The Kerala Precedent: How Article 356 Became a Weapon of Cold War Politics

The Wire

12 hours ago

Newly declassified British intelligence files have confirmed coordinated CIA-UK operations with Congress leaders that led to the downfall of Kerala's 1959 Communist government.
EMS Namboodiripad.
On July 31, 1959, the Nehru Government invoked Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss a state government for the first time against a non-Congress administration. E.M.S. Namboodiripad, who had served as Kerala's chief minister from April 5, 1957, saw his Communist-led government terminated after 27 months in power. What followed was not just a change of government, but a constitutional precedent that would haunt Indian federalism for decades.
For 65 years, the story of this dismissal has been contested territory. To supporters of the Vimochana Samaram (Liberation Struggle), the mass agitation that culminated in the dismissal represented a popular uprising against Communist overreach. To the Left, it was a carefully orchestrated conspiracy involving domestic and communal opposition with the help of foreign agents, including the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
The story has taken a dramatic turn and become more intriguing with historian Paul McGarr's latest revelations. Drawing on recently declassified British intelligence files, McGarr's research reveals that the United Kingdom's MI5 and MI6, along with the CIA, mounted covert operations in coordination with senior Congress leaders and India's Intelligence Bureau to bring down the Namboodiripad administration.
McGarr's findings reveal that when Kerala began gaining international attention as "The Indian Yenan" – a reference to the famous Chinese Communist revolutionary base – British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan became alarmed and authorised a "Special Political Action" program specifically designed to undermine the Communist Party of India's growing influence in the state.
The operation included a covert training scheme that brought Congress leaders and union organisers to the UK for intensive anti-Communist instruction. The plan had the approval of IB chief B.N. Mullik and was politically green-lit by Union home minister Govind Ballabh Pant and Union finance minister Morarji Desai. Most significantly, the British archives reveal the careful diplomatic manoeuvering required to secure Indian government cooperation:
"Having met Govind Ballabh Pant, India's Minister for Home Affairs, Morarji Desai, the Union Finance Minister, and Nehru himself, Lord Home reported back to London that Pant and Desai were firmly in favour. Nehru proved less enthusiastic. The Indian premier did, however, concede that it would be useful for the Indian government to be able to call on UK intelligence assistance in certain circumstances."
The trained operatives were then "infiltrated into the Indian National Trade Union Congress," bolstering its ability to counter CPI-aligned unions. This created what McGarr describes as sustained political pressure that complemented CIA funding efforts.
"The people of India have the right to know the truth about the 1959 dismissal of Kerala's first Communist government. I believe that much is still remaining hidden about the Vimochana Samaram, which was shaped not only by local politics but also by external interventions that influenced the course of democracy in postcolonial India. The newly revealed UK involvement is almost unbelievable, but surprisingly new," observed eminent political scientist G. Gopakumar.
Ballot box Communists
The undivided CPI's electoral victory in Kerala in 1957 created one of the earliest democratically elected Communist governments in the world. It was only the second revolutionary government ever elected democratically, after communist success in San Marino from 1945 to 1957. This democratic path to socialism sent ripples across the Cold War world, where the ideological battle between capitalism and communism typically played out through revolution or military intervention, not electoral politics. In Washington and London, policymakers watched apprehensively as Namboodiripad's government began implementing the radical reforms that had brought it to power.
The Communist government's troubles began with its very success in implementing promised reforms. The Kerala Education Bill of 1957, piloted by state education minister Joseph Mundassery, aimed to bring the state's schools under tighter government regulation. The legislation required that teacher appointments in grant-aided private schools – many run by Christian churches and caste organisations – be made from government-approved lists.
For the powerful Syrian Catholic Church and organisations like the Nair Service Society, these reforms represented an existential threat to decades-old control over education and patronage networks. The changes would have significantly affected the livelihoods and autonomy of thousands of teachers while reducing the influence of religious and community organisations over educational institutions.
Even more explosive were the agrarian reforms championed by revenue minister K.R. Gouri. The legislation sought to confer ownership rights to long-term tenant cultivators, fix ceilings on landholdings, and prevent arbitrary eviction of tenants. For the landed elites – particularly the Nair and Syrian Christian communities who had dominated Kerala's rural economy for generations – these reforms were unacceptable.
The gathering storm
Opposition to the EMS government began coalescing almost immediately after the bills were introduced. The Syrian Catholic Church mobilised its considerable resources against the education bill, with Church leaders framing the legislation as an attack on religious freedom and minority rights.
Simultaneously, the Nair Service Society, under Mannathu Padmanabhan's leadership, began organising against the land reforms. The Indian National Congress, smarting from its electoral defeat, provided political coordination for what would become a formidable opposition coalition.
The protests, initially peaceful, gradually escalated. The turning point came on June 13, 1959, at Angamaly, where police firing on protesters resulted in seven deaths. Similar incidents followed across the state, creating a cycle of violence and political mobilisation that would ultimately provide the justification for central intervention.
Evidence of foreign involvement
The question of foreign involvement in the Vimochana Samaram has been the subject of scholarly investigation for decades. CIA funding of the Congress party has been documented on multiple occasions. The most significant admission came from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who served as US Ambassador to India in the 1970s. In his memoir A Dangerous Place, Moynihan revealed that the CIA had secretly funded the Indian National Congress on multiple occasions, including operations targeting Kerala's Communist government.
"In the 1950s, as the role of world policeman shifted from Britain to the United States, the CIA overthrew several democratically elected governments in the Third World, often with extreme bloodshed,' explains Thomas Isaac, CPIM leader and Kerala's former finance minister. Yet in former British colonies like British Guiana, India, and Iran, it was still British intelligence that held sway in the early years. The coup in British Guiana was initiated by Britain itself. 'Now, for the first time, concrete records reveal Britain's interventions in Kerala—until now known only through the memoirs of B.N. Mullik, then head of India's Intelligence Bureau," says Issac who co-authored the book Toppling the First Ministry: Kerala, the CIA, and the Struggle for Social Justice, along with Richard W. Franke.
While the CIA's role in funnelling money to Congress politicians and anti-communist trade unions has been hinted at in past memoirs and research, McGarr's work adds detailed evidence of Britain's parallel campaign.
The Cold War context
Understanding the foreign dimension requires recognising Kerala's significance in Cold War calculations. A democratically elected Communist government in an Indian state represented a dangerous precedent from the perspective of Western policymakers who saw containment of Communism as a strategic imperative. Internal CIA documents, some later declassified, show the extraordinary level of attention Kerala commanded in Washington's intelligence apparatus. The agency produced detailed intelligence assessments tracking political developments in what internal communications referred to as "India's Communist State."
The fear was not just about Kerala itself, but about the precedent it might set. If Communism could succeed through democratic means in one corner of the world, what would prevent similar outcomes elsewhere in the developing world? This concern shaped Western intelligence approaches to the crisis.
The constitutional precedent
On July 31, 1959, on the advice of the Union Cabinet, President Rajendra Prasad invoked Article 356 of the Constitution to dismiss Kerala's elected chief minister E.M.S. Namboodiripad and his cabinet, and ordered the dissolution of the state assembly. The decision came after months of escalating protests and violence, setting a precedent for using the provision against non-Congress administrations that would be repeatedly invoked in subsequent decades.
Prime Minister Nehru, despite his initial reluctance as revealed in the British archives, ultimately accepted the advice of his Cabinet to dismiss the EMS government. The justification was the breakdown of law and order, but critics argued that the violence had been manufactured to create grounds for constitutional intervention.
The dismissal of Kerala's Communist government established what would become known as the "Kerala precedent" – the use of Article 356 to remove an elected state government facing political opposition based on ideological grounds. While Article 356 had been used before in Punjab (1951) and PEPSU (1953), the Kerala case marked its first deployment against a Communist government and set the template for future political misuse of this constitutional provision. Over the following decades, Article 356 would be invoked repeatedly against state governments that were inconvenient to the party in power at the Center, fundamentally altering the federal balance envisioned by the Constitution's framers.
Historical reassessment
Recent research has begun to provide a more nuanced understanding of the Vimochana Samaram, moving beyond simple narratives of popular uprising or foreign conspiracy. The evidence suggests a complex interaction of genuine domestic grievances, opportunistic political calculation and foreign intelligence operations.
The concerns of various Kerala communities about the Communist government's reforms were real and significant. The education bill openly threatened the autonomy of religious institutions, while the land reforms challenged established property relations. These fears of the elite provided the raw material for political mobilisation.
However, the systematic coordination of this opposition, the sophisticated propaganda campaigns, and the strategic timing of escalations suggest influences beyond purely local concerns. The documented CIA funding and British intelligence cooperation indicate that foreign powers saw an opportunity to roll back a dangerous precedent and took it.
McGarr's research reveals that the Kerala operation was not an isolated case. It mirrored interventions in other newly independent nations where Western powers feared communist electoral success could become a model for the developing world.
The Kerala episode provides crucial historical context for contemporary debates about foreign interference in domestic politics. The techniques revealed in declassified documents – covert funding of political movements, sophisticated information campaigns, coordination between foreign operatives and domestic actors – bear striking similarities to modern concerns about electoral manipulation.
Perhaps most importantly, the Kerala case demonstrates how constitutional provisions designed to protect democracy can be turned against it when political will is lacking. The misuse of Article 356, beginning with the Kerala precedent, would become one of the most contentious issues in Indian federalism.
The unfinished story
As archives continue to open and more documents become available, our understanding of the Kerala episode continues to evolve. The full scope of foreign involvement may never be completely known, as intelligence operations by their nature leave incomplete paper trails scattered across different countries and agencies.
What remains clear is that the dismissal of Kerala's first Communist government represents a watershed moment in Indian democracy – a moment when the principles of federalism and electoral sovereignty came into conflict with Cold War imperatives and domestic political calculations.
The Vimochana Samaram thus stands as both a historical case study and a contemporary warning about the fragility of democratic institutions. 'If the fresh revelations are true, it amounts [to] a Union government conspiring with foreign agents against one of its provinces, a rare moment in political history,' says Dr. Gopakumar.
As India continues to grapple with questions of federalism and constitutional governance, the lessons of 1959 remain relevant. The Kerala precedent serves as a cautionary tale about the price of sacrificing democratic principles for immediate political advantage – a price that, once paid, may take generations to recover.
M.P. Basheer, a journalist and writer based in Trivandrum, was the executive editor of Kerala's first TV news channel, Indiavision.
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