the folklore and myths that make them a people, their cultural memory and so on, is something you have explored in some other works of yours too, for example Janakatha. Did this idea inform the form and structure of the novel?
NP: The historical account of an incident, even if it is faithful and comprehensive, cannot be equated with the emotional effects of the incident upon the people. Each individual experiences the economic, political and cultural incidents of their time differently because their financial status, political stance, cultural roots and mental make-up are different. A writer should see how a historical incident casts its shadows in obviously different forms on different people of the same region. Let us take the example of the COVID-19 epidemic. In India, the disease has not affected the financial status of government employees and pensioners. But autorickshaw drivers, migrant labourers, coolies, people working on daily wages in private institutions, conductors, cleaners and drivers of private buses, lottery vendors and construction workers were thrown into horrifying poverty. People of all age groups, forced to remain shut in their homes, were on the brink of mental breakdown. Many sought the help of psychiatrists. Some were so severely haunted by dark memories and a sense of guilt that they could not come back to normalcy and took their lives. A medical history of COVID-19 or a detailed report on the steps taken by the government to fight the disease will not contain these facts. But if a fiction writer writes about COVID-19, their starting point would be these harsh realities. Anyone can see that Albert Camus’ Plague is more authentic than any official account of the plague. That is the difference.