Pinarayi birthplace of the red revolution

Pinarayi: The bus screeches to a halt. Passengers who stare unseeingly out of the window at the lush countryside, barely notice the structure by the side that is lost in a swirl of dust as it gathers speed and disappears in the distance.

But it's here in forgotten Parappuram junction in Pinarayi, and not in glitzy Delhi or ideological capital Kolkata that the red flag was first unfurled. Right here at this very spot where the hammer and sickle glow by the light of a lurid red bulb throwing a long shadow over a granite slab with 40 names, that Communism was born in Malabar in December 1939.

Officially, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) whose diktat could forever change India's economic and foreign policies if they tip the balance in these state assembly elections in Kerala and West Bengal says it was founded in India in 1925.

But that was a many-splintered thing, unlike the 40-man group that arrived on this hillock, deep in the jungles of Pinarayi at the dead of night, united by one common purpose.

"They came to a small hut [which no longer exists today] making their approach not by land but by boat on a river that flowed through the thick forest," says Balan Maash, the Pinarayi-based author who is writing the definitive book on his village where revolutionaries have hidden out for months on end when evading the law. Its working title loosely translated is 'Pinarayi Birth house of revolution'.

In stealth, by the light of the flaming hay torch, the group announced the formation of the Communist Party of India, and its first unit a four-man unit for Pinarayi that would propagate their leftist message.

In that group were the putative state of Kerala's first communist leaders like the charismatic EMS Namboodiripad and A.K. Gopalan, and other members of the Congress Socialist Party, the ginger group within the Congress that would form the nucleus of the new party.

EMS would make history of his own in 1957 as the Communists' first elected chief minister, the man who changed the political and social landscape of Kerala with sweeping land reforms that gave land to the landless. Over time the Marxists here have shed their early rigidity and grown markedly more pragmatic.

Says 'Berlin' Kunhanandan Nair, an expert on Marxism: "You'll find a Marxist in every family in northern Kerala."

These were areas marked by a struggle against the feudal landlords.

"This is what makes it a formidable vote bank," says Nair.

It has built local hero Pinarayi Vijayan, the son of an impoverished toddy tapper and a farm labourer, who uses the name of his village as his nom de guerre into an iconic cult figure. Standing once more from the adjoining Tellicherry constituency Pinarayi is part of neighbouring Koothaparambha is his lieutenant Kodiyeri Balakrishnan.

Nair says that victory is assured, that a two-thirds majority in the assembly is a given. "Things are going to change at the centre. Power will shift to the Marxists."

Win or lose, in the land where Marxist-Leninist communism really began in India, the red flag still flies high.