27-29 August 1994
Thiruvananthapuram, India

THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON KERALA STUDIES

by Paul Baak

The meeting was hosted by the AKG Centre for Research and
Studies, 
intending to bring together socio-political activists and
'independent' scholars. As those familiar with India might know,
AKG stands for A.K. Gopalan, the influential Kerala communist
writer and activist. The Centre is closely connected with the
CPI(m), the Communist Party of India (Marxist).
The organizational background greatly influenced the congress
itself. For instance, the participants found themselves in the
midst of a political theatre during the inaugural session. The
presence of two former Chief ministers (E.M.S. Namboodripad and
E.K. Nayanar) and the Vice-President of India (K.R. Narayanan)
made strict police security measures necessary and caused a wide
press coverage. 

MARXISM ON THE MOVE
To be honest, there were some disadvantages to the involvement of
the AKG Centre/CPI(m):
Some of the presentations were in fact political speeches,
without any inference to research-based findings. Moreover, some
activists chose to speak in Malayan during the discussions,
ignoring the international character of the conference.
In spite of all this, the conference was a great success.
According to estimates, more than 1500 (!) persons participated
in the 73 (!) sessions. Perhaps an even greater organizational
achievement was that all delegates were given the abstracts of
the papers presented at the conference, published in five
separate volumes.

LIVELY DISCUSSIONS
Many panels focused on policy-oriented topics (including the
'Kerala Model', i.e. improvement in the standard of living in
economically backward regions), whereas other sessions were
purely academic in nature, dealing with issues such as Matailing
and Malayaman poetry. The great number of political activists
certainly made the discussions very lively, as was the case in my
panel on 'Agrarian movements in the post-Independence period'.
Besides myself, other 'Amsterdam' scholars such as Jan Breman
(Chairperson of the session on 'Consumption, Standard of Living,
and Social System'), Jos Mooy (who presented a paper on the 'Food
distribution system'), and Peter van der Werff (who presented a
paper on 'Forest Plantation transformation') were present at the
conference.