Political Legend K R Gowri Passes

K R Gowri Amma, a member of the first Communist government in India headed by E M S Namboodiripad, died in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday, May 11.

Gowri Amma was 102 and had been admitted to a hospital due to age-related ailments. She breathed her last at 7 am on Tuesday while undergoing treatment in the ICU, hospital sources said.

Considered to be among the most powerful women leaders in Kerala, Gowri Amma, as she was fondly called, was the lone surviving member of the first Kerala legislative assembly.

She was married to the late T V Thomas, who was also her cabinet colleague.

Gowri, revenue minister in E M S Namboodiripad ministry, is credited with playing a key role in bringing the revolutionary Agrarian Relations Bill, which set the ceiling on the amount of land a family could own, paving the way for landless farmers to claim excess land.

Born on July 14, 1919 in the sleepy Pattanakkad village of coastal Alappuzha to K A Ramanan and Parvathy Amma, Gowri was attracted to politics at a young age.