Surjeet8217;s just emulating his comrades

But similar gestures made by a host of other lesser known party activists never hit headlines. A case in point is that of CITU State general secretary K N Raveendranath, who was once a top-runner for the coveted post of state secretary of the party but subsequently fell on bad days and was removed from the central committee of the party. In the fifties, Raveendranath had donated to the party the entire propertyowned by him at that time running to nearly an acre of prime land in the heart of Ernakulam city, which at the current market rate would fetch about Rs 2 crore. The Ernakulam district committee of the party disposed off that property to meet its financial liabilities.

Old-timers in the party recall that unlike E M S Namboothiripad, most hard-boiled activists of the Communist movement of those days were not landlords, who had nothing to donate except their sweat and blood. But the few who owned land were dissuaded by the party from emulating the example set by Namboothiripad for some reason.

For instance, Abdul Jaleel, an old guard of the party who got elected to the Assembly from Vadakkekara in 1965, wanted to donate his property to the party inspired by the gesture made by Namboothiripad, but he was dissuaded from doing so by the local party bosses at that time as they did not want to create so many Namboothiripads in the party8217;. Jaleel later left the party and died unsung.

Keraleeyan was anotherleader of the undivided Communist Party from north Malabar who donated his entire property to the party. The donation of personal assets by many Communist activists of those days across the country had much to do with the revolutionary and Gandhian spirit of the times.

Instances are galore of similar sacrifices made by activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh which started building up its network in the State from the early fifties. A V Bhaskaran, a senior RSS pracharak who is presently the southern India organising secretary of Vidya Niketan, donated one acre of prime land owned by him on TD Road, Ernakulam, to the Sangh in the late sixties. The present district office of the RSS is located on that plot.

The Thanthra Vidya Peetom at Veliyathunad near Aluva stands on the plot, which was the ancestral property of Iravi Ravi Namboothiripad, a full-time Sangh pracharak, donated to the organisation.