E. M. S. Namboodiripad Quotes

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.

As opposed to this two-stage transformation-slave to feudal and feudal to capitalist-in Europe, India remained tied to the same old order under which the overwhelming majority of the people belonged to the oppressed and backward castes. This is the essence of what Marx called India’s ‘unchanging’ society where the village was not touched by the wars and upheavals at the higher levels, the British conquest being the first revolution.

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

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,''

...the Buddha whose near-materialist philosophy gripped the mass of suppressed humanity…those belonging to the materialist school had to fight an unequal fight and were therefore defeated...the defeat of the materialists in this unequal battle was the beginning of a millennium-long age of intellectual and socio-political backwardness which culminated in the establishment of British rule in our land.

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.

Elements of Gandhism were by and large inherent in my life style and mode of thinking even after I adopted Marxism. While expressing my ideological difference with Gandhism, I became a political activist who upheld the high values of Gandhism and tried to translate them in my personal lifestyle.