EMS Namboodiripad is not a figure from the past. He is a beacon for India’s future.

EMS began his public life as a Gandhian, before moving to the Nehru-led left camp in the Congress. Eventually EMS came to Communism and joined the Communist Party of India (CPI). He became a preeminent leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) after the split in the CPI.

As India’s first Communist Chief Minister, EMS presented new dimensions not just to the country’s polity but to Communist theory and practice as well. He was a creator and interpreter of the famed ‘Kerala model’ of development which led the state to make remarkable achievements in sectors such as education, literacy, healthcare, land reforms, etc. Under EMS, the left showed what was possible to improve people’s lives through parliamentary and other ways, even while functioning within the constraints of the capitalist system.

P. Govinda Pillai first met EMS in the early 1940s, and the two remained comrades and friends till EMS’s death in 1998. Himself a prominent Marxist intellectual and Communist leader, PG traces the ups and downs in EMS’s political life and charts his ideological development in this engaging biography. In his writing, PG combines the analytical rigour of the historian with the passion of an activist and the warmth of a close friend of over half a century.