Oommen Chandy had won many political battles but if one were to pick the rival who suffered the worst blow, it would be Cherian Philip.
It is not that Philip failed to put up a creditable show in Puthuppally in 2001. He did prevent Chandy from running away with the election, the last rival to do so before Jaick C Thomas in 2021. In fact, Cherian's vote share (41.50%) was better than even Jaick's in 2021 (41.22%).
What left Cherian Philip, now the director of Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee's Political Study Centre, virtually irrelevant was not the Puthuppally defeat but the way Chandy rebuffed Philip's principle, a principle for which Philip quit the Congress party and dared to take on his mentor.
Philip insisted that a Congress member should not hold the post of MLA or MP beyond 10 years. Consider this '10-year principle' to be a torn page from a forgotten notebook. What Chandy did was he picked up this page, and with it wiped the dust from the chair he was about to sit on, crumpled it and threw it in the waste basket.
When Philip raised the banner of revolt in 2001, Chandy was MLA for 31 years. He remained MLA for another 22 years, till his last breath.
Fight to create Kodiyeris and M A Babys
Cherian Philip had been pushing for the 10-year rule right from his Youth Congress days. "The CPM and the CPI had adopted this policy in the eighties itself because most of the leaders at the time were from the trade unions.
The new policy, championed by E M S Namboodirippad, resulted in a surge of youth power in the CPM, leading to the emergence of leaders like Kodiyeri Balakrishnan, M A Baby and Suresh Kurup," Philip said.
At the same time, in the 80s and 90s, there was a leadership freeze in Congress. "New faces were not getting a chance. So I kept insisting that the Congress party, too, should implement the 10-year rule adopted by the CPM. I said this before the 1991 and the 1996 elections," he said.
In 2011, too, he made the same pitch. "I consulted both K Karunakaran and A K Antony. They were not against it. But both said it could be implemented only partially, not in full," Philip said.
War on Chandy's monopoly
His battle, he said, was ideological and had nothing to do with securing a seat for himself. "There was already an understanding to give me the Thiruvananthapuram West seat," Philip said.
This internal revolt caused the old guard to converge around Chandy. "Chandy then took the stand that all sitting MLAs, irrespective of whether they had completed 10 years or more, should be given seats," Philip said.
In protest, he decided to contest against "the man who had been MLA for the longest time", Oommen Chandy himself. "It was my way of fighting against the power monopoly in the Congress," Philip said.
This declaration of war was first made not in front of the media but before Chandy himself. "He was the first person I informed. I went straight to his house in Thiruvananthapuram," Philip said. Chandy was getting ready to go out.
"He did not take my words seriously. He thought it was just another of my occasional outbursts. His wife (Mariamma Oommen) listened with rapt attention but he was moving around with a knowing smile. He went out without saying anything," Philip said.
As he got into the car, Chandy called his wife and asked her to serve Philip breakfast. "He knew I had not eaten anything," Philip said.
Leader's sagacity
The world knew of his decision only the next day, when he walked out of Karunakaran's house in Thiruvananthapuram with tears in his eyes.
"Karunakaran tried to dissuade me. He told me that no one can ever beat Oommen Chandy. He proposed that I contest from Thiruvananthapuram North instead. But when I insisted on going to Puthuppally, both of us became emotional. As I walked out of Karunakaran's home, the media swarmed me," he said.
He walked straight to the railway station and took a ticket to Puthuppally.
By then CPM had already announced its Puthuppally candidate, Flory Mathew. It was only after he arrived at Puthuppally, and seeing the massive crowds that came to greet him, that the CPM quickly withdrew its official candidate and declared support for Philip.
Spurning the BJP
The then BJP state president, C K Padmanabhan, also declared support. "But I declined. I said I would accept Left support but not the BJP's as it is a communal outfit," Philip said.
Philip claims that he had no intention of winning. "Mine was a symbolic battle. I wanted the world to know what I stood for," he said. "If I had a truck with the BJP, I could have won. They have some 10,000-odd votes, and I had lost by around 10,000 votes," he said.
Fact is, till 2011, a BJP candidate had never managed to cross 5000 votes in the constituency. And Philip had lost by 12,575 votes.
Illusion of support
Philip said he was not even swayed by the unprecedented public interest in him.
"When I arrived at the Kottayam railway station, there was a massive crowd to greet me. I walked from the station to Puthuppally. Crowds gathered in large numbers on either side of the road," Philip said.
Puthuppally, which was largely ignored by election analysts till then because of its predictability, suddenly became the most talked about constituency in 2001. The media billed the contest as a guru-shishya fight.
"Seeing the crowds, the CPM leaders thought a win was a possibility," Philip said. V N Vasavan, now the cooperation minister, was Philip's election committee convenor.
"Even Oommen Chandy, who is usually away in other places during the campaign, stayed put in the constituency. He did not leave Puthuppally," he said. "But I took all of this lightly. I knew I was not going to win. I was also aware that I was nothing more than a curiosity to the voters in Puthuppally, just a quirky chap who had dared to take on Chandy in his lair," he said.
One-man army
He said he also knew very well that Chandy's stature could easily cover for the Congress's weak organisational strength in Puthuppally. "Today it can be said that Congress's organisational capacity is weak. But even during those days when Congress had a strong organisational base in its strongholds, Puthuppally had none. It was a one-man show. Chandy towered over everything. It is impossible to defeat such a person," he said.
Philip said he did not even take up any local issues to target Chandy. "I did not bother to know whether there was development in Puthuppally or not. Perhaps, the CPM would have done something on these lines. My only focus was to tell people why I am taking on the mighty Chandy," he said.
Old love letters
At the same time, his admiration for Chandy could not be wished away. What he had written about Chandy in his acclaimed historical work 'Kaalnoottandu' (Quarter Century), a political history of Kerala during the first 25 years after its formation in 1957, became campaign material for the Congress.
The praises he had showered on Chandy in the book, like his innate sense of justice, were blown up and erected as big billboards across Puthuppally. "Journalists asked whether I regret these. I said I will not take back a word of what I had spoken or written," he said.
But of defeat he was so certain that Philip did not even visit the counting station. "I left for Kottayam even before that," he said with a laugh, the kind that men use when they want to convey that they are not the type to be easily fooled.
Guru-shishya reunion
But gradually, and long before he returned to the Congress, Philip reconnected with Chandy. He was one of the few people who were with Chandy during his last days.
A few years before, Chandy admitted that he had wronged Philip. The occasion was an award function, when Philip was still with the CPM. "I have never felt any anger towards Cherian when he contested against me. Even then I was convinced that we had done injustice to him. The fault is mine, and my party's, if we could not offer a nice post for someone like him who had made huge sacrifices for the party."
These words hastened Cherian Philip's return to the Congress.
