This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ‘The Early Parliamentarians’, exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.
On August 15, 1947, as India emerged as an independent country, there was a prisoner charged with sedition lodged in the Cannanore jail. His crime? Celebrating Independence Day and stirring up the people against His Majesty the Emperor of England, who could no more call India his colony.
This was veteran freedom fighter, Communist leader, parliamentarian and champion of civil liberties, Ayillyath Kuttiari Gopalan Nambiar, popularly known as A.K. Gopalan or AKG. He was born in July 1902 at Mavilayi in Chirakkal taluk (Kannur district) in North Malabar and educated in Tellicherry (Thalassery), now in Kerala.
In his autobiography In the Cause of the People, Gopalan writes, “There were grand celebrations and outbursts of joy throughout the country. On August 14, 1947 I was in solitary confinement in the big Cannanore jail. There were no other detenu prisoners. There were many comrades who were arrested under the Kavumpayi and Karivellore cases, some under trial and some awaiting trial. I could not sleep at night. Cries of Jai issued from all four corners of the jail. The echoes of the slogans ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai’ and ‘Bharath Matha ki jai’ reverberated through the jail. The whole country was waiting for the celebration due after sun-rise. How many among them had waited for years for this and fought for it and sacrificed their all in the struggle. I nurtured feelings of joy and sorrow. I was glad that the goal for which I had sacrificed all my youth and for which I was still undergoing imprisonment had been realised. But I was even now a prisoner. I had been imprisoned by Indians – by the Congress Government, not by the British.”
A man who was secretary of the Kerala Congress and its president for some time and member of the All India Congress Committee for a long time was celebrating August 15 in jail.
He further writes about that memorable day, “Some of my fellow prisoners accompanied me. The flag was hoisted on the roof of the third block where all the prisoners assembled. I spoke for four or five minutes. The jail authorities were not happy about this, but were not equal to a lathi charge that day. I was taken to the Calicut ADM’s court after August 15, on a charge that I had stirred up the people against His Majesty the Emperor. Independence was achieved on August 15. I was arrested after that on a treason charge created by the British under a law popularly termed 124 A after its serial in the legal code. The people were amazed. What sort of a government is this? I made the following statement to the court:
‘I am proud that am being tried for creating enmity against the legally constituted Emperor of British India. All freedom lovers in this country and the leaders of the freedom movement from its birth, like Nehru, Gandhi and such leaders, have tried to create enmity against the Emperor’s government. Mahatma Gandhi has been proceeded against under section 124 A IPC for working towards the same end. As a result of all this, His Majesty’s government and British India have ceased to exist today. Many of my colleagues who committed the same crime along with me have become Ministers and Governors. There is some incongruity in bringing me to trial at this time when on the face of it we have just achieved freedom. am sorry that things should have come to such a pass.’”
According to AKG, “I was a political prisoner from 1930 to 1945 in the eyes of a foreign government. Under today’s popular government, I am branded as a criminal.”
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
He was released on October 12, 1947, but just over a month later, he was detained again under the colonial laws that were still in place in the newly independent nation. After India became a republic, the Preventive Detention Act, 1950 was passed to ‘regularise’ detentions of many including AKG. He appealed against his detention in the Supreme Court under Article 32 of Indian Constitution, claiming his fundamental right of freedom of speech and expression and to travel freely in India had been violated.
He was hoping that the freedoms guaranteed by the new Constitution that came into force in 1950 would ensure his release from jail. After all, Article 21 stated that “no person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty except according to procedure established by law”. He argued that the preventive detention law violated his fundamental rights under, among others, Article 21 and Article 22 of the Constitution (protection against arrest and detention).
However, Article 22, while providing for ‘protection against arrest and detention’, including the right to be informed of charges, the right to a lawyer and the right to be produced before a court within 24 hours, carves out a strategic exception – that protection is suspended when an arrest is under a law that specifically provides for preventive detention. Thus, AK Gopalan vs State of Madras would go on to become the first case to question the Constitution’s contrariety.
On May 19, 1950, a six-judge bench of the Supreme Court, with a majority of four, upheld his detention and ruled that the preventive detention law was valid and only allowed minor procedural safeguards that the length of detention had to be informed at the time of arrest although it could be extended. But the bench struck down Section 14 of this Act, which provided that the grounds for detention should not be given to detenus. While AKG lost his case, the prescient questions it raised continue to shape our rights and freedoms.
In 1951, Gopalan, fresh from his defeat in the Supreme Court, argued his case himself in the Madras high court, which ruled in his favour as one of the detention orders did not indicate the period of detention as mandated by law. However, barely 10 yards from the court’s gate, he was served fresh detention orders.
After another round of fierce courtroom battle, AKG was released for the second time in two days. But the Madras high court chief justice at that time, Justice P.V. Rajamannar, had pulled up the advocate general for keeping a detention order ready even before the court’s verdict came. The AG resigned the next day. Over two decades later, and a year after his death, AKG stood vindicated – the Supreme Court in its 1978 ruling in Maneka Gandhi v Union of India restored justice.
Gopalan was a staunch nationalist who first joined Congress and later the Communist Party of India, becoming one of its 16 members elected to the first Lok Sabha in 1952. Later, he became one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Coming from an upper-caste Hindu Nambiar family, he was educated at Basel Evangelical Mission Parsi High School, Tellicherry and at Government Brennen College. After graduating, Gopalan worked as a school teacher for seven years.
By the time he became a teacher, India’s independence movement was gaining traction under Mahatma Gandhi. The stirrings of the nationalist movement drew him away from the classroom. AKG first took part in the Khilafat Movement, which prompted a marked change in his outlook, transforming him into a dedicated full-time social and political worker. He later became involved in the Malabar revolution. During this time, he removed the suffix to his name (Nambiar) that suggested his caste status.
At the age of 25, he boycotted foreign cloth and foreign liquor. He actively participated in the freedom struggle and at the same time worked among the workers in Kannur and Calicut.
In 1927, AKG, joined the Indian National Congress and began playing an active role in the Khadi Movement and the upliftment of Harijans.In 1930, he participated in the salt satyagraha at Payyannur. His participation in the civil disobedience movement landed him in jail for the first time at the age of 28. He was arrested for participating in the salt satyagraha in 1930. Later, he joined Guruvayur Satyagraha (1931-32) and was the captain of the propagation march of the Guruvayur March under the initiative of KPCC. While in jail, he organised workers and started a trade union.
While in Congress, he went on to become president of the Kerala Congress and a member of the All India Congress Committee, but interactions with communist leaders in prison shifted Gopalan’s politics.
By 1934, AKG had joined the Congress Socialist Party (CSP) and, in 1939, when a section of CSP merged into the Communist Party, Gopalan became one of Kerala’s earliest Communist leaders, alongside P. Krishna Pillai and E.M.S. Namboodiripad.
AKG led the hunger march from Kannur in Malabar region to Madras in 1936 and the ‘Malabar Jatha’ in support of the movement for a responsible government in Travancore. The strongest caste system was in North Kerala, where those belonging to a lower caste were not allowed to walk on a public road in Payyannur. AKG and the Keralites led the procession through the public road in front of the Kandoth Thiyya caste Temple (Palliyara) near Payyannur. AKG said, “This is a time when Harijans are being denied the freedom to travel on public roads.”
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939 prompted an upsurge in activism against British domination, and AKG was again arrested. But in 1942 he escaped from prison and remained at large till the end of the war in 1945.
He was arrested again shortly after the end of the war and was still behind bars when India became independent on August 15, 1947. AKG, then 45, was in solitary confinement in Cannoor jail.
After his release in 1951, AKG was elected to first Lok Sabha from Cannanore as a united CPI member and again in 1957 and 1962 from Kasargod for the second and third Lok Sabha respectively. In 1967, he was elected from Kasargod and in 1971 from Palaghat Lok Sabha seat as CPI(M) candidate. He was an MP for five consecutive terms till his death on March 22, 1977.
During the Sino-Indian war in 1962, Gopalan along with other Indian communists like Namboodripad took an impartial view and requested both nations to discuss and settle the matter peacefully. The official leadership of the party at that time denounced this and supported the Indian government. This led to a split in Communist Party of India in 1964.
Many leaders of the left group were arrested with the support of the leadership of the party. When the party leadership blocked the publication of an article written by then general secretary EMS, condemning the government for attacking the left leaders in the party using the cover of the war, he himself quit the post and supported the left group.
AKG was part of the left group and faced disciplinary action by the party leadership dominated by the right. During this time a newspaper published a letter allegedly written by rightist leaders S.A Dange to the British during the freedom struggle. In this letter he promised to keep away from the freedom struggle if granted bail. This was used by the left group to beat the right. When the demand of the left to set up a party-level inquiry about the alleged letter of S.A Dange was rejected in the National Council of CPI, the left group walked away and formed a new party.
AKG joined the new breakaway faction, which later came to be known as Communist Party of India (Marxist). He also wrote extensively. His autobiography Ente Jeevitha Kadha written in Malayalam has been translated into many languages. His other works include For Land, Around the World, Work in Parliament and Collected Speeches, all in Malayalam. A biopic on Gopalan was made titled AKG – Athijeevanathinte Kanalvazhikal.
By the time he died at the age of 75, Gopalan had been jailed 20 times, spending 17 years of his life behind bars.
Gopalan married twice. His second wife was Susheela Gopalan, who was a prominent Marxist and trade union activist. He played an important role in the formation of Indian Coffee House, a workers cooperative initiative by organising the thrown out employees of Coffee Houses of Coffee Board to establish ICHs in late 1950s.
The headquarters of the CPI(M) was named AKG Bhawan and inaugurated on October 19, 1991 by B.T. Ranadive.
Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
