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| Newsletter February 2007 |
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By Girija K. P.
This is actually not a review. These are some thoughts on a (personal/public) diary written by a naxalite woman, named Mandakini Narayanan. I happened to be the first or second person who got the privilege to read her diary written in English. So I named her thoughts as "Unfurled Leaves, Memoirs of Mandakini Narayanan". This happened when my friend Mini Sukumar, who runs a publishing house called Women's Imprint, and I approached her for a lengthy conversation/interview in order to publish it as a book. Later we decided to publish it in Malayalam. Sadly, we could not bring it out before she died last December in her residence in Calicut at the age of 82.
Mandakini was born and brought up in Mumbai in the late 1920s in a Gujarati Brahmin family. She was an active participant in the National movements. Later she worked for All India Students Federation of India and the - ‘Friends of Soviet Union-‘. She got her father's job in the Bombay secretariat, but due to her political activities it got terminated with-in two years. She fell in love with Kunnikkal Narayanan, a comrade in the Friends of Soviet Union and they got married. In 1960's, Narayanan decided to move to Kerala to pursue his political activities and she accompanied him along with their one-year-old daughter, Ajitha. Narayanan was a Malayalee Ezhava (BC) and his hometown is in Calicut in the Northern Kerala.
Mandakini got a teaching job in the Gujarati School at Calicut and got closely acquainted with the Gujarati families. After her school time, she participated in the library activities of Kunnikal Madhavan Smaraka Vayanasala. Narayanan and his friends founded Kunnikkal Madhavan Memorial Library as a tribute to his brother, a freedom fighter. The library space was used for cultural and political debates and activities. (In those days, many libraries in Kerala ignited various cultural and political activities in relation to the left movement) Mandakini also helped them in producing pamphlets on Maoist literature.
The major political activities of the Kunnikkal naxalite group were the Thalasserry police station attack and the Pulpalli wireless station attack, apart from killing some feudal landlords. Mandakini was a member of the team, which masterminded the Pulpally wireless station attack although she couldn't directly involve herself in it due to her ill health. Her only daughter, Ms. Ajitha, an 18-year old girl at that time, was actively involved in this action. Years later, after her release from jail, Ajitha shifted her focus and began addressing women's issues and founded a women's organization. By this time, Mandakini was known to everybody as ‘Ma'.
After 1970, which roughly coincided with Narayanan's death, Ma decided to stay away from political activities. In spite of her physical absence in the socio-political arena, Ma was a voracious reader with a sharp sense of all current political issues of her time. In addition, for some years, she tried to learn classical music from a friend. In the diary, she even wrote about her wish to start a music school that could integrate the classical and Hindustani systems of music. She tried her hand at painting for some years. The diary contained some poems too. In short, she tried to cope with and enjoy her life in a meaningful way.
Women who belong to the previous generation did not get their deserved share in the history of Kerala (everywhere!), inspite of their creative socio-political life. Our intention of recording the history of a remarkable woman such as Ma in Kerala led us to the reading and documenting of her diary. The depiction of politically vibrant woman carries with it some stereotypical notions. Some of them have been socially recognized as the noble wives/mothers/relatives and followers of the well-known freedom fighters and others as the ones who sacrificed a lot by keeping the comrades in shelters and looking after them. Of course there were a few exceptions. The history of the un- represented women activists is somewhere in between these two kinds or representation.