Comrade of small jokes

But people in the CPM who have known him from his youth say that the bluster, buffoonery and the bitter tears he comes up with on occasion are all for the gallery. Behind the mask is an unscrupulous political survivor who could ditch even his closest comrade for a position of power in the party and the government.

They recount how in 1967 a sulking Nayanar had wrangled out of the late A.K. Gopalan a party ticket to contest for the Lok Sabha after the party had denied him one. His performance in Parliament was nothing to write home about, except for the odd occasion when he was found dozing when his turn to raise a question came. Yet, Nayanar has managed to remain on the fast track ever since. A defeat in the 1971 polls did not really make a difference, thanks to the sudden death of party strongman C.H. Kanaran. This catapulted Nayanar to the post of CPM state secretary. Until this point he was hardly known outside Malabar. Since then he has been either the party’s chief minister or its organisational boss, perhaps the most recognisable face of the party in the state after the venerable EMS.

Many credit his astonishing rise to his stars for there was at least one occasion in 1984 when Nayanar found himself almost out of the party. He had teamed up with M.V. Raghavan to evolve and canvas support inside the CPM for an alternative line of alliance with the Muslim League. While Raghavan and a few other members of the team stuck to their guns inviting expulsion from the party, Nayanar quietly caved in and expressed regret for his “mistake”. Nayanar also learnt from this incident. He has never meddled in ideological matters after that. It has been a single-minded pursuit of power ever since.

In 1990, after long years as party secretary, Nayanar said that he has had enough. But at the crucial party conclave in Kozhikode he put paid to the dreams of his arch rival, V.S. Achuthanandan, by offering himself for the post once again and going on to win it. After two terms as chief minister, Nayanar stated once again in 1996 that he has had enough. He said he was not contesting the elections on health grounds. But when the LDF won and V.S. Achuthanandan lost, he made himself once again available for the purpose of mounting the gaddi. He deserted his CITU friends overnight and teamed up with Acuthandandan to become Kerala’s chief minister a third time, defeating his former ally, Susheela Gopalan, by just two votes in the CPM state committee. Thus behind all the bluster and buffoonery, Nayanar is every inch an ambitious person. It’s an ambition laced with insecurity.

He is at his confident best while exchanging inanities or taking on his political opponents. He knows his enemies in the party are waiting for an opportune moment to pull him down. He has a deep-seated mistrust of Thiruvananthpauram, the seat of power, with its seemingly harmless eddies that could prove to be whirlpools and generally has little respect for professional advisors and speech-writers. So he puts his mouth in his foot without as much as a wince, to the delight of his fans and foes.

During his last term, he invited widespread criticism with his well-aired observation that women in capitalist societies in the West are raped as often as cups of tea are drunk. He used the analogy to try and dismiss a particularly sordid incident of rape, involving a foreign national, that had occurred at Kovalam. His recent attack on Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things shows a similar lack of restraint and taste. Nayanar rashly charged the Booker Prize-winning author of painting the Syrian Christian women characters in her novel in unflattering colours and as instruments of deviant sex.

But that’s Nayanar. Never shy of rushing into situations where discretion is called for. But his brashness arises out of a supreme confidence that he places in his credentials as a journalist and author. But what do these qualifications really amount to? His journalistic experience boils down to a few months as a sub-editor in the ’40s and a tenure as editor of the CPM party newspaper in later years. As for his writing skills, well, he has written quite a few but hardly any of them are still read.

It therefore makes eminent sense for Chief Minister Nayanar to confine himself to affairs of state and leave the task of literary criticism to others more qualified than he.