He led the Nivarthana agitation in Travancore to gain the democratic authority for the citizens to decide on the legislation and to attain opportunities regardless of caste or social and economical status.

Kesavan was influenced by the work of Padmanabhan Palpu, the social reform campaigner who was a member of the Ezhava community and a founder of the Sree Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam (SNDP) association where he later rose to the general secretary post.

[3] Due to a speech he made at a public meeting in Kozhencherry he was arrested on 7 June 1935, tried for sedition, and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

[citation needed] Kesavan took an active part in organizing Travancore State Congress and became a member of its working Committee.

After independence, Kesavan was elected to Travancore Assembly and became a member of the first cabinet headed by Pattom Thanu Pillai, but resigned after few months.

[4] Kesavan was considered to be one of the Triumvirate of Travancore (Thiruvithaamkoor) State Congress leadership, the other two being Pattom A. Thanu Pillai and T.M.

Kesavan wrote an incomplete autobiography, Jeevitha-Samaram,[5] consisting of two volumes that described his life up to the time of his political prominence.

Udaya Kumar says that his "early memories are tinged with two lines of injustice: the discrimination he suffered as a backward Ezhava boy on the streets and other public places, where he was forced to defer to upper-caste people, and the unjust exercise of authority and discrimination towards him by the elders and the upper sub-divisions within the Ezhava caste".

When the fire broke out in Sabarimala, during May 1950 in the following months Kesavan, in his characteristic frankness said, "If a temple is destroyed that much of religious fanaticism will go off.