'The Last of the Just': Remembering Vakkom Majeed Through 'Les Misérables'

The Wire

11-07-2025

Vakkom Majeed passed away on July 10, 2000.
'He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.'
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
In the long and rolling corridors of memory, some lives stay like verses, opening out slowly, sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter, never quite closing. Vakkom Majeed's was one such life. A life commemorated not only by its fearless engagement with history, but by its quiet, intense companionship with books. On the 25th anniversary of his passing, as we also mark the 100th year of Pavangal, the Malayalam translation of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables, it feels almost providential to recall him through the pages he so often inhabited.
Majeed Sahib, as many called him with reverence, moved with a book always kept under his arm, a bulwark against ignorance, a lamp in times of doubt. And among the many volumes he read and reread, Pavangal held a sacred space. Nalapat Narayana Menon's 1925 translation of Hugo's masterpiece was more than literature to him. It was revelation. He had devoured the original edition in his youth, and its characters never left him – Valjean's anguish, Javert's moral rigidity, the revolt in the streets of Paris, the quiet dignity of suffering souls. When he spoke of Pavangal, it was with a fervour one reserves for scripture. He did not read the novel, rather he lived it.
A. P. Udayabhanu, a veteran freedom fighter of Kerala, once described Majeed as a 'moving encyclopaedia with at least one book in his hands.' But Majeed Sahib was more than a repository of knowledge. He was a seeker, a provocateur of conscience, a gentle fire that never flickered out. I have the sweetest of memories of my time spent with him, from childhood itself, I remember the rhythm of his voice as he discussed Bertrand Russell's three-volume autobiography, Churchill's sprawling accounts of World War II, or the 10-volume correspondence of Sardar Patel. There was never a trace of vanity in his learning. He read not to impress but to illuminate. And when he shared his readings – Azad's Tarjuman al-Qur'an, Muhammad Asad's Road to Mecca, M. N. Roy's The Historical Role of Islam, Arthur Koestler's The Yogi and the Commissar, or Hugo's Pavangal, like many – he spoke with the urgency of a man who felt truth must never be hoarded.
Born on December 20, 1909, in the storied Poonthran Vilakom family of Vakkom near Chirayinkil (Travancore), S. Abdul Majeed inherited a legacy of reform and resistance. His uncle, Vakkom Abdul Khader Moulavi, had already lit the flame of renaissance among Kerala Muslims. From his schooldays at St. Joseph's High School, Anjengo, young Majeed was pulled into the vortex of reform movements and the call of the Indian freedom struggle. By the time the Quit India movement broke out, he was already a marked figure in Travancore, arrested, jailed, and later jailed again for resisting the plan of ' Independent Travancore.'
But what set him apart – what made him more than just another freedom fighter – was the deep moral imagination that animated his politics. His understanding of rebellion was not ideological. It was profoundly ethical. Like Victor Hugo, he believed that human dignity must stand unshackled before the majesty of any state or creed. He condemned the 'two-nation theory' not because it was politically inconvenient but because it was morally vacuous. To him, the soul of India was plural, secular, and indivisible.
In 1948, he was elected unopposed to the Travancore-Cochin State Assembly from Attingal. But when his term ended in 1952, he walked away from practical politics, choosing instead the solitary path of reading, reflection, and moral clarity. While others sought power, Majeed Sahib sought wisdom. And in doing so, he became more relevant with age. Over the next decades, he would immerse himself in the philosophical and historical writings of Bertrand Russell, the radical humanism of M. N. Roy, and the emancipatory visions of Narayana Guru. He called for a ' return of Ijtihad ', a freedom of thought within Islamic traditions, and dreamed of a society beyond caste and creed.
He never became rigid in doctrine. His politics was never a fixed ideology, but a conversation between ideas and reality. In our many conversations, I recall his thoughtful analysis of the Malabar Rebellion. He agreed with the thesis that it was fundamentally a revolt born of agrarian injustice but he was deeply saddened by its later communal turn. For him, the tragedy of history was when righteous anger was manipulated into sectarian hatred.
And always, there was a book in his hand. Always, a passage to quote. Always, a memory to share.
The last three decades of his life were his most contemplative. He reread the classics, interrogated nationalist histories, and engaged with young minds who came to him for guidance. To them, he gave not slogans but questions. When he spoke of Jean Valjean's redemption, it was a commentary on our prison system. When he discussed Javert's suicide, it became a parable about the dangers of legalism without compassion. When he recalled Fantine's fall, it was a scathing critique of social hypocrisy.
He never forgot the moment when he visited the Indian National Army hero Vakkom Khader in the Madras Central Jail. It was Majeed Sahib who brought back Khader's last letter to his father before his hanging, a task that broke his heart and steeled his resolve.
In 1972, when the nation celebrated the silver jubilee of independence, Majeed was awarded the Tamrapatra by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Later he was deeply perturbed by the excesses of Emergency.
There was no trace of ceremony in his life. No pursuit of fame or favours. He lived in quiet dignity, read in solitude, and died in obscurity, on July 10, 2000. He left behind not an estate, not a political dynasty, but an idea of what it means to live ethically, read deeply, and act justly.
Today, as we remember him, the centenary of Pavangal seems to carry the tenor of prophecy. One hundred years since Jean Valjean entered Malayalam letters, and twenty-five since Vakkom Majeed left this world, the two seem braided, one fictional, one real, both intensely human. Majeed Sahib was Kerala's own Valjean: hunted by regimes, misunderstood by many, but ultimately redeemed by the fire of truth and the grace of humility.
Let us not forget him in a hurry. Let us not reduce him to a paragraph in history books. Instead, let us pass on his memory like a worn volume of Pavangal, read and reread, loved and lived, whispered from one generation to the next.
For in remembering Vakkom Majeed, we remember the best of what we once hoped to be.
K.M. Seethi is director, Inter University Centre for Social Science Research and Extension (IUCSSRE), Mahatma Gandhi University (MGU), Kerala, India. Seethi also served as Senior Professor of International Relations, Dean of Social Sciences at MGU and ICSSR Senior Fellow.