198 books, and far from putting the pen down: Goa’s writer-Governor

And, if that sounds prolific, you don’t know Pillai, now the Governor of Goa. On May 2, a collection of his short stories, Ente Priya Kadhakal, is scheduled to be released by Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in Thiruvananthapuram. It would be his “198th book”.

Sitting amidst his office in Raj Bhavan that has stacks of books piled up on chairs and in corners along the floor, the 68-year-old says: “My ambition is to write till my last breath.”

In a career spanning over five decades, Pillai has been many things — lawyer, student leader, an active BJP politician in his native Kerala, orator — and lately, a Governor blossoming as an author and a poet.

In the last four years, he has authored at least 60 books on subjects ranging from politics, law, economy and social issues to nature and travelogues. The Covid pandemic, with its empty hours to fill, certainly helped, Pillai says. “Public visits were prohibited and travel was suspended… It was a blessing in disguise.”

Life has since fallen into a more gubernatorial routine, and Pillai says he manages by waking up at 4 am and spending over an hour voraciously reading or writing. He is never to be seen without a book on his travels, he says.

The love for reading started young for Pillai, who would frequent the village library at his native Venmony in Alappuzha district to devour anything he could lay his lands on — Malayalam dailies, classics, folklore, and political books. He lists the writings of Ram Manohar Lohia, Mahatma Gandhi and Pandit Deendayal Upadhyaya as among his favourites; and the English T S Eliot and William Shakespeare, Malayalam poet Ayyappa Paniker and Malayalam writer S K Pottekkatt as among his early literary influences.

By the time he graduated in Arts from Pandalam NSS College, and went on to study law at Calicut Law College (“inspired by freedom fighters”), he was writing regularly for local magazines and periodicals, and the law college magazine.

However, his political destiny was foretold, with or without an interest in politics. “My father supported the Praja Socialist Party. Till I was about 14, I was interested in the socialist politics of Lohia. Later, I gravitated to the Jan Sangh… Till the day I became Governor, I followed the Jan Sangh’s ideology and school of thought,” Pillai says.

This journey began with RSS student outfit ABVP, and Pillai rose through the ranks to become its state general secretary (1977 to 1979). Before the BJP started getting serious south of the Vindhyas, it had a devoted worker in Pillai, who was with the party right from its inception in 1980.

By 1984, his first set of books had been published – a collection of articles on politics, ‘Sathyavangmoolam’; a book on rent control laws in Kerala; and one on Nostradamus.

With the Jan Sangh and socialists fellow travellers at the time, Pillai says he was a part of the ‘Total Revolution’ movement led by Jayaprakash Narayan that eventually led to the overthrowing of the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government at the Centre. Pillai laments that during this period of political turmoil, including the Emergency, his family destroyed some of his writings, fearing repression from the State.

His 80th book, Dark Days of Democracy, tells the Emergency years from a Kerala perspective, according to Pillai. Released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2018, the book talks about that period in the history of India, and how it continues to “haunt thousands of victims of a tyranny”.

P S Sreedharan Pillai with President of India, Droupadi Murmu

Post-1980, Pillai helped the BJP set up party units in uncharted territories, including Lakshadweep. First in 2003-2006, and then 2018-19, Pillai was appointed the Kerala BJP chief. His brand of pragmatic politics helped the party make inroads in the state, with its unique dynamics of nearly half the population comprising minorities.

This pragmatism is also reflected in his career as a lawyer where, despite being an office-bearer of the BJP, both the LDF and UDF governments in Kerala have appointed him as special public prosecutor in several cases.

Under Pillai’s stewardship, the BJP-led NDA went on to register its maiden electoral victory in Kerala, winning one seat in the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.

In November 2019, he was sworn in as the Governor of Mizoram and in July 2021, he took oath as the Governor of Goa.

Pillai claims to have kept his ideology deep in cold storage, now that he is holding a constitutional post. However, he ruffled many feathers when, in September 2022, at a programme in Quepem in South Goa, he said he disagreed with the idea of ‘Goa for Goans only’, adding that history has shown that such ideas do not work.

It was a call given by the Revolutionary Goans, a nascent political party that managed to win 1 seat in the 40-member Assembly in polls last year.

He has also written a book on the Shah Bano case and Uniform Civil Code, both BJP pet issues. Besides, he has been writing increasingly on nature, compiling his speeches and public visits as Governor as books, and, most recently, brought out a book on his visit to 421 villages of Goa.

Asked to name a favourite book from his bibliography, Pillai says it is tough: “I cannot differentiate among my children.”

So, how many more to come? Pillai laughs: “No number as such. Whenever I get time, I write and I plan on continuing. I am planning to write in Hindi too.”