HVK Archives: GOST is anti-communist: EMS
GOST is anti-communist: EMS - The Indian Express
Express News Service
()
26 August 1997
Title: GOST is anti-communist: EMS
Author: Express News Service
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: August 26, 1997
Arundhati Roy's description of Left leaders in Kerala termed a caricature
Lashing out against Arundhati Roy's novel God of Small Things, veteran
Marxist E M S Namboodiripad has described it as "anti-Communist propaganda."
"It presents a totally unrealistic picture of the Communist movement in
Kerala," he said while refusing a request by The Indian Express for an
interview on his views about the book.
In his column in an English fortnightly, the veteran leader has said that
Roy had defamed him in the book, which was part of her antipathy to the
Communist movement in Kerala. Namboodiripad was taking off from Marxist
critic Ajaz Ahmed who had reviewed the book earlier.
Roy's description of the three Communists in the novel, which included one
living person (EMS), was nothing but a caricature of the Communist party,
which has been in existence for the past 60 years or more, the veteran
leader has said in his column.
The CPM leader has said that he entirely agreed with Ahmed, who
characterised Roy's description of EMS being a landlord in Kottayam area
whose ancestral house had been converted to a modem hotel as "libel and
defamation."
Referring to a character in the novel 'Comrade Pillai', EMS has pointed
out: "There is nobody in our party who resembles 'Comrade Pillai' as
projected by Arundhati Roy. Anyone resembling 'Comrade Pillai' would find
himself or herself out of the party. Ours is a party that grows stronger
and stronger as we take determined action against those who violate the
code of Communist conduct. The degeneration that has affected all bourgeois
parties is something alien to us."
The veteran Marxist said he was not surprised that Roy's work was greatly
appreciated in world literature because the "ideology" of world literature,
dominated in the bourgeoisie is by its very character "anti-Communists".
Anybody who attacks Communists anywhere in the world would be welcome to
the captains of industry of bourgeois literature in the world. And Roy's
novel is no doubt a sharp weapon in the hands of anti-Communist leaders of
the world (bourgeois literature), EMS has said.
The veteran leader pointed out that the Communist party had become a major
political force in the State because of the sacrifices of thousands of
matryrs who laid down their lives in the cause of freedom democracy, social
justice and secular politics. "How could such a party emerge in Kerala if
it leader were like the three, who according to Arundhati Roy are typical
Communists. The thing is so absurd that it does not require refutation," he
has said.
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