Nandakishore Mridula’s Reviews > Communistubharanavum Vimochanasamaravum > Status Update

The communist government, riding on a wafer-thin majority, was beleaguered by right-wing elements and their media from the beginning: to compound matters, they had to deal with food shortage as well! Doomed from the start.

The writing is haphazard with a lot of repetition, time shifts and too much information packed into too little space (it parallels the author's speaking style exactly!) but the detail is rich. As the events unfold, it becomes clear that the first communist ministry carried the seeds of its own destruction within itself. And a hostile environment did not help.

Kerala elected the communists to power through the ballot box in 1957 - the first ever communist government to take charge in such a fashion in the world. A couple of years later, it was brought down through a disgraceful strike called vimochana samaram ("liberation struggle"), by upper caste Hindu and Christian right-wing lobbies. This book chronicles that turbulent era.