Comrade Idamana K. Narayanan Potty, Marxist scholar, translator, publisher and activIdamana K Narayanan Potty (1961-2025)ist, passed away on 17 November 2025 in Kerala after a brief but severe illness. He was 64 and had recently undergone surgery for liver cancer, following which his condition deteriorated rapidly.

Born on 31 March 1961 to N. Krishnan Potty and M. S. Devaki Devi, he came from a distinguished scholarly lineage. His grandfather, Idamana R. Narayanan Potty, the first Mahopadhyaya of Travancore, was a noted Sanskrit scholar, teacher at the Sanskrit College, Thiruvananthapuram, and Curator of the Trivandrum Manuscript Library.

Narayanan Potty was educated at Model School, Government Arts College and University College, Thiruvananthapuram. He obtained a BSc in Physics and an MA in English Literature. During his student years he became deeply involved in communist politics, which would shape the entire trajectory of his life.

At the age of 17, he came into contact with Marxism through the Socialist Unity Centre of India (SUCI) and its student wing AIDSO. A committed and disciplined activist, he organised a party unit in Nedumangad and drew several members of his family into the movement. After seven years of intense political work, he left the organization in 1985, disturbed by contradictions between its theoretical claims and organisational practice.

This break led him into a long phase of spiritual and scholarly pursuit. For more than three decades, he devoted himself to Sanskrit, Vedic literature and Hindu ritual practice, becoming a priest and a respected Vedic scholar. He published articles on Indic traditions and initiated efforts to revive the historic Kanthallur Sala, an ancient centre of learning.

In his later years, following renewed contact with former comrades, he returned to Marxist theory and political engagement. He became deeply involved in the defence of the Soviet socialist experience and the historical role of Joseph Stalin, introducing his comrades to the works of American historian Prof. Grover Furr.

It was on his initiative that Proletarian Publishers was founded, through which several important Marxist works were brought into Malayalam, including: Grover Furr, Stalin’s Struggles for Democratic Reform, Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied, W. B. Bland, Restoration of Capitalism in the USSR, Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, besides Stalin and the Tactics of People’s Democratic Revolution. Through these efforts, within a short span of three years, Malayalam gained access to some of the most significant contemporary Marxist and historical texts.

Comrade Narayanan Potty was widely respected for his intellectual seriousness, remarkable memory, and unwavering commitment to study. Even shortly before his illness, he was actively participating in

Marxist study camps, most recently at Aluva under the Centre for Marxist Studies, where he appeared healthy and energetically engaged.

He is survived by his wife Sathi, whom he married in 1987, and their son, who works in the software industry.

His passing is deeply mourned by comrades, readers, and friends who valued his lifelong dedication to learning, critical inquiry, and revolutionary thought.

Dr. V. Prasad

This journal came into touch with Comrade Narayanan Potty while he was engaged in the translation of Khrushchev Lied. Part of his intense translation work was the translation of materials from this journal. Comrade Potty was very particular in the translation of documents which he was in agreement with, rejecting to consider the translation of even the Marxist writings of authors who later supported revisionism. He translated the two discussions of Stalin and the CPI and accepted the need for people’s democratic revolution in India thereby rejecting his earlier views supporting socialist revolution as the immediate stage of revolution. He rendered support to the Programme and Tactical Line documents of 1951 which were written after the Moscow discussions. The Tactical Line document rejected the PC Joshi line of collaborating with the Nehru wing of the Congress Party, the Ranadive line of supporting immediate socialist revolution and the Telengana line of copying the imagined tactical line of the Chinese revolution. He supported the understanding that the armed activity of the working class was necessary along with the partisan struggle of peasantry. Unlike China, India did not have the advantage of a friendly rear and direct Soviet support which played a determining role in the success of the revolution,

Moreover he translated the discussions of Stalin and Harry Pollitt on the British Road to Socialism along with its introductory essay by

Vijay Singh. This was significant as it went against the current of those communists who while supporting Stalin exerted strong opposition to his formulations of People’s Democratic revolution as being the initial stage of revolution in the imperialist countries such as the US, Britain and Japan.

Comrade Potty considered that the essay of Vijay Singh on the failure of most of the people’s democratic states to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism to be an important contribution to the revolutionary movement. (Some questions of the dictatorship of the proletariat in the people’s democracies). This article illustrated with the examples of the DPRK and People’s China the arresting of the revolutionary process after 1953 and the preservation of the national bourgeoisie in the state and the economy. This was incompatible with views of Lenin that small capital perpetrated the continual spread of capitalism in a persistent manner, and was a view defended by Stalin.

Cde. Potty further rejected the invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine by Russian imperialism while recognizing the imperialist role of US imperialism. It was a major example of his rupture from the Brezhnevite tradition of rendering support to Russian imperialism by the descendants of the Khrushchevite parties.

The death of Comrade Potty is a severe blow to the communist movement in India.

Long Live Comrade Narayanan Potty!

Revolutionary Democracy.