FIRST COMMUNIST MINISTRY IN KERALA 67 the 1957-9 episode in Kerala has been looked at from the caste angle by Western scholars and in their wake by the Indian epigones, can be attributed to the existence of a dual epistemology which treats economic and political developments in India as unique in terms of a purely Indian phenomenon as well as to the exigencies of ananti-^ communist propaganda apparatus, aimed at explaining the left advances in terms of a non-class, archaic operational model" (p 4). After refuting the fallacious arguments of those who view the complex Kerala politics as a simple caste-communal affair, the author critically analyses the origin, composition, character and role of various caste-communal organisations that emerged among the Malayalam-speaking people since the beginning of this century. He also brings out forcefully how in the socio-political milieu of Kerala and the rest of the country, a purely class based organisation, the Communist Party of India, projected an alternative programme and made tremendous advances by rallying the people in the national, democratic and economic struggles. We however think that the author is unscientific in artificially and arbitrarily dividing the Malayalee population into four or five "ethnic categories" based on caste or religious differ^nciation. For there is no ethnic difference perse between a Namboodiri Brahmin, a Nair, a Syrian or Roman Catholic and a Muslim, just as there is no 'ethnic' difference between a Tamil and a Malayalee. While dealing with the emergence of the communist movement in Kerala, the author makes a special mention of the remarkable political careers of E M S Namboodiripad and A K Gopalan. This he does "not so much in order to stress their decisive contribution, but in order to delineate how two leaders with quite different styles of functioning, went through three similar stages of intra-caste reform work via the Gandhian-dominated bourgeois nationalist movement to an anti-feudal and anti-imperialist united front strategy based on the organised strength of the workers' and peasants' alliance" (p 14). The point is well made. However we wish the author had brought out forcefully and stressed adequately the important fact which both EMS and AKG laid stress on, namely, that Kerala was extremely fortunate in having many outstanding leaders and dedicated cadres drawn from the working class and peasant background who made innumerable sacrifices in building a powerful working class and communist .movement. In the last section of the introductory chapter, the author presents the ideological background to the emergence of the communist ministry and discusses the political-ideological differences within the CPI in the late 1950's under two sub-headings, "Peaceful transformation to Socialism" and "Allies in the bourgeois democratic revolution". To be sure, there were serious political-ideological differences within the leadership of the CPI and these differences were