ELECTION YARN

Why Chirakkal's communist victory made waves in Soviet Russia

Kannur: On August 16, 1949, a day after India celebrated its third Independence Day, hundreds of people gathered at the Raja's Upper Primary School in Chirakkal grama panchayat, a village 6km from Kannur town.

What happened on the school premises -- a 10-minute walk from Chirakkal Chira, a 15-acre artificial pond built by the erstwhile Chirakkal royal family -- made it to the history of Indian democracy. For the first time in India, a communist party was elected through voting to govern a local body.

The news was broadcast across Soviet Russia by Radio Moscow; and Chirakkal came to be known also as Moscow, according to a book called 'Cherucherikallu', which recounts the history of the village.

The Communist Party of India (CPI) won the election democratically, beating the Congress at a time when it was banned in India because of its call for an armed revolution (Calcutta Thesis) to overthrow the Jawaharlal Nehru-led Union government.

Chirakkal was ruled by the Kolathiri or Chirakkal dynasty since the 11th Century AD and was a political and economic rival to the Zamorins of Kozhikode. It became a handloom and textile hub. Four-time Chief Minister and Congress leader K Karunakaran was also born in Chirakkal in 1918.

Chirakkal was established as a gram panchayat in July 1949. A month after, local body elections were called for, according to 'Cherucherikallu', written by the late C H Balakrishnan 'Master', a school teacher who was the president of the panchayat in the 1990s.

Those days, only citizens above 21 years of age, who could read and write had the right to vote. Voting was not through ballot papers but by raising hands. Around 600 people turned up at the school to vote on August 16, 1949.

The government appointed village officer Chengalath Nanu Menon as the presiding officer. The proscribed Communist Party decided to field nine candidates but only seven agreed to contest the election.

Congress leaders 'Gandhi' Mukundan 'Master' and Pattarkandi Gopalan 'Master' objected to the candidature of the communists, alleging they were facing criminal cases in various police stations. Valapattanam sub-inspector Rayarappan Nair, responsible for the security bandobast, removed communist candidates K V Narayanan, Parayil Vasu and Kunhu Muhammed from the school grounds, and questioned them.

But the Congress leaders could not provide any documents related to the alleged case and presiding officer Menon ordered the police to let all the candidates in for the election. "The police had to allow the candidates to contest because of the unbiased approach of the election officials," Balakrishnan wrote.

In the election, around 500 of the 600 registered voters raised their hands for the seven communist candidates -- K P Narayanan, Parayil Vanu and Kunhu Muhammed, Theroth Onnakkan, K M Kunjonnakkan, T C Madan, and M C Nanu. The remaining five seats were won by Congress candidates T Kunhambu Nair (who owned Indian Textiles), Thaippurathu Kannan, V Karunakaran, C Prabhakaran Menon, and Chirakkal T Sreedharan Nair. They got only seven and nine votes.

The following day, i.e. on August 17, 1949, K V Narayanan was elected as the panchayat president and T C Madhavan, as the vice-president. They had no experience of governance, nor did the panchayat have an office. They ran the office from the terrace of an old building on Puthiya Theruvu. Congress member T Kunhambu Nair financially supported the panchayat in a big way, noted the panchayat president K V Narayanan in panchayat records.

However, three other Congress members, Prabhakaran Menon, V Karunakaran, and T Sreedharan Nair lost their membership in the panchayat board because they failed to attend board meetings. The first panchayat board's tenure ended on June 20, 1953. "Except for 1988, when the Congress won the panchayat election, Chirakkal always voted for the communist," said the present vice-president Anil Kumar P of the CPM.