In the theatre of Indian politics, few figures have carried the weight of personal integrity and public trust quite like Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan. In a political landscape where ideology often trumps instinct, Achuthanandan stood out as a moral outlier—a man whose compass did not always point to the party line, but instead to something more steadfast: his sense of right and wrong.

At a time when political pragmatism demanded silence, compromise, or convenient amnesia, Achuthanandan frequently chose the tougher path. He spoke up — for survivors, for the poor, for whistleblowers — even when it cost him the support of his own comrades.

It’s easy to remember him as the stern-faced, dhoti-clad Marxist who refused to play politics-as-usual. But beneath that stoic demeanour was a deeply instinctive leader who, despite being schooled in the rigours of class struggle, did not ignore the human textures of injustice — particularly gendered injustice.

In case after case, from Suryanelli to Sister Abhaya, Achuthanandan’s – VS, for most – voice cut through the party's caution and equivocation. He spoke not as a tactician, but as someone compelled by conscience.

VS may not have claimed modern feminism, but in spirit and action, he practiced its values—defying party lines on gendered violence and women’s struggles, driven by empathy, not expediency.

The irony is hard to miss: In a party that claims the moral high ground on progressive politics, its most consistent voice on gender justice was often sidelined. This is not just about one man’s integrity — it is also about a Left that could not catch up with its own ideals.

Feminism without the label: VS’s gender politics in action

Achuthanandan may have never called himself a feminist — in fact, he may have bristled at the label — but his politics, when it came to gender justice, spoke a language that was unmistakably feminist in spirit. While the Indian Left remained largely tethered to class-based interpretations of oppression, VS consistently widened the frame to include gendered violence, institutional patriarchy and the politics of silence.

Take the Suryanelli case — a politically explosive scandal involving the systemic rape of a minor girl and the alleged involvement of influential men. When most leaders, including those in his own party, ducked for cover or resorted to sterile legalese, Achuthanandan did something simple yet radical: he believed the girl. He named names. He demanded justice, not as a strategic move, but as a moral imperative. It earned him reprimands from within, but admiration from the outside — particularly from women’s groups who rarely found allies in electoral politics.

Then there was the Ice Cream Parlour case, a murky saga of alleged sex trafficking involving political heavyweights from other parties. VS refused to look away. He pressed for investigation and accountability, even as whispers within the CPI(M) suggested his interventions could disturb potential alignments. Where the party preferred ambiguity, VS insisted on clarity. It was not that he did not understand the cost of crossing these boundaries — he simply did not seem to care.

The Sister Abhaya case, involving the suspicious death of a nun and the alleged cover-up by powerful religious institutions, further cemented his place as an inconvenient truth-teller. While most political actors tiptoed around the Church, wary of alienating voter blocs, VS called it out for what it was — a nexus of power, silence and complicity. His party colleagues worried he was being ‘too emotional’ or ‘too individualistic.’ But VS was not interested in tone — he was interested in justice.

What made his interventions even more striking was the tone he struck — not paternalistic, not saviour-like, but rooted in solidarity. He did not talk down to survivors, nor did he wrap his language in the moralising tropes that often pass for political sensitivity. His was a politics of standing beside, not speaking for — and in that, he embodied the very essence of feminist praxis.

These were not isolated acts but deliberate choices—part of a moral architecture that made VS a public beacon and a party thorn. For all its progressive claims, the Left parties were not ready for his brand of radicalism.

A leader too radical for the party

The irony at the heart of VS Achuthanandan’s career is this: his greatest political strength — a moral clarity that resonated with the public — often became the very reason his party kept him at arm’s length. If his commitment to gender justice put him ahead of the curve, his broader political ethics placed him in a league that his own organisation struggled to match.

On gender, Achuthanandan refused to treat women’s issues as secondary or symbolic. While the CPI(M) largely filtered its activism through a class-first lens, often relegating caste and gender to footnotes, VS recognised that oppression was layered. To him, the battles of women and the marginalised were not sidebars in the socialist script — they were central chapters.

Many within the leadership saw his outspokenness in such matters as populist overreach, even as the ground beneath them shifted with public sentiment growing more responsive to exactly these concerns.

His discomfort with corruption made him equally inconvenient. Whether it was the SNC-Lavalin case that implicated senior party leader Pinarayi Vijayan, or various land-grab scams involving powerful interests, VS did not hesitate to call them out — often taking names his party would have preferred buried in committee reports.

It was not that he loved confrontation; he simply could not abide hypocrisy. And that made the party leadership anxious. While Achuthanandan’s moral fire earned him credibility across ideological lines, the CPI(M) often responded by clipping his wings, denying him re-election, or isolating him within its own ranks.

The contrast was stark: a leader revered by the public, yet barely tolerated by his peers.

There was also a fundamental clash of style. The CPI(M), like many large parties, often prized discipline, deal-making and strategic silence. VS was never good at any of those. His leadership was old-school in the truest sense — not nostalgic, but deeply rooted in personal conscience and public accountability.

He moved slowly, spoke carefully, and acted when he believed it was right — even when it cost him politically. For a party that was increasingly shifting toward technocratic governance and realpolitik, VS’s principled stubbornness felt like a liability.

He did not play the game. He did not bend to strategy, factionalism, or electoral convenience. And for that — for being the kind of leader people trusted more than the party machinery around him — he paid a price. His marginalisation was neither accidental nor sudden; it was a slow exile, dressed up in politburo language.

Yet, through it all, Achuthanandan remained the most recognisable and trusted face of the Left in Kerala — precisely because he refused to become just another player in the political circus.

What the Left missed: The feminist legacy they failed to claim

For a party that prided itself on progressive credentials, the Left’s failure to celebrate VS Achuthanandan’s feminist legacy is more than an oversight — it is a missed political reckoning. Here was a Marxist leader who did not just pay lip service to gender justice but lived it out in real-time politics.

Yet, ironically, it was never a point of pride within his own party.

VS’s interventions on behalf of women were not driven by party resolutions or national campaigns. They came from instinct — a gut-level sense of justice shaped by lived experience and an unshakable ethical compass.

Whether standing with victims of sexual violence or calling out the patriarchal undercurrents in politics and governance, he spoke plainly, often when it was least convenient. He did not wait for public opinion to solidify before taking a stand — more often than not, he shaped it.

And yet, this aspect of his legacy was never institutionalised by the CPI(M). His actions were treated as outliers, not templates. No ideological framework was built around his approach. No younger leaders were publicly mentored or encouraged to follow his example.

There was no party-wide introspection about why a figure like VS — who won admiration across generations and gender lines — was so frequently left out of the CPI(M)’s own narrative about its progressive identity.

This silence had consequences. In a political landscape increasingly shaped by questions of dignity, gender rights, and intersectional justice, the CPI(M) could have pointed to VS as a living embodiment of Marxism that resonated with 21st-century sensibilities. Instead, they let that possibility drift.

While other movements learned to adapt and embrace feminist voices — however imperfectly — the Kerala Left often appeared trapped in an older script, wary of expanding its vocabulary beyond class struggle.

Among young people and women, this disconnect was palpable. Many saw in VS a rare kind of politician: someone who spoke their language without pandering. But they did not see that spirit reflected in the party he belonged to.

By failing to champion VS’s feminist instincts as part of its core ethos, the Left did not just betray one of its finest — it alienated a generation looking for moral courage and ideological relevance in public life.

In sidelining VS, the CPI(M) did not merely lose a leader. It lost an opportunity to bridge the gap between ideology and empathy, to root Marxist politics in lived realities of gender and justice, and to show that the personal, in fact, is political.

Reclaiming VS, reimagining the Left

If there is one lesson the Left can draw from V.S. Achuthanandan’s life, it is this: that ethical politics and mass appeal need not be mutually exclusive, that feminism need not be bracketed off from Marxism, and that speaking one’s conscience need not mean straying from ideology.

But that future is possible only if the Left is willing to reclaim what it once failed to recognise.

VS was never a self-declared feminist. His politics did not arrive neatly packaged with the vocabulary of intersectionality or the tokenism of gender quotas. But in practice, he delivered something far more powerful — a politics where standing with the marginalised, including women, was not a strategy but instinct.

He saw dignity as indivisible, and justice as non-negotiable.

To revisit his legacy, then, is not to place a garland on a retired leader. It is to reimagine what Left politics could still be — deeply ethical, stubbornly people-centric, and unapologetically rooted in moral clarity. VS showed that one could stand against corruption, against patriarchal violence, against land-grabbing and cronyism — and still be loved by the masses.

The contradictions were not in the politics, but in the party’s inability to embrace it.

In a time when ideological clarity is often clouded by cynicism and progressive spaces struggle to connect with lived realities, the VS model remains strikingly relevant. It reminds us that the language of justice doesn’t always require reinvention — sometimes, it only requires remembering.