He was the eponymous founder of the newspaper, Kesari and was one of the three major figures in modern Malayalam literary criticism, along with Joseph Mundassery and M. P. Paul.

A. Balakrishna Pillai was born on 13 April 1889 to Akathoot Damodaran Kartha of Pulickal Mele Veedu family of Thampanoor, Thiruvananthapuram[1] and Parvathy Amma, in the south Indian state of Kerala.

While working, he continued studies in law and graduated with first class in 1913 to pursue a legal career which, however, was short lived as he was not successful as a lawyer.

[4] Balakrishna Pillai, by this time, had already started writing, primarily at the behest of a few publishers and this gave him the opportunity to get acquainted with Kalakkunnath Raman Menon, who ran a weekly, Samadharshi.

The next seven years were spent in Thiruvananthapuram, pursuing a literary career and in 1942, he moved to North Paravur in Ernakulam, the native place of his wife.

[14] By the 1930s the "Jeevat Sahitya Prasthanam" was inaugurated in Malayalam literature by a group of Marxist ideologists and some progressive writers including Pillai, Joseph Mundassery and M. P.

In an era of Western literary and cultural paradigms, they emphasized the importance of prose fiction in Malayalam and also advocated for realism in literature.

[18] Though many of his theories were rejected during his times by academic intellectuals, his findings about the connection between the present day inhabitants of India with that of Western Asia are acknowledged by the modern history.

Many other notable personalities thought Kesari was "eccentric" partly because it was too incomprehensible for them to take,[citation needed] and also because he used unconventional methods for understanding history.

P. Govinda Pillai commented that Kesari, who otherwise traversed through the blistering spheres of modern thoughts, often aberrated into frivolous anarchism and childishly immature illusions.

[20] Academic scholars often failed to take note that, when he actually tried to explore the pre-historical times, there were not enough archaeological evidences unearthed as it is the case today, which could help to throw light on the subject.

Pillai emphasized the importance of using alternative methods to understand pre-historic times and pointed out that comparable legends and myths obtaining in the regions concerned are more useful than archaeological, epigraphical, and literary sources.

So also, in speaking about the "protohistoric" states, the author believes that the ancestors of "the Greeks and the Romans, of the Indians and Persians, of the Chinese and Tibetans, and of the Malays and Polynesians" were the same.