The Enduring Legacy of Varghese

Sreejith K

Some ‘political ghosts’ just do not fade away. They lurk in the shadows waiting for an opportune moment to re-emerge. Sometimes, they are summoned from a history that tried to bury them by a movie that retells the tales of defiance, however fleeting, of the marginalised. Narivettta (leopard hunt), which deals with the Muthanga Adivasi struggle of 2003, is one such invocation. In the film, the main protagonist, Varghese, a police constable sent to suppress the uprising, later turns against the system on behalf of the adivasis. His name is no coincidence, and instead, marks a symbolic inversion since the first Naxalite in the state to be killed in a fake encounter during the early phase of the movement, while fighting for the land rights of the tribals in Wynad, was Varghese. An instance, thus, to borrow a phrase from Walter Benjamin, of a tiger’s leap into Kerala’s past wherein history bursts into the present with revolutionary force.

In the revolutionary life he led, and the inevitable death at the hands of the state he was fighting against, Varghese had a few things in common with Che Guevara. Though not as affluent as Che’s background, Varghese came from a relatively comfortable settler-farmer family. Before breaking away from CPI (M), Varghese was the Party’s office secretary in Kannur district, its stronghold through the years. Even while he remained within the CPI (M), Varghese had already begun work amongst the Adivasis of Wayanad. P K Kariyan, who was a young boy at the time, remembers him as someone willing to engage with the tribal communities, sharing their meagre meals and living in their modest homes. Through persistent effort, Varghese helped secure higher daily wages for the Adivasis and upheld their dignity in a society that had long marginalised them. Kariyan, in his memoirs, mentions an instance when, after a landlord assaulted a young tribal shepherd, Varghese, rather than retaliating himself, instructed the boy to strike back. In that simple yet radical act, entrenched hierarchies were symbolically overturned.

Following the Naxalbari uprising and the subsequent split from the CPI(M), Varghese joined the revolutionary ranks. There was no ideological unity among the various Naxalite factions from the outset. Their differences ranged from how they characterised the Indian state to the strategies they adopted for dismantling it. Initially, Varghese aligned with Kunnikkal Narayanan’s line, which included attacks on police stations, and even refused to meet Charu Mazumdar during his visit to Kerala. Over time, however, he would gravitate toward Mazumdar’s tactics and lead a campaign of annihilation targeting landlords and other alleged class oppressors. At the time of his eventual arrest and subsequent killing on 18th February, 1970, he had been planning a journey to Bengal to meet Charu Mazumdar.

The afterlives of Che Guevara and Varghese unfolded along vastly different paths, though. The former would go on to become a global icon, his mythical legacy cemented not least by the hauntingly powerful photograph taken by Alberto Korda and endlessly reproduced across continents as well as by the wealth of writings, both his own and those of others, securing his place in the global imagination. Varghese, on the other hand, left behind only fragments. The sole piece of writing directly attributed to him is a letter he sent to his family while in Kannur, during his time with the CPI (M). Drawing upon the Bible, he defends the revolutionary path he chose to his devoutly Christian family by invoking the plight of those who labour and still die in hunger. Incidentally, in the popular film Thalappavu, which recounts the story of Varghese and the remorseful policeman who killed him, the first visual of Varghese follows a close-up of a street artist’s painting of Jesus, a scene that subtly evokes martyrdom. In both the film and in life, there is a Judas figure - Sivaraman Nair, who initially offers Varghese shelter, only to betray him later to the police.

Varghese survives in fragmentary oral testimonies and scattered recollections of those who once walked beside him. Vasu, an activist from those days, recalls some of the hard decisions Varghese made in the course of the uprising, including the annihilation of a few who perhaps might have deserved a second chance. But such acts do not diminish Varghese’s stature in the eyes of Vasu, who feels that they are testimony to a leader navigating impossible choices under difficult conditions. Ajitha, in her memoirs, recounts the discomforts she endured as the only woman in the group during their arduous trek through the Wayanad forests, including incidents caused by some male party members not totally free of toxic masculinity. Yet she reserves her deepest respect for Varghese, whose conduct, she writes, remained impeccable throughout. Even Ramachandran Nair, the policeman who would eventually kill him, offers a poignant portrait of Varghese. In his memoir, he recalls Varghese’s eloquence, idealism, and courage even as he was being transported in a jeep to his death. Such then is the complexity of state violence that even the executioner cannot sometimes escape the haunting weight of the rebel’s memory. Years later, it was Nair who stepped forward with a confession, leading to the belated conviction of the officer who gave the order.

Meanwhile, the Adivasis of Kerala, like their counterparts elsewhere, continue to suffer the encroachment of their lands, poverty, and the erosion of their cultures. The much-celebrated “Kerala Model” of development has largely passed them by. Over the years, only a handful from the mainstream have stood by them. Among those few was Varghese whom they held dear while he was alive. That is how, following the attack on the Pulpally police station, when the state launched a massive manhunt, Varghese eluded capture for months, sheltered and protected by the Adivasis, who revered him as their perumon (leader). Even after his death, Varghese survived in their collective memory. In the play Naattugaddika, written by the late K G Baby, Varghese is reimagined as the gaddikkakaran, a ritual figure who strips landlords-turned-communists of their red flags, symbols of their betrayal of the revolutionary cause after coming to power post-1957 elections. The play, which draws on gaddika, a ritual performance among the Adiyars (the most marginalised among the Adivasis), was staged during the JanakiyaSamskarikaVedi phase of the Naxalite movement until it was banned by the Left government. It is a reminder that while the mainstream may have forgotten the travails of the Adivasis, their struggles remain etched in alternative cultural memory.

It is in this context that a film like Narivetta serves as a powerful reminder of the inequitable society Indians continue to inhabit. The Varghese people encountered in the film is, at first, a far cry from the martyrs of the early Naxalite movement. He is portrayed as a disillusioned, self-absorbed policeman who joins the force reluctantly. Posted in Wayanad to quell the Muthanga uprising, he begins with indifference toward the Adivasi cause. But as he gradually uncovers the inner workings of the state’s machinery of deceit, where even a fellow officer is deliberately sacrificed to falsely implicate Maoists and justify violent repression, his conscience is stirred. Confronted by this betrayal, Varghese undergoes a profound transformation. He switches sides, exposes the truth, and ensures that the real perpetrator is held accountable. In this journey, the character of Varghese begins to merge with that of Ramachandran Nair, the very policeman who, in real life, confessed to executing the original Varghese under official orders decades earlier. Thus, Narivetta becomes a tiger’s leap into Kerala’s troubled past and, by excavating buried truths and unsettling official narratives, confronts the state’s long-standing complicity in silencing subaltern resistance.

[Sreejith K teaches History at Dr APJ Abdul Kalam Government College, Kolkata]

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Vol 58, No. 7, Aug 10 - 16, 2025