Thiruvananthapuram: Legendary Marxist firebrand and former minister KR Gowri died at a private hospital here Tuesday. She was 102 and had been suffering from various age-related ailments for some time, party sources said. KR Gowri was one of the founding leaders of the Communist movement in Kerala and the lone woman member in the state’s first cabinet.
The chief of Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi (JSS) breathed her last at 7.00am while undergoing treatment in the ICU, party sources said.
‘Gowri Amma’, as she was fondly called, belonged to the erstwhile Communists who had toiled hard to build up the Left movement in the southern state. She battled police brutality under the colonial regime and stiff opposition from the then administrators.
Gowri’s vibrant political activism, fierce fights against the feudal system, strong stand taken for the women cause and exceptional administrative acumen helped her get the nickname ‘iron lady’. Her qualities helped her carve an exclusive space in the male-dominated politics of Kerala. She was the lone surviving member of the first Kerala legislative assembly. It was headed by legendary Communist leader EMS Namboothiripad in 1957 and the only woman in the first state cabinet.
As the Revenue Minister in the Namboothiripad’s ministry, Gowri playeda key role in bringing the revolutionary Agrarian Relations Bill, which set the ceiling on the amount of land a family could own, paving the way for the landless farmers to claim excess land. She was married to late Communist leader late TV Thomas, who was also her cabinet colleague.
After the split in the Communist Party in 1964, Gowri joined the CPI(Marxist), while her husband remained with the CPI.
Born July14, 1919 in the sleepy Pattanakkad village of coastal Alappuzha to K Ramanan and Parvathy Amma, Gowri was attracted to politics at a young age. She was jailed in 1948, the year she joined the Communist party and defied adversities and fought many odds to build the party.
Gowri, who never minced words to put her thoughts across, was elected to the Travancore-Cochin legislative Assembly in 1952 and 1954.
After her successful foray to the state legislature in 1957 from Cherthalain Alappuzha, there was no looking back. She represented Cherthalain 1960 also after which she moved to Aroor and represented the constituency in the assembly eight terms from 1967-2006.
The woman leader served as a member of various communist governments – 1957, 1967, 1980 and 1987 and was also a member of AK Antony and Oommen Chandy governments from 2001-2006. She was the longest serving MLA after late KM Mani.
A fighter and a rebel throughout her life, Gowri did not mind floating a new political outfit- Janadhipathya Samrakshana Samithi (JSS)- from the scratch after being expelled from the CPI(M) in 1994. She had also the distinction of being the first woman law student from the Ezhava community.