When senior Congress leader V M Sudheeran speaks about his first ballot battle in 1977, it is as if he is talking about the best days of his life. “Never again had I felt as comfortable,” Sudheeran said, his voice barely concealing a wistful longing for those old days.
Not once did he mention Emergency, not until he was asked. Even then he brushed the question aside quickly, as though impatient to get back to talking about his first election campaign. “All that was wrong about the Emergency in North India came to light only later, after the elections,” he said.
At that point, Kerala voters, too, did not seem to care much about the Emergency (Rajan's custodial death was revealed after the elections). When Indira Gandhi and her Congress party were decimated at the national level, it was in Kerala alone that a coalition led by it swept both the Lok Sabha and Assembly polls held simultaneously in 1977. “A twist in the tail,” is how the socialist leader George Fernandes described the Congress victory in Kerala.
Sudheeran was 28 then, the vibrant Kerala Pradesh Youth Congress president of the time. “A K Antony (then KPCC chief) called me to the Kerala House in Delhi and told me that the party wants to field me as the Lok Sabha candidate from Alappuzha,” Sudheeran said. He could not be given Thrissur, his home turf, because it was reserved for the CPI, which then was in an alliance with the Congress.
Those days, constituencies were categorised on the basis of winnability. 'A' constituencies were sure seats. Those in 'B' were fence sitters, could go either way. Alappuzha was 'C', a Marxist bastion that the Congress was unlikely to win. Antony also told Sudheeran to promptly meet Congress president D K Barooah to get a formal clearance.
Barooah gave him school-masterly encouragement. “Mr Sudheeran, we are going to put you in Alappuzha. It is not a sure seat. But you give it a fight,” he told him. Sudheeran's opponent was the highly revered trade union leader E Balanandan.
After getting Barooah's go ahead, he came back to Thiruvananthapuram and took an express bus to Thrissur to meet his parents. It was this journey that gave him hope. “When the bus reached Harippad, I lifted the shutters and to my surprise I found that my name has been painted on the walls along the way. It was everywhere. The Youth Congress workers had begun the campaign even before I had returned from Delhi,” Sudheeran said.
Poll graffiti was still an inside job, not yet left to professionals. Party workers had to do it all by themselves. The 'hand' was not Sudheeran's symbol. It was 'cow and calf', the calf sucking milk and the mother preening its child; 'gau mata'. Even then, the cow was a sensitive issue. But see who had felt aggrieved. It was Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the BJP's earlier avatar. The party accused Indira Gandhi of using the cow to whip up Hindu sentiments. The Congress party secured the 'hand' symbol only after Indira Gandhi had formed Congress (I) in 1978.
Young crowd puller
Sudheeran managed to make the first day of his campaign memorable. “As we reached Kuthiathode, we found a large gathering. I got out of the vehicle and took the hands of the first man I saw there. He was old and looked like a worker. I held his hands close to me and asked for a vote. He was a bit taken aback. But soon a smile broke on his face and he told me 'I will vote for you son, but in the Assembly my vote is for my party'. He was a CPM worker,” Sudheeran said.
Then it became his style to walk right into a crowd, wherever he saw one. He, along with the CPI stalwart P S Sreenivasan (who was fighting K R Gouri in Aroor Assembly seat), were also drawing huge crowds in the coastal areas of Alappuzha.
The CPM was rattled. “He was young and a rising star in Kerala politics. He also spoke about progress and development in a Marxist den where there were none,” said K C Joseph, the former minister who was then the Youth Congress general secretary and Sudheeran's closest aide during the campaign. Sudheeran's most seductive slogan was “coastal railway for Alappuzha”. He also made fun of CPM dalliance with Jan Sangh. (Jan Sangh was then part of Bharatiya Lok Dal, which had an alliance with the CPM in Kerala.)
Fall of Gouri and Indira
The CPM hit back. “They hurled some frivolous personal charges against me,” Sudheeran said, as if nothing could have been sillier. It turned out to be so. Balanandan lost by a stunning 64,000 votes. So did some of the mightiest names the Left had fielded in Alappuzha assembly segments. K R Gouri, who had till then not tasted defeat, fell to CPI's P S Sreenivasan. V S Achuthanandan, too, lost. He was trounced by K K Kumarapillai of RSP, which was then with the Congress-led alliance.
In fact, the Congress-led alliance swept all the 20 Lok Sabha seats on offer. It also won 111 of the 140 Assembly seats, catapulting K Karunakaran to the post of chief minister. (It is another matter that Karunakaran lasted only 31 days. The skeletons from the Emergency cupboard started falling out, and he had to resign.)
“But the excitement of the win was drowned when news came from north that Indira Gandhi had fallen,” Sudheeran said. If the Emergency era brutalities had not influenced Kerala, there was a reason. “Leaders like A K Antony and the Youth Congress did function as a corrective force during the period. Whenever police brutality came to our notice, we were the first ones to raise the banner of protest,” Sudheeran said. This tallies with what the legendary CPI leader M N Govindan Nair had famously said. “A K Antony stood as the massive Vindhya range that prevented the Emergency from reaching Kerala,” he had said.
Once elected, Sudheeran had just a single-point agenda. Get Alappuzha the coastal railway he had promised. “My first question, and my first speech in Parliament was about the issue,” he said. When nothing seemed to work, he announced an indefinite hunger strike in front of the Parliament in November 1978. “Antony had warned me that November was not the right time for such a fast but I had no choice,” Sudheeran said.
Face to face with Morarji Desai
He shot off letters to all the MPs, including Union ministers. Some ministers like George Fernandes, Surjit Singh Barnala, H L Bahuguna and Jagjivan Ram responded favourably. He met President Sanjiva Reddy, too. “I still remember the President telling me that I reminded him of his son. His son's name was Sudheer,” Sudheeran said. The young MP also organised a 'padayatra' from Kayamkulam to Kochi before taking a flight to Delhi to begin the fast.
Back in Delhi, he came to know from senior journalists like T V R Shenoy that prime minister Morarji Desai was not in favour of the fast. Sudheeran then decided to meet the prime minister directly. “Those were simple times. I could easily get an appointment with Morarjibhai. He was very cold to begin with. He said I was setting a bad precedent by fasting for a local issue. He called it inappropriate. I heard him out with respect and then told him 'Morarjibhai, the coastal railway was a promise made by Pandit Nehru. But my people are still waiting for it. Haven't you gone on a fast seeking elections in Gujarat? I am only following in your footsteps.' The moment I said this he smiled,” Sudheeran said.
The coastal railway was one of railway minister Madhu Dantavade's major announcements in the Railway Budget he presented four months later in March 1979.
