E. M. S. Namboodiripad

Namboodiripad's engagement with history was not academic but an inevitable part of his involvement with politics.

When we own up our mistakes some people interpret as if we alone were in the wrong. The fact is that just as we did, they also committed mistakes. If in the debate on Roopa Bhadrata we erred, people like Mundassery also erred equally.

Sankara was one of the tallest of India's (and the world's) idealist philosophers; his Advaita Vedanta is one of the richest contributions India has made to the treasury of human knowledge.

...engaged themselves in mainly exposing the policies and programmes of the bourgeois leaders including Gandhi without participating in these struggles and sharing their bitter experience. The result was that the bourgeois leadership and the people were getting closer to each other.

But when people like Mundassery tried to correct us, they viewed form and content as two separate categories and argued for perfection in both. That was their theory. In fact the form and content are not so separate of conflicting categories. For progressive content there must be progressive form. The progressive form is the same as perfect form. Those like Mundassery did not realize the relation between the two.

Like several other historical personages, Gandhi had a highly complex personality, his teachings, too, are incapable of over-simplified assessments on the lines of his being 'the inspirer of the national movement who roused the masses to anti-imperialist action', 'the counter-revolutionary who did all he could to prevent the development of our national movement on revolutionary lines', etc."

The author has accused her own mother of indulging in deviant sexuality. Yet, Mary Roy takes pride in the "beautiful work" by her daughter. "Why is it so?"

I am proud of my individuality as a Communist that |Arundhati sees as a flaw and my lack of deviant sexuality that Arundhati sees as a matter of credit,''

E.M.S. Namboodiripad straddled the history of twentieth century Kerala and the Indian Communist movement in a manner which invokes awe. The word ‘history’ is what recurs in the Malayalam media while paying tributes to him. History maker, history’s man, epochal figure: these are some of the terms which underline the recognition that EMS was something bigger than a political leader.

Namboodiripad was by birth a brahmin,that too from the most exclusive and ancient namboodiri community of kerala,yet if he had not been from this community,communism leave alone E.M.S the man would have never become a by-word in Kerala

He also created opportunities for Kerala to prove its capabilities at the national and international levels.

associated himself with the masses, their lives, their problems, sentiments and aspirations.

Why and how did our country fall from its brilliant antiquity to the degradation of pre-British days? The answer is that defeat of the oppressed castes at the hands of the Brahminic overlordship, of materialism by idealism, constituted the beginning of the fall of India’s civilization and culture which in the end led to the loss of national independence.

When we own up our mistakes some people interpret it as if we are wrong. They too commit mistakes.

Between December 1991 and March 1998, octogenarian E.M.S. Namboodiripad wrote 128 columns for Frontline on an impressive-indeed awesome-range of subjects. For these seven years and more, his was simply the most dependable contribution from the standpoint of the editorial desk....He was a Master at handling history on the wing...EMS wrote one column a month for Frontline.... ‘Perspective’, the EMS column ranged over politics, philosophy, economics, education, social movements, literature, cultural affairs, religion and books.