Achuthanandan: Farewell to world’s longest-lived card-holding communist

In faraway Cuba, Fidel Castro was just a young schoolboy at Dolores School in Santiago, not yet introduced to politics. Che Guevara was a child in Rosario, Argentina, immersed in books and local chess tournaments, not guerrilla warfare. In China, Mao Zedong was drafting On New Democracy and consolidating the Communist Party’s rural base in Yan’an, caught between the Chinese Civil War and the Second Sino-Japanese War.

In Moscow, Joseph Stalin was tightening his grip on power, preparing to assume the role of Premier of the Soviet Union. Leon Trotsky, once Lenin’s closest comrade, would be assassinated that very year in Mexico.

Early days

It was into this turbulent global moment that Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan, a young man from Punnapra in Alappuzha, committed himself to the ideals of Communism. He joined the party not for spectacle, but for struggle. No grand revolutions or guerrilla armies awaited him, only the hard, patient, disciplined work of organising peasants, fighting caste injustice, and surviving the wrath of a colonial regime and, later, the ire of the postcolonial state.

Also read: VS Achuthanandan obituary: The biography of resistance

There is a legend from those early days that speaks volumes about his journey. During the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising, VS was reportedly arrested and brutally beaten at a police station in Poonjar. Left bloodied and barely conscious, he was presumed dead by his captors. They planned to dump his body under the cover of night, disguising the act by placing him in a police van alongside two petty criminals. But fate intervened in the form of one of the thieves, who realised VS was still alive and refused to go along with the officers' plan.

That single, defiant act of conscience saved the young comrade. VS lived because a man branded a thief chose to honour life over complicity.

Committed communist

He lived on not just in flesh but in purpose. Through imprisonment, expulsions, ideological battles, and political rebirths, VS never let go of the one thing that defined him, the party card. More than eight decades later, his name would stand alone in the archives of political history, not just as Kerala’s former Chief Minister, not just as a leader of the CPI(M), but as the longest-lived, continuously active card-holding communist in the world. A title not of ceremonial grandeur, but of lived conviction.

Eight decades in active politics is no ordinary feat. But to do so as a committed communist within the democratic framework of a diverse, turbulent country like India, especially in Kerala, where politics is both a public ritual and a private conviction, is nothing short of extraordinary.

Party's conscience

In a state where political loyalty is matched only by its scrutiny, he emerged not just as a mass leader, but as a moral figure. He was a critic within, a rebel who refused to fall silent, a man often pushed to the margins only to return stronger, louder, and more relevant than ever. He was expelled, he was isolated, but he was never erased. He was, in the eyes of many, the party’s conscience.

His was a politics shaped in the open on the muddy roads of Alappuzha, in rural libraries where he self-educated after being denied formal schooling, and in factories and farmlands where he led countless protests. He was a worker, an organiser, a trade unionist, a freedom fighter, and eventually, the unlikely Chief Minister who brought his moral weight to governance.

He remained the bridge between generations, between orthodoxy and reform, between revolutionary dreams and democratic realities.

Also read: ‘Irreplaceable loss to Party and State’: CM Vijayan’s tribute to VS Achuthanandan

And now, as Kerala says goodbye, the man becomes memory, and the memory becomes movement.

You are our eyes,

You are our heart,

You are a rose

Blooming in our heart.

You are the comrade

Who led us all.

Who is saying

You are dead?

No, no—you will

Live in us.

Comrade remembered

From 4 pm in the evening until well past midnight as this obituary is being keyed in, thousands of comrades of VS Achuthanandan were gathered in Kerala's capital, raising slogans that echoed not just grief, but a reaffirmation of ideals. The atmosphere was solemn yet stirring. There were no chaotic wails or uncontrollable sobs but only the steady, disciplined chant of slogans, the kind that has long marked the CPI(M), the party that shaped and was shaped by VS.

As the city of Thiruvananthapuram braced itself for the final farewell, people arrived in waves from across the state to pay homage to the former Chief Minister, a man whose life was not only long, but lived with integrity.

The gathering was more than a ritual; it was a declaration. Of love. Of loyalty. Of legacy.

Also read: Former Kerala CM V S Achuthanandan passes away

Even in a crowd of thousands, the moment was managed with remarkable order and quiet dignity. At the AKG Centre—the CPI(M)'s state headquarters—red volunteers kept a calm, almost ceremonial rhythm to the proceedings. They guided the public with care, gave space to leaders with humility, and ensured that no one regardless of stature, missed their chance to say goodbye.

By 11.30 pm, the body was moved from the AKG Centre to his residence at Thampuranmukku, on the outskirts of the city. But the farewell would continue.

Today (July 22), public homage will be at the historic Durbar Hall till 2 pm. After that, begins the final journey from Thiruvananthapuram to Alappuzha, the land of his birth, and the land of his making. The funeral will be held on July 23.

It is the soil of Punnapra and Vayalar, where he took his first political steps amid rifles and red flags, and where the seeds of his revolutionary soul were first sown.

Now, he returns. Not as a comrade in struggle. But as a comrade remembered, as Kerala walks with him one last time.