Sep 21,1998
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KERALA Cult of the Big Chief The CPM(M) sees a bonanza in the legacy and writings of EMS. By MG Radhakrishnan
The party is working overtime on Operation EMS. Take the akademi's progress. M.A. Baby, CPI(M) MP and board member of the akademi, sees it as "a centre of excellence nourishing the intellectual strength of the democratic movements of the country". That may sound gobbledegook. Thankfully, however, money talks with greater clarity -- and in the case of the EMS Akademi, it positively bellows. The initial budget for the akademi is Rs 2.5 crore. Between August 24 and 26, the CPI(M) conducted a statewide fund-collection drive for the "centre of excellence". In just three days, the party collected Rs 4.02 crore. It is the book business which is the most ambitious though. As V.S. Achuthanandan -- CPI(M) leader and chairman of the project's editorial board -- puts it, "After Gandhiji's collected works, this will be the largest published collection by any Indian author." Already, hundreds of party cadre have been deputed to homes, rural libraries, newspaper offices and so on, to ferret out any scrap of paper which may contain EMS' wisdom. In a seven-decade politico-literary career, EMS produced 70 books in Malayalam and English. His Marxism: A Primer, first published a quarter of a century ago, is into its 14th edition and continues to be a bestseller. Though 89 when he died, he was still churning out five weekly columns for a variety of newspapers and magazines. In fact, Chintha Publishers, the CPI(M)'s in-house publishing division, has been subsisting on EMS' pen. Arthasasthram, EMS' seminal treatise on economics, has sold 60,000 copies over 14 editions. This is a record for a Malayalam non-fictional work. The book will, of course, form part of the collected works. So will the question and answer column EMS sustained for 26 years in a party weekly, his 1,114-page history of the freedom struggle, autobiography, pamphlets, speeches. Initially, the party plans to print 5,000 copies of each volume. The first will roll off the presses on November 7 this year -- the 81st anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In 1999, a new volume will reach the bookshops every month. In 2000, it will be two new volumes a month. By 2002, the 100th volume should be in the reader's hands. Each volume will be priced Rs 150. The entire set will therefore cost Rs 15,000. However, the collected works will be available for Rs 9,000 paid upfront (discount: 40 per cent) or 50 monthly instalments of Rs 200 each (total: Rs 10,000; discount: 33.3 per cent). Even after offering such discounts, the CPI(M) hopes to earn over Rs 6 crore from sales. Chintha has been generous to its star author in that it is paying EMS, posthumously, a 15 per cent royalty. This is a goodly figure, given most Indian publishers pay between 7.5 and 10 per cent. EMS had willed all his royalties to the A.K. Gopalan Centre for Research and Development, yet another party affiliate. All his life, EMS was a determined Marxist who opposed the appropriation of the surplus value of labour by the bourgeoisie. Put simply, this meant that one person should not profit from another's work. Ironically, his legatees in the CPI(M) seem to have no qualms about exploiting EMS in his death. |
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Communism may have been the god that
failed but its fetishes refuse to die. In Kerala, the ruling CPI(M) is seeking to deify
E.M.S. Namboodiripad -- "EMS" as he was known -- in a manner which would have
done Mayawati's Ambedkarisation project in Uttar Pradesh proud. EMS, the doyen of Indian
Marxists, died earlier this year. Now, he is the inspiration behind three projects. 
