Jeeva, a man of the masses who swore by downtrodden and working-class ideology

TWO hungry politicians stood in a deserted railway station. Ironically one of them clutched a cloth bag full of coins and currency notes which they had collected to support their party. Most of it was from hardworking factory workers and peasants. As hunger was rumbling in their stomachs, one of them suggested finding something to eat before the train came.

“We don’t have money to buy a food packet,” said the leader. “But we have money in the bag” protested the other. “No, that’s the people’s money. we can’t touch it,” pointed out the first and so the duo spends the night hungry. And it was not the only time he had spent a hungry night on a matter of principle.

Unbelievable as this story may be, such honest politicians did exist and Jeeva the communist from Boothappandi village would top their list. A pragmatic person with an unsoiled standing in public life, his day could have been an example of how a politician could live without the riches that adhere to the powerful.

There were three distinct socio-political movements in Madras before the British left. One was of course the freedom movement. The other was the self-respect movement which later morphed into the Dravidian front. The third was the communists. Jeeva was one leader who had actively participated in all these radically different movements with utmost gusto. Jeeva was a pioneer of communism in Tamil lands. He turned to communism because he felt Congress only wanted to attain Independence and the Periyar-led movement stood only for social justice.

Along with Ramamurthi, he laid the foundations for the party, braving police and laws enacted to suppress them. During the initial years, the communist party was banned in India and its leaders operated from hiding. Jeeva was in hiding right under the nose of the police in a friend’s house — actor NS Krishnan.

P Jeevanandham (Jeeva to his admirers), born as Sorimuthu in the town of Boothapandi in the socially fragmented Travancore state, strode like a colossus in the post-independent political arena.

The orthodox nature of his family exposed Jeevanandham to literature, and the arts, early on in his life. And also the negativity it espoused — caste-based rigidity. He had walked out of his house when his father scolded him. The reason, a plethora of complaints that he was taking his Dalit friends into temples (their entry was banned into religious places in Travancore’s very harsh social customs).

His political baptism was in 1924 when he participated in the famous Vaikom Satyagraha to challenge the upper-caste Hindus and the maharajah himself, where Dalits were barred from walking on the road leading to the temple at Vaikom.

Plunging into the nationalist stream he joined an ashram run at Cheranmadevi, and when he found that Dalits and upper-caste students were fed in separate halls, he supported Periyar’s protest against this practice and quit the ashram.

Communist Jeevanandham was in the vanguard of struggles to foster a sturdy labour movement based on Marxism. His oration and literature helped him do it. But many a time he had to suffer police repression and undergo imprisonment. One notable time was when he translated Bhagat Singh’s book and as a result, was dragged down the streets in chains to be imprisoned. He once went on a 19-day fast in jail to demand political prisoner status. Once he was exiled from the presidency.

When the Madras legislative assembly elections were held in 1952, Jeeva contested as Communist Party candidate and won from Washermanpet constituency in the working-class heartland of North Madras. He also campaigned vigorously for his comrades in jail. His oration in the Assembly on various urgent reform issues and even language policy won him the status of a star legislator.

He was a leader of the literary movement as well, writing and inspiring other writers by founding Tamil Nadu Kalai Ilakkiya Perumandram in 1961, a precursor of all progressive literary movements. A writer and poet himself, the songs he composed were regularly sung in the trade union meetings. He would take up issues like the nationalisation of Bharathi’s literature and making Tamil the teaching medium in the state.

Jeeva led a simple life. There was a prevailing joke that hard of hearing Jeeva would switch off the hearing aid once his speech was over on stage to conserve his battery and not listen to others. He used public transport and lived in a hut till the very end. When the former Chief Minister Kamaraj offered him a government flat Jeeva declined, citing the lives of thousands of people in the state without housing. So popular was he that, two hundred thousand people attended his funeral held at Kasimedu cemetery in Madras.

In a way, Jeeva espoused the minimalism of Gandhism, keenness for social impartiality from Periyar and the Marxist spirit to fight exploitation of the downtrodden. He spent more than a decade in the other two movements and the rest of his life with the communists. A close study of his work is a valuable record of the political landscape of Madras in the 20th century.

— The writer is a historian and an author