K K Kochu passed away on March 14 after a battle with cancer. His life bore witness to the myriad shifts in Kerala’s political and social trajectory, the struggle to ensure equity and justice, which still continues. (Facebook/KK Kochu)
Shailaja Menon
Mar 15, 2025 12:48 IST First published on: Mar 15, 2025 at 12:48 IST
The Kerala story has captured the national imagination with its tales of total literacy, beautiful landscapes and thriving ideological struggles — in short, a liberal enclave of alternative imaginations. However, Dalits in the state have remained marginal to the social and economic progress in the rural and urban areas. The flip side of this narrative is beautifully laid bare by K. K. Kochu in his autobiography Dalithan, which reveals the underbelly of caste based oppression behind the glitter. It provides an excellent sketch of the fauna and flora amidst which the community labours and their sense of the environment. It questions the trope of the scavenger/bhangi (T. Sivasankara Pillai’s famous novel, Thottiyude makam (The Scavenger’s Son 1947), around which the lives of the Dalits were mirrored.
K K Kochu passed away on March 14 after a battle with cancer. His life bore witness to the myriad shifts in Kerala’s political and social trajectory, the struggle to ensure equity and justice, which still continues. He belonged to the Pulaya community, which performed agrestic slavery in the homes and lands of their social superiors to eke out a miserable livelihood. His life epitomises the perpetual struggle to ward off hunger and the back-breaking labour of the Pulaya men and women. He joined the Maharaja’s College in Kochi hoping to study medicine and lift his family out of poverty, only to be taunted by his upper-caste classmates for receiving a stipend meant for the reserved category. Gradually, he was attracted towards literature and gave up the study of biology.
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Kochu’s life is also a testimony of the various political struggles the state has witnessed and the place of Dalits within these movements. He was primarily a part of the communist movement, but soon he realised that the tentacles of caste cannot be wished away even within the so-called progressive ideologies. When he left the movement because it was not recognising the caste question, he was branded a “Naxal” by the CPI (M). He was jailed during the Emergency and later on played an active role in forming the Communist Youth Forum, the People’s Workers’ Union and the Human Rights Committee for Dalits and Adivasis. In 1986, Kochu became a member of the central committee of the SEEDIAN (Socially Economically Educationally Depressed Indian Ancient Natives), a newspaper under the leadership of the Dalit collective in Kerala. It helped to create an alternative archive to articulate the Dalit social world. He also worked with the State Transport Corporation between 1977 and 2001.
Gradually, Kochu realised that the mainstream political formations of the state have not succeeded in articulating the demands of Dalits and Adivasis as the majority of these formations are based on caste and religious identities. He gravitated towards the Phule-Ambedkarite ideology as an alternative model to work for the liberation of the oppressed communities. His publications in Malayalam reveal this ideological transformation. To illustrate, Buddhanilekulla Dooram (Distance towards the Buddha), Ambedkar: Jeevithavum Dauthyavum (Ambedkar: Life and Mission), Idathupaksham Illaatha Kaalam (A Time When There was no Left Wing), Dalit Nerkaazhchakal (Dalits: A Candid View), Kerala Charitravum Samooha Roopikaranavum (Kerala History and Formation of Society), and other publications. He was honoured with multiple awards for his overall literary contribution. He was a recipient of the Arali Award, the Vaikom Chandrasekharan Nair Award and finally the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2021.
The retrospective gaze of writers like Kochu and others like Om Prakash Valmiki, Sharan Kumar Limbale, Kalyan Rao, to name a few, exemplify the countless experiences of deprivation, caste and gendered violence, everyday histories of struggle to fulfill basic needs (fetching water from a public well or using a public road was fraught with danger) and the community networks which mediate Dalit lives. The commonplace nature of Dalit lived realities as portrayed in the life narratives reflect that the aspirations of the marginalised are not mere imitations of upper caste practices. They are also not mere inhabitants of the vast ritual separation of purity and pollution. They critique the fundamental structures of society, religion, culture and political economy to establish the agency of Dalits as historical and political agents. They challenge the dominant epistemological paradigms of our society and reveal the spatial geographies of power which percolate every experience of caste. Unlike the valorised Gandhian villages with its utopia of gram swaraj, the lived spaces as reflected in these texts were based on denial of self-respect and equal access to resources. Through his writings and his immersion in grassroots movements, K. K. Kochu established himself as an organic intellectual who provided a cultural critique of his society and a beacon of hope for future generations.
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Shailaja Menon teaches History at the School of Liberal Studies, Ambedkar University Delhi
