KR GOURI AMMA

May 12, 2021

Veteran Communist leader and the leader of Janadipathya Samrakshana Samiti (JSS), K.R. Gouri Amma passed away in Thiruvananthapuram due to age-related ailments. She was 102 years old.

About:

R. Gouri Amma was an Indian politician and the first revenue minister of Kerala state.
She was a Marxist revolutionary, advocate, author and diplomat.
She was also one of the founding leaders of the Communist movement in Kerala.
She headed the Janathipathiya Samrakshana Samithy (JSS), a political party based in Kerala, a rebel outfit she had formed in 1994 after her ouster from CPI (M).
She was the first female law student coming from the Ezhava community. She was a minister in the communist-led ministries in Kerala in 1957, 1967, 1980 and 1987. She also became a minister in the Congress-led cabinet from 2001 to 2006.
She had been a minister in the first democratically elected Communist Government of 1957 in Kerala led by E M S Namboodiripad. As the revenue minister in the EMS cabinet, Gouri had drafted and piloted the historic Kerala Agrarian Relations Bill, which paved the way for land reforms.
She has been the longest serving woman legislator in the Kerala Assembly, the oldest woman member in the Assembly, the oldest woman Minister etc.
She published an autobiography titled Atmakatha, which won the 2011 Kerala Sahitya Academy Award.