The Frontline Years

E.M.S. Namboodiripad is perhaps modern India's most important Marxist theoretician. From 1992 till his death in 1998, EMS wrote a column in the newsmagazine Frontline. The present volume puts together a selection of his Frontline columns. This volume is a testimony to the variety of his interests, his erudition, and his ability to communicate complex questions of history and theory in simple and elegant prose. EMS discusses, among other things, the roles and contributions of Congress leaders from Dadabhai Naoroji and Ranade to Gandhi, Subhas Bose and Nehru to Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh; he discusses the thoughts and relevance of Marxist theoreticians including Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Mao Tse-tung and Stalin, as well as Nelson Mandela; he writes on religion, philosophy and art; he discusses important questions of the Indian polity including planning and centre-state relations; he comments on the Indian Communist movement (including on the decision not to join the United Front government at the centre in 1996); and he writes about the radical experiments in Kerala. E.M.S. Namboodiripad E.M.S. NAMBOODIRIPAD (1909–1998) was among India’s pioneering Communist leaders and a Marxist theoretician of enormous stature. He became Chief Minister of Kerala on two occasions, in 1957 at the head of the historic first Communist government, and again in 1967 as head of a seven-party coalition. He was the author of several books and hundreds of articles and essays.