Joseph Mundassery (17 July 1903 – 25 October 1977) was a renowned literary critic and Indian politician from Kerala state. He was one among the towering literary critics in the Malayalam language and literature. In Kerala politics, he is famously remembered as the Education Minister who is the mastermind behind the drafting of the controversial Education Bill of the first EMS communist ministry of 1957.
Joseph Mundassery was born at Kandassankadavu, Thrissur. After his schooling from a local school he took his Bachelors degree in Physics and later the Masters degree in Sanskrit and Malayalam. Until 1952, he was the Head of the Department of Foreign Languages at St. Thomas College, Trichur.
Mundassery entered politics through the Kochi Prajamandalam and was elected as a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) of the princely state of Cochin in 1948 from the constituency of Aranattukara. Later on he became an MLC in the Travancore-Cochin Assembly in 1954, from Cherpu.
After the formation of the Kerala State in 1956, he won the Assembly election in 1957, from Manaloor, and went on to become Kerala’s first Education Minister (1957-‘59) in the EMS Communist ministry. And finally in 1970 he was elected as an MLA from Trichur constituency.
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