14 SOCIAL SCIENTIST imbibing the ideas of rationalism and atheism. Politically too, I became an ardent supporter of the left Congress leaders headed by Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhash Chandra Bose, even though I had not broken with Gandhism. The years of the Salt Satyagraha and subsequent political developments made me plunge fully into the radical movements of both a socio-cultural and political character. As a college student in those days, 1 fully participated in all political activities calculated to support the freedom struggle. At the same time, 1 devoted my time to the furtherance of the radical socio-cultural movement. The columns of a weekly of which I was the de facto editor in 1930-31 were used to propagate leftist ideas in socio-cultural as well as national-political fields. These activities as a student susequently landed me in jail as an active Civil Disobedience volunteer. From then on, 1 transformed myself from an ordinary social reformer and freedom fighter to a young man fighting for a revolutionary restructuring of the entire society— a Socialist to begin with and subsequently a Communist. The story of my development along these lines has been told in my How I Became a Communist. This particular pattern of development of my political personality gave two distinct trends to my political thinking. As a freedom fighter and radical nationalist, 1 was opposed to caste and communal politics. As a radical social reformer too, I was all for the total elimination of all distinctions based on the caste and the religious community. However, I could see the reality that, whatever the ultimate goal to which we were moving, we cannot wish away differences and distinctions based on the caste and the religious community. Socio-political orgamzjtions dedicated to the cause of serving the lower castes and fighting for reforming the social and family systems of even the upper castes, therefore, had my sympathy. All the more so when Lome of these caste-based organizations started championing political demands, integrating the movement for political democracy with social justice for the oppressed castes. An important development of the first half of the 1930s which influenced me was the rise of a particularly radical socio-political movement initiated by some leaders of the oppressed Ezhava caste. The late C Kesavan of Travancore unleashed a movement which tried to integrate the aspirations of the democratic people of Travancore for responsible government with those of the oppressed castes and the religious minorities for social justice in the then upper caste-dominated autocratic regime of the state. The majority of nationalists denounced him and his movement as "casteist" and "communal" and? therefore, "anti-national". The weekly paper edited by me then was one of the two organs of the nationalist Malayalam press (the other being the one edited by that patriarch of Kerala journalism, the late