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Joseph Mundassery | |
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| Born | (1903-07-17)17 July 1903 |
| Died | 25 October 1977(1977-10-25) (aged 74) |
| Occupation(s) | Literary critic, politician, social reformer, educationalist |
Joseph Mundassery (17 July 1903 – 25 October 1977) was a literary critic and Indian politician fromKerala state. He specialised in the Malayalam language and literature. InKerala politics, he is remembered as the Education Minister who was behind the controversialEducation Bill of thefirst EMS communist ministry of 1957.
Joseph Mundassery was born at Kandasankadavu,Thrissur. After his schooling locally he took his bachelor's degree in Physics and later a master's degree inSanskrit andMalayalam. Until 1952, he was the Head of the Department of Foreign Languages atSt. Thomas College, Trichur.
Mundassery entered politics through theKochi Prajamandalam and was elected as a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) of the princely state ofCochin in 1948 from the constituency of Aranattukara. Later on, he became an MLC in theTravancore-Cochin Assembly in 1954, from Cherpu.
After the formation of the state of Kerala in 1956, he won the Assembly election in 1957, fromManalur, and went on to become Kerala's first Education Minister (1957–59) in theEMS Communist ministry. Finally, in 1970, he was elected as an MLA fromTrichur constituency.
As a prominent figure in the field of Malayalamliterary criticism, Mundassery was one among a well-known trio of Malayalam critics, the others beingKesari Balakrishna Pillai andM. P. Paul.
Through his controversial theory about Rooparbhadrata – formal excellence – Mundassery ushered in a new chapter of literaryhermeneutics, which was unheard of inMalayalam until then. According to the theory, the proclaimed aim of the author would inevitably lead tointentional fallacy, and an author should be evaluated on more objective criteria like his role as a spokesman of his age.
He was the President of the Kerala Sahithya Parishad from 1965 to 1967, and an executive (and a founding) member of theKerala Sahitya Akademi. He was also instrumental in establishing theKerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi.
Mundassery's notability as an educationist rests partly on the reforms that he partially succeeded in bringing about in the educational sector in Kerala when he was the Education Minister. He authored the controversialEducation Bill of the First communist ministry of Kerala. To a great extent, the proposed bill directly led to the snowballing of theVimochana Samaram and the subsequent downfall of theE.M.S. Namboodiripad's first communist ministry in 1959.
Even though the Bill failed to pass through the Assembly, many of its provisions were later implemented by subsequent governments, albeit with amendments. As the Education Minister of the first democratically elected ministry of the newly formed State of Kerala, Mundassery was instrumental in the establishment and restructuring of some of the early universities and prime educational institutions of the state, having had experience as theVice Chancellor of theCochin University of Science and Technology.
Mundassery was the guru of many pupils at St. Thomas College, Trichur, among whom were some of the future leaders of Kerala such asC. Achutha Menon andMathai Manjooran.
Mundassery died in 1977.
PROF. JOSEPH MUNDASSERY SMARAKA GOVT. HSS in KANDASSANKADAVU, Thrissur is named after him
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