CPM central committee member and former chairperson of the Kerala Women's Commission M C Josephine died here on Sunday. She was 74.
She had collapsed while attending the 23rd Party Congress in Kannur.
Josephine, who entered public life through student, youth and women organisations, became a CPM member in 1978, in the aftermath of the Emergency. Josephine herself had stated that she was appalled by the violence unleashed on communist workers during the Emergency.
Her rise was quick in the party. In 1984, she became a member of the CPM Ernakulam District Committee. In 1987 she was nominated to the State Committee. She has been a CPM central committee member since 2002.
However, it was as a powerful women's leader that Josephine had made her mark. Her organisational skills and ideological rigour are considered legendary within the party circles. Josephine was one of the leading inspirational figures that attracted a new generation of women leaders like T N Seema into the CPM. Her fiery speeches were a big draw, and hugely inspirational.
Josephine became the national vice president of Mahila Association in 1996. She is also the central committee member of Mahila Association.
It was her stern Marxist ideals that had perhaps made her align with former Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan during the protracted intra-party power struggle that lasted nearly two-and-a-half decades. Though skilled at mobilising the cadre, especially women, Josephine had never tasted parliamentary success. Thrice she had been in the fray - twice for Assembly (Angamalay - 1987 and Mattancherry - 2011) and once to the Lok Sabha from Idukki (1989) - but had lost.
Nonetheless, she was Angamaly Municipality councillor for 13 years.
Her tenure as Women's Commission chairperson had also ended on a sour note after her haughty manner with a domestic complaint victim during a live television channel programme provoked widespread bitterness. She had no sympathisers within the party either.
In 2018, when a female DYFI member accused former CPM MLA PK Sasi of sexual abuse, Josephine sought to approach the crime as if it was something trivial.
"This is nothing new," she said. "We are all human beings, mistakes do happen," she added.
She also refused to take up the case saying the victim had not lodged a complaint with the Women's Commission.
This was when the National Commission for Women (NCW) had already taken cognisance of the case.
Josephine then went on to make the controversial remark that the CPM had its own system to handle such complaints.
Then, in January last year, Josephine provoked deep anger when she insisted that an 89-year-old, a victim of a physical assault, appear before the Commission.
The old lady, through an emissary, had informed the Commission that she was unable to travel.
Even while conceding that she was at fault, close women leaders in the CPM had said that her rough exterior had kept her sensitive side effectively masked.
It was also known, at least within CPM circles, that Josephine had never really overcome the death of her husband, the trade union leader Pallippattu P A Mathai who died in March 2020, also of a heart attack.
