How Kerala’s Marxist cartel captured the university system
This is not a piece of history that I am writing, but a chronicle of events that is directly connected to the recent events in the academic field of Kerala, monopolized by the Left intellectuals.
When Sir C P Ramaswami Aiyar, the then Diwan of the princely State of Travancore, established Travancore University in 1937 (a precursor to the University of Kerala), he had two major dreams. He wanted the entire citizens of Travancore to have access to quality education and elevate the university to the stature of global institutions. It is said that Sir C P had written to Nobel laureate Albert Einstein, inviting him to be the vice-chancellor of the new University. Since Einstein expressed his inability to shift to Travancore, the then Maharajah, Bala Rama Varma, insisted that Sir C P himself should take over the mantle of vice-chancellor, and he obeyed the diktat.[1]
Over the next decade, Travancore University rose to the status of a center of academic excellence. Interestingly, the University was established against the opposition and anguish of the University of Madras. This is because people in Travancore were dependent on the University of Madras for their higher education, and the latter feared that it would lose the revenue it was getting from Travancore students.
Those were the days when Travancore University had the stature of the best universities in the United Kingdom. No need to elaborate that the University lost much of its sheen with the departure of Sir C P from Travancore following the accession of the princely State to the Union of Indian in 1947. The provinces of Travancore, Kochi, and Malabar were merged on 1st November 1956 to form the State of Kerala. Subsequently, the Travancore University was reconstituted as the University of Kerala.
The initial years of the new university were free of troubles and chaos and stood out for its discipline and dignity. Over the next decades, the institution has been stuck in an intellectual rut. With politics taking the front seat, academic affairs were relegated to the back seat, and the University became a cesspool of corruption, nepotism, favoritism, and indiscipline. The CPI(M) usurped the State’s psyche through educational institutions, media, and the world of arts, literature, and culture. Party leaders who failed to make it to the Legislative Assembly and Parliament found it easy to regain their eminence through universities and schools. The posts of vice-chancellors, heads of departments, and faculty positions were monopolized by Marxists by employing all the tricks in their arsenal. Those who failed to get academic qualifications managed the same by hook or by crook. Copying during examinations was the old modus operandi. But with senior comrades occupying strategic positions in teaching and non-teaching areas, it has become easy to manage degrees, post-graduate degrees, and PhDs. University of Kerala may be the only institution in the country where failed degree students can get admission in post-graduate courses. The only condition is that one should be an activist of the SFI, the student wing of the CPI(M).
P M Arsho, secretary of the SFI, who failed to pass the graduation from the elite Maharajas College at Ernakulam, managed to get a bachelor’s degree certificate from the university itself! Now he is on the way to manage a PhD from Kerala University. The doctorates awarded to more than a dozen leaders of the CPI(M)/ SFI have courted controversy in the State. Sunil Elayidom, a professor posted at Sree Sankara Sanskrit University at Kalady, managed to get a PhD using his political influence in the chief minister’s office during the tenure of late V S Achuthanandan in office.
“It was a sub-standard thesis he submitted, and I said no to the demand that he should be awarded the PhD. There were many phone calls from the Chief Minister’s Office asking me to fall in line and clear the thesis. Since I was steadfast in my decision, the University authorities opted for a party fellow traveler as examiner, and he cleared the same,” said Prof M G Sasibhushan, art historian and Indologist based in the capital city.
Thanks to the PhD, Elayidom managed to get into the Sanskrit University as a lecturer and got promoted to a professor. Not content with these achievements, he ventured out to write books on subjects ranging from art to political history. The books on art he authored are mainly “cut and paste” from books written by academicians based in the US and Canada, said Prof Ravishankar S Nair, noted literary critic. “I was in for a shock when one of the books he authored was a word-by-word translation of Bharatanatyam-A Reader by Davesh Soneji, a US-based art historian. “There is no contribution from Elayidom in this work other than translating the same. But there is no mention of Soneji in this work, which is unfair,” said Prof Nair. Plagiarism has become a synonym for Sunil Elayidom, pointed out Prof Nair.
There are many instances of research scholars groping in the dark when asked about their PhD thesis. Chintha Jerome, another CPI(M) leader whose thesis is titled “The ideological foundation of Malayalam commercial cinema in neoliberal times,” is a copy of an article, “The mind space of mainstream Malayalam cinema,“ published in a portal Bodhi, pointed out R S Sasikumar, a former academician and president of Save University Campaign Committee, a whistleblower.
The obsession of comrades for a PhD is because the doctorate is the key to job opportunities in universities in the state, as the recruitment is done by the Government of Kerala. Many unqualified persons in the CPI(M) with no research potential have managed to get doctorates thanks to the discriminatory selection process.
The latest incident involving a researcher CPI(M) leader, Vipin Vijayan, whose Ph D thesis has been put on hold at the orders of an upright vice chancellor, has become a subject for memes and posts critical of the former. Vijayan’s Ph D thesis was on Sanskrit and about Chattampi Swamikal, a monk who played a major role in eradicating untouchability in this part of the world. Swamikal shot into the national limelight when Swami Vivekananda came to Kochi to meet him to learn about Chinmudra. Vijayan did not know Sanskrit, and his thesis was submitted in English. During the Open Defense held before the clearance of the thesis, he fumbled many times, and his ignorance of Sanskrit was exposed.[2]
The decision to award the doctorate for the mistakes-ridden thesis was put on hold, and this made him, as well as his comrades, furious. They blamed Prof C N Vijayakumari, who guided him in the research work, for the faux pas. “Since she is from the Brahmin community, she has some grudge against me, a Dalit, for venturing out to learn Sanskrit. Vijayakumari told me many times that Sanskrit is not meant for the depressed and oppressed classes, as it is a divine language. She was pouring molten words into my ears. Whenever I went to meet her at her cabin in the University, she used to purify the room after I came out of the meeting,” Vijayan told the media after a fortnight of his Open Defense. His allegations, made after 15 days of the session, are yet another proof of a manufactured lie. This was done following the intervention of the top leaders of the CPI(M) to help him come out of the impasse.
But he was ignorant of the fact that Prof Vijayakumari, dean of research, University of Kerala, had dedicated her life to propagating Sanskrit. She and her family members speak only Sanskrit for their communication. Not only that, she teaches Sanskrit to hundreds of students free of cost. Her housemaid, who looks after the household and cooks food, is a Harijan. The professor did not reveal these facts to anybody. Vijayan, who is also a CPI(M) leader, filed a criminal case against Vijayakumari, accusing her of violating the Scheduled Caste/ Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of) Atrocities Act 1986, and the police issued a look-out notice for her. But the Kerala High Court gave a directive to the police not to arrest Vijayakumari till the case in the trial court is disposed of. The professor has not gone to the University office since the Open Defense, in which Vijayan was grilled by the academic scholars who had gathered to scrutinize the thesis.
This is an attempt to convey the message to would-be employers looking for persons with PhDs in humanities/ arts to be appointed as tutors/ professors/ scholars. If the candidates are from the University of Kerala, be wary of them, as instances of these scholars using fake PhDs are galore. What a fall for a university that was set up with the intention to make it as good as the best institutions in the West! There are at least 20 PhD scholars about whom a comedy serial could be made.
The motto of the University is Karmani Vyajayate Prajna (wisdom manifests itself in action), which stands in contrast to the action of the students and the politicians running the institution. There is neither wisdom nor action in Kerala University as of date, said Sashikumar. It is the Marxists who run the university with their mission to destroy and demolish the educational system in the State and throw out the last vestiges of Indian culture from all centers of learning.
Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.
Reference:
[1] A Brief History of the University – Kerala University
[2] 64 PhD degrees approved; Vipin Vijayan’s withheld – Nov 20, 2025, ToI
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