SPEAKING TO DELEGATES in Hyderabad on the fourth day of the six-day 22nd Party Congress of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), its triennial summit, General Secretary Sitaram Yechury poked fun at what he called the ‘bourgeois media’ for their distorted portrayal of communists. He specifically named the Malayala Manorama, a Kerala daily, for carrying allegedly … Continue reading A Report From the 22nd Party Congress of CPM
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When Pinarayi Vijayan Put Sitaram Yechury in His Place
LIKE MOST OF his puritanical predecessors in the Stalinist confines of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM), Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan is a reluctant conversationalist. His interactions with the media are always guarded. He belongs to a generation of Marxists taught to be tight-lipped about the goings-on of the party apparatus, unlike the CPM’s … Continue reading When Pinarayi Vijayan Put Sitaram Yechury in His Place
Marxism and Martial Arts
FOUR-YEAR-OLDS hate being woken up at 4.30 am and taken through morning ablutions by force, especially when they see most grown-ups in the joint family snoring away. But then a short walk that follows to a kalari session in the rain could lift your spirits. Petrichor is a feeling you experience long before you discover … Continue reading Marxism and Martial Arts
Fidel Castro: My Hero in Havana
Growing up in a Marxist household in northern Kerala, the first time I heard the name Fidel Castro was during the Falklands War of 1982. The elders at home were discussing UK’s aggression under Margaret Thatcher on Argentina, a Latin American country, which had ‘natural claim’ to the island to its south. Newspapers carried a … Continue reading Fidel Castro: My Hero in Havana
Pinarayi Vijayan: A Marxist in the Marketplace
MANY YEARS AGO, when his intra-party rival VS Achuthanandan was Chief Minister of Kerala, Pinarayi Vijayan, who was then the chief of the ruling CPM’s state unit, attended an all-party meeting to discuss the width of state highways. It was a departure of sorts for a party strongman to turn up at such a gathering, … Continue reading Pinarayi Vijayan: A Marxist in the Marketplace
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