Laal Salaam, VS: A Century In Struggle Ends

July 21, 2025 — As the pre-evening skies turned overcast in Thiruvananthapuram, it felt as though all of Kerala had cloaked itself in grey, sensing the weight of what was to come. At around 03:20 PM, the medical bulletin from Sree Uthradam Thirunal Hospital was released, confirming what many had feared: Comrade V.S. Achuthanandan, a century old (102-year-old) torchbearer of Kerala’s communist movement, had passed away.

Even before party offices across the state lowered their red flags and raised black flags in mourning, the news had already spread like wildfire. Almost instantly, party cadres— from workers and farmers to students, veterans and people from all walks of life— began pouring into the AKG Centre for Research and Studies in the heart of the capital.

The Kerala Police, anticipating an overwhelming crowd, quickly set up barricades to control the flow. But the people’s emotion could not be restrained. Lakh after lakh surged past the barriers : to see their VS, as they affectionately called him, and tribute the one final salute to the leader who had marched with them through the pages of history.

It was in October 1946, at just 21 years old, that V.S. Achuthanandan emerged as a fierce youth leader, fearlessly opposing the autocratic Diwan C.P. Ramaswami Iyer and his proposed constitutional reforms to make Travancore an independent state outside the Indian Union. The so-called "American Model" put forward by the Diwan was rejected by the people as a betrayal of India’s national and democratic aspirations.

In that moment, a young VS gave voice to the fury of the masses — raising a slogan that would ring across generations:

“American Model Arabi Kadalil!”

(Throw the American Model into the Arabian Sea!)

This wasn’t just a slogan. It was a call to revolution — a defiant roar echoing from the coir fields of Punnapra to the blood-soaked battleground of Vayalar, where hundreds of workers and peasants gave their lives for justice, dignity, and freedom from feudal oppression and imperialist interference.

As the procession arrived, the slogans rose — not as cries of despair, but as a thunderous tribute to a comrade who lived, fought, and died for the people.

With trembling voices and raised fists, a sixteen year old chanted:

“American Model, Kadalil Thalliya Nethave,

Njangade Omana VS-ey, Kanne Karale VS-ey,

Njangalde Nenjile Rosa Poove,

Illa Illa Marikkunnilla, Jeevikkunnu Njangaliloode!”

The leader who threw the American Model into the sea, our dearest VS,

VS, the apple of our eye,

The rose that bloomed in our hearts —

You do not die,

You live on through us.

The body was brought by Chief Minister and Politburo Member Pinarayi Vijayan, CPI(M) State Secretary M.V. Govindan, District Secretary V. Joy, and received by the Red Volunteers, who carried their beloved comrade through the same corridors where EMS Namboodiripad, the first Communist Chief Minister in independent India, once lay in state. At the AKG Centre, the party secretariat took over the arrangements, and one by one, General Secretary M.A. Baby, Politburo Members, Ministers, State Committee Members, and leaders of allied parties paid tributes to the man who had given his entire life to the movement.

Over the decades, VS spent years underground, was jailed multiple times, and yet never once drifted from the ideology that gave him purpose. In 1964, when the party split, he stood with the future: a founding member of the CPI(M), chosen not by pedigree but by the people's pulse.

He served as State Secretary, Politburo Member, opposition leader and LDF Convenor, but never lost the spirit of the grassroots. When he became Chief Minister (2006–2011), it was not governance for power’s sake — it was governance rooted in protest. He led anti-encroachment drives in Munnar, resisted corporate land grabs, championed environmental causes, and wrestled beast of corruption by its horns.

His speeches, whether in the Assembly or on street corners, carried the raw moral force of a man who knew struggle first-hand. In between movements and elections, VS also served as Chief Editor of Deshabhimani from 1996 to 2005. He was not a trained journalist, not even a tenth-passed. He was a worker, a leader of workers, and by every measure, a master of the people’s language—shaping narratives for the workers, farmers, and poor who saw their own lives reflected in every line he wrote or approved.

His editorials were uncompromising, just like him — fiercely ideological, deeply humane, and unapologetically partisan for the working class. Deshabhimani, the paper he once edited, bows in revolutionary tribute. We do not bid farewell. We say — Laal Salaam, Comrade. For you showed us that journalism must always have a side — the people's-side. We will carry the pen forward, Red with truth, rooted in struggle.