India, July 22 -- The late Sitaram Yechury once compared Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan - VS for his millions of admirers - to the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. VS, who passed away aged 101 Monday evening in Thiruvananthapuram, was more of a state chieftain than a national leader. But in his battleground, the state of Kerala, he commanded widespread respect and loyalty similar to that the "Comandante" evoked in the communist citadel in the Caribbean.

What distinguished VS from most of his political peers is that his popularity was not restricted to the cadre base of his party, the Communist Party of India-Marxist. In the last few decades of his life, he transcended the image of a hardline commissar and transformed into a mass leader, w...