K R Gouri Amma's life and Kerala's history have a somewhat similar trajectory.
She was the sole woman in Kerala's first ministry and came frustratingly close to being anointed as the state's chief minister. She remained an active presence in Kerala politics, contesting all assembly elections in the state but for the 2016 one.
The veteran communist leaves behind an illustrious century. Her life was revolutionary in more ways than one.
Named after the first Ezhava woman to get a university degree in the princely state of Kochi, Gouri Amma went on to become the first law graduate from the community in the princely state of Travancore. She was the first woman advocate from the Ezhava community when she started practice at Cherthala.
Gouri Amma's political career preceded Kerala. She first contested an election in 1948 to Travancore state assembly. She lost.
When Travancore was merged with Kochi to form Thiru-Kochi, she was elected to the new state's assembly from Thuravoor in 1951.
She was elected to the assembly again in 1954, from Cherthala.
She has represented either Cherthala or Aroor in the Kerala Legislative Assembly ever since the state was formed, until 1977.
Gouri Amma won 12 elections, lost four and served as a minister in six governments, starting with the E M S Namboodiripad government in 1957.
She is the longest-serving woman legislator (16,874 days) and minister (5,824 days).
Age of romance
Gouri Amma, who celebrated her 101th birthday this year, was born to Parvathi Amma and Ayyappan Raman at Pattanakkad near Cherthala on July 14, 1919.
She completed the intermediate course from Maharaja's College, Ernakulam, where she was in illustrious company.
Those were the days when a little known poet named Changampuzha Krishna Pillai had taken the Kerala campuses by storm with 'Ramanan'.
“Our Malayalam lecturer Kuttippuzha Krishna Pillai recited the poem in class one day and asked if anyone knew the poet. Everyone replied in unison that it was Changampuzha. They did not know that it was the same Krishna Pillai who sat silently on the next bench until the teacher introduced him to the class,” she recounted her campus days during one of her interviews to Manorama.
Gouri Amma completed her bachelor's degree from St Teresa's College, Ernakulam. Later she joined the Thiruvananthapuram Law College.
“Very few women in Thiruvananthapuram draped a sari those days. I used to. And the boys used to wait for me. I did not enjoy the attention though,” she recalled.
Turning point
The turning point in her life came in 1946 when she joined the communist party. Gouri Amma lost her father the same year. She was drawn to the communist movement in the decisive days of the Punnapra-Vayalar revolt against the then Travancore state Dewan, C P Ramaswami Iyer.
Gouri Amma was inducted into the Communist Party of India by P Krishna Pillai.
Two years later, she joined other communist leaders in jail after the party was proscribed following the Calcutta thesis, a call for taking up arms proposed by the undivided communist party's then secretary B T Ranadive.
But for a small break, Gouri Amma remained in jail until she was elected to the Thiru-Kochi assembly in 1951. She was arrested again a year later.
When Kerala trusted the communists in the first assembly election in 1957, Gouri Amma became the state's first revenue minister.
She later married her comrade and cabinet colleague T V Thomas. A split in the party in 1964 resonated in her personal life too. She walked over to the newly formed CPM, while Thomas remained with the CPI.
Gouri Amma, an active proponent of agrarian reforms, was nominated as the first president of the Karshaka Sangham in 1960, a post she held till 1984.
Overcoming losses
The year 1977 was of losses. Thomas died in March. Gouri Amma lost the assembly election for the first time. “Though T V walked out of my life, I had gone to look after him when he was admitted to a hospital in Bombay. EMS initially objected since we were in different parties. A party forum later let me to be with T V for two weeks. When it was time for me to leave, T V cried. I never saw him again,” she had said.
Gouri Amma bounced back to active politics and became a minister in 1980. In 1987, the CPM projected her as its chief minister candidate. Party secretary V S Achuthanandan and CPI secretary P K Vasudevan Nair publicly declared that Gouri Amma was their choice to become the chief minister. She was shocked to see the party choosing E K Nayanar as its legislative party leader after the victory.
She stormed out of a party meeting, but her comrades pacified her by offering her crucial portfolios in the cabinet. She was given industries and excise departments.
Yet the bad blood continued until 1994 when Gouri Amma was expelled from the CPM.
Unperturbed, she formed a new outfit and named it Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi (JSS). Gouri Amma won the assembly election from Aroor without the support of the Left Democratic Front or the United Democratic Front in 1996. Two years later, she led the JSS to the Congress-led United Democratic Front.
Gouri Amma, who then served in the A K Antony and Oommen Chandy ministries, lost the elections in 2006 and 2011. In 2014, she left the UDF.
Later on, she was revered across the political spectrum. Her former comrades and colleagues came together to heap praise on her parliamentary career.
Witness to history
Gouri Amma said her autobiography could create an earthquake. “When I finished writing my autobiography, I gave it to a party leader for publishing. He showed it to someone else. I was warned of legal suits if I published it.”
Gouri Amma served as a minister in the first cabinet of Kerala and spearheaded a host of reforms that changed the social structure of the state forever. With her demise, Kerala has lost the only surviving member of the historic government of 1957.
Gouri Amma has steered diverse departments including revenue, excise, food, agriculture, civil supplies and industries.
She has served in the left ministries of 1957, 1967, 1980 and 1987 as well as the A K Antony and Oommen Chandy governments between 2001 and 2006.
Remembered for her unwavering stand for the masses, she managed to get the legislature pass the Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill on the eve of the government’s dismissal by the centre in 1959.
She also set in motion the Kerala Land Reforms Bill a decade later. It was later passed by the Achutha Menon government.
Gouri Amma also brought in effective legislation to guarantee land rights to the agricultural labourers.
