Opinion M Kunhaman, the champion of those who were left behind

His professional articles and books focused on the uneven social and economic transformation among the Scheduled Tribes in Kerala. The focus of his inquiry emanated from his life experience

Economist and Dalit thinker M Kunhaman

KP Kannan

December 7, 2023 11:55 AM IST First published on: Dec 7, 2023 at 07:02 AM IST

The death of Professor M Kunhaman, whose body was discovered at his home by friends on November 3, has shocked Kerala. Kunhaman was a scholar, trained in economics and development, but one who kept pricking the conscience of Kerala’s society about how it treated Dalits and Adivasis.

Kunhaman is said to be the second Dalit in Kerala — after the erudite K R Narayanan who had adorned the chair of the President of India — to have passed his postgraduate education with a first rank. He was born in Palakkad into one of the poorest sections in Kerala, the Panar. His autobiography titled Ethiru (meaning “in opposition”) shook many a sensitive Keralite. He depicted, in graphic detail, how hunger was a constant childhood companion in the 1950s and ’60s and how he went to school “for food and not for education”. When he passed the secondary level examination, one of his teachers helped him get admitted to Government Victoria College in Palakkad. When he secured the first rank in MA in Economics, he was felicitated by the college with a gold medal. He sold it a few days later to buy food for his family.

Life changed soon after. He became an officer in the Kerala government and was the District Statistical Officer in Palakkad when I met him sometime in 1976-77. He wished to apply for an MPhil in the Applied Economics course at the Centre for Development Studies, where I was a young faculty member. I was sure that he would get admission given his academic record. He not only got admission but was fortunate enough to be mentored for his dissertation by the distinguished economist K N Raj with whom he conversed freely. He then joined the Department of Economics at the University of Kerala and served there for 27 years, but a professorship eluded him. He was critical of the politics in the university administration and more critical of the Left parties in Kerala for their attitude and inadequate attention to Dalits and Adivasis. While he admired E M S Namboodiripad as an intellectual, he questioned his use of the caste tag “Namboodiripad” — something that few had dared to do.

Kunhaman’s autobiography won a Sahitya Academy Award, but he refused it saying the book was not written to bag an award. His professional articles and books focused on the uneven social and economic transformation among the Scheduled Tribes in Kerala and found a relatively higher degree of backwardness among those in the northern (Malabar) region than in the south. The focus of his inquiry emanated from his life experience. In the last phase of his career, he was a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tuljapur campus, from 2007 to 2013.

Kunhaman’s frequent pricking of Kerala’s social conscience found a distressing validation when a tribal man was beaten to death by locals on February 22, 2018. He had been found “stealing” food from a shop in Attappady in Palakkad to satiate his unbearable hunger. It was one of the strongest indictments of successive governments in Kerala who had spent hundreds of crores of rupees in the name of SC and ST development.

Professor Kunhaman could not be easily boxed into any of Kerala’s political parties or their organisations. His frequent interviews and writings in Malayalam would have, I am sure, caused distress among important political and social personalities. They also became a hot topic for the media. He did not talk or write much about his personal life but confided in friends about the pain that he went through, starting from the birth of a child with a severe disability, her passing away, separation from his partner and leading the life of a loner. That surely must have added to his agony, over and above what he carried from his childhood. His recollection of his childhood was, and is, a timely reminder to Kerala society to introspect and realise the shallowness of its claim of social progression.

The writer is a development economist and people’s science activist