Top 15 E. M. S. Namboodiripad Quotes

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

E.M.S. Namboodiripad was a leader who equipped Communist parties to handle governance in a bourgeois system.

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.

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.

EMS was uniquely positioned to analyze the various phases of the national movement and the role of Gandhi. He began his political life as an ardent Gandhian. Through out his life, while d adhering to the Marxist world outlook, he practiced many of the Gandhian principles of simplicity and personal austerity that are cherished by Indians.

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

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

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

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."

It is far from the truth to say that the rebellion was a communal riot, that the objective of the rebels was the destruction of Hindu religion and that the six months of rebellion were six months of anti-Hindu atrocities... All this, however, does not mean that religious fanaticism was totally absent in the rebellion. The numbers of forced conversions which did take place cannot by any stretch of imagination be explained by any other motive than religious fanaticism... One can and should, however, state explicitly that the main force behind the rebellion was not fanaticism which was simply a by-product...

This new theory of Dravidian superiority is as unscientific as the theory of Aryan superiority. For, it goes against all the accepted conclusions of historical research, which have conclusively proved the indivisible links between social and family institutions on the one hand and the stage of civilization on the 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.

It is the fact of life that a truth emerges out of a conflict between two wrongs. The development of society is through contradictions. Thus the Roopa Bhadrata argument which arose out of our conflict was wrong, in another sense it was correct too. Evaluating the worth of literature we should never confine ourselves to content alone. Mundassery was correct in insisting that form too is to be evaluated. In his own words it is not enough to have perfect content, it must also have perfect form. That is Roopa Bhadrata. Is that not correct? Yes, it is. We accept that we were wrong on that count. Those of us who founded the Jeevat Sahitya Sanghom were political workers. We looked at literature too through political eyes. So we did not pay sufficient attention to the artistic structure of literature. That was our mistake.

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.

We had then and still have to fight a two-front battle. Ranged against us on the one hand are those who denounce us for our alleged ‘departure from the principles of nationalism and socialism’, since we are championing ‘sectarian’ causes like those of oppressed castes and religious minorities. On the other hand are those who, in the name of defending the oppressed caste masses, in fact, isolate them from the mainstream of the united struggle of the working people irrespective of caste, communities and so on.