M. N. Vijayan
Known for his leftist ideals and oratorical skills, Vijayan was the president of the Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham (Progressive Association for Art and Letters) and served as the editor of Deshabhimani.
He published a number of books of which Chithayile Velicham (The Light in the Pyre) received the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award for Literary Criticism in 1982.
M. N. Vijayan was born on 8 June 1930 to Pathiyasseril Narayana Menon and Mooliyil Kochammu Amma at Lokamaleshwaram, a small village near Kodungallur in Thrissur district of the south Indian state of Kerala.
[3] In 1960, he joined Brennen College, Thalassery as a member of faculty at its department of Malayalam and served the institution until he retired from service in 1985.
Vijayan worked as the editor of the cultural weekly Deshabhimani owned by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)).
He was President of Purogamana Kala Sahitya Sangham (Progressive Association for Art and Letters) and Adhinivesha Prathirodha Samithi (Council for Resisting Imperialist Globalisation), a leftist think-tank based in Kerala which collaborated with the CPI(M).
[6] Vijayan and Professor Sudheesh's articles in Padom against the "people's plan", a program aimed at decentralisation of power, became a controversial issue.
Some prominent writers, including M. Krishnan Nair and Thinakkal Padmanabhan, have said that Vijayan's writings are difficult to understand, as he does not follow conventional grammatical structures.
[14] His studies on Vailoppilli, a well known Malayalam poet, and especially the poems "Mampazham" and "Sahyante makan", using Freudian techniques attained wide acclaim.
[15] He was a staunch critic of communal organisations and he used a significant part of his oratory and writings to back Communist Party of India (Marx) in their ideological and material resistance against the invasion of fascist forces with venomous separatist aims in Tellicherry and Kerala.
Parishath and its activities lost credibility when Ernakulam Chief Judicial Magistrate dismissed the defamation case filed against Paatom,[16] a magazine which exposed the fishy trails of such organisations.
Vijayan was married to Sharada and the couple had a son, V. S. Anilkumar, a writer and an academic working at Kannur University and two daughters, Sujatha Balachandran, a doctorate degree holder in agricultural science and Sunitha Rajagopal.
