Political pundits are wont to describe it as a laboratory for political experiments. When communists never thought it possible or desirable to capture power any other way than through an armed revolution, a red star rose in the firmament of Kerala after an assembly election. That was when it was discovered that communism could follow the parliamentary path too.

Pundits often talk about another development that is either concomitant or merely subsequent. It was Kerala that tried out a political coalition for the first time. Whether or not coalitions were perfected as an instrument to defeat a main enemy at a givenpoint of time after the communists is a moot point. The fact is that coalitions became a permanent fact of life after Kerala's first experiment with coalitions. And not merely in Kerala, but throughout India, coalitions have become an unavoidable evil, or if you like, virtue.

Then there are things like literacy, work stoppage and nurses. Kerala has produced all this more than any other place. Another trend unique to Kerala, which is currently in evidence, is its enormous capacity to make history a living experience. When others talk about what happened yesterday evening or two days ago, Kerala is happy to relive whatever it went through several years ago. Interestingly, what happened in history, hoary history, and what it chooses to bring back into current discourse becomes a remarkably intense experience.

Kerala is never tired of discussing what happened a quarter century ago or half a century ago or even earlier. The other day it was discussing whether what happened in the forties, a struggle ofcomparatively unarmed people against the imperial/royal government, was part of the freedom movement or not. The communists who inspired it naturally argued that it was. Others said no. The debate which has been underway ever since it happened is still on, even after it was declared as part of the freedom movement when Indrajit Gupta was union home minister. A new feature film is now on show, celebrating the memory of that struggle and its martyrs. Nothing ever becomes history. Everything is current. Naturally, communists have played a great role in making history a living experience, particularly when it suits them. They are never sick of repeating the complaint that their government was dismissed in 1959, wrecking all democratic norms. That was the first occasion article 356 was invoked to disband a state government, setting in motion a pernicious tendency of New Delhi getting rid of anyone and anything in a state capital that it felt was unpleasant to it. The "liberation struggle" thatculminated in the dismissal of the communist government is still an infamous frame of reference in all political banter.

To this unending list or historical events which become a living experience, Kerala has found a new addition. Kerala and West Bengal are two states which recall the days of political extremism with a degree of terror and nostalgia.

What the harebrained Marxists call left infantilism erupted with wild fury in the late sixties, and it was put down with an iron hand. Though traces of it are still existing in pockets of Andhra and Bihar, that movement practically petered out in the sixties. There was no discussion later on it except as an academic exercise. Kerala has started a new discussion, not academic but intensely political.

As it often happens, it has put many people, particularly the Marxist oracles, on the defensive for a change. The discussion is on the death of a young naxalite, Varghese, more than a quarter century ago. It was feared then that he was shot dead by the policeand not killed in any encounter.

The fear has now been confirmed by a constable who confesses that he shot Varghese dead point blank. The eruption of a discussion on something that happened close to three decades ago was instant. No one knows how and why this confession came about so dramatically after so many years. But it has been a useful subject for human rights activists, media hounds, and curiously, Marxist-baiters. The Marxists were quite relieved when the naxalite movement was crushed because it had threatened to wean away many from their ranks. They are now reminded that many of them had taken then a stand that was unhelpful to the cause of human rights.

The Marxists who always like to see themselves as inexorably right are terribly embarrassed. History is often an embarrassment. When it becomes a constantly living experience, it is all the more so.