B. M. Kutty
Born to a family of peasants and landowners in Chilavil–Ponmundam village of Tirur, Malabar District, Madras Presidency, Kutty was influenced by communism at an early age and joined the student faction of the Communist Party of India in the 1940s.
Kutty was associated with many left and centre-left parties in Pakistan and served as the political secretary for Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, a prominent Baloch leader and Governor of Balochistan.
Kutty was born on 15 July 1930 at Chilavil–Ponmundam village in Tirur, Malabar District, Madras Presidency, British India, to a middle-class Malayali Muslim family of peasants and landowners.
[2] After the conclusion of his final year examinations in June 1949, he sent a telegram to his parents saying that he would return home, but instead left for Bombay without even waiting to receive his college certificates.
Kutty described his "love for geography" and desire to visit the cultural heritage of Lahore as the reason for his immigration to Pakistan and that it had no religious motivation as it did for millions of other Muslims who left India after the partition.
He met a Malayali Hindu, A. K. Pillai, in Lahore who helped him find a job as assistant manager at Indian Coffee House.
[3] In the decade of the 1980s he was associated with the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy (MRD), a left–wing political alliance formed to oppose and end the military government of President Zia-ul-Haq.
[3] Kutty worked with Gandhian social and peace activist Nirmala Deshpande and when she died in 2008, he attended her funeral with his friend and colleague Karamat Ali and politician Sherry Rehman, and brought back her ashes to consecrate in the Indus River in accordance with her wishes.
During his time in Lahore, Kutty became a member of the Communist Party of Pakistan and met many left-leaning political workers and leaders, including prominent Baloch politician Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo.
[4] Kutty joined the National Awami Party (NAP) when it was founded in 1957 and became the political secretary of Bizenjo, retaining that position even when the latter served as the Governor of Balochistan from 1972 to 1973.
[7] In February 1973, Pakistani forces raided the Iraqi embassy in Pakistan suspecting that Iraq might be colluding with the Soviet Union to arm the Baloch insurgents.
[8] Kutty came under suspicion by the Government of Pakistan because of his "unusual" credentials—a communist originally from Kerala working for a Baloch party and its leader and the-then governor.
[4] Kutty married Birjis Siddiqui, an Urdu-speaking woman originating from Uttar Pradesh, on 21 January 1951 in a wedding ceremony in Lahore attended by five Malayalis.
He was buried in Paposh Nagar Graveyard, Karachi; his funeral prayer, Salat al-Janazah, was recited earlier at Abu Hanifa Mosque in Gulshan-i-Iqbal.
