WITH the passing of Comrade Kumar Shiralkar on October 2, 2022 at the age of 80 due to cancer, the CPI(M) and the Left democratic movement of Maharashtra has lost a dedicated, multi-faceted revolutionary leader. I have lost a true comrade and friend of the last 40 years.

Kumar was born in a middle-class family at Miraj in Sangli district of Maharashtra on January 10, 1942. He completed his B.E. (Mechanical) from the Walchand College of Engineering, Sangli. He was a topper in the entrance examination for IIT Bombay, but due to family responsibilities he could not do the course and worked in a Thane company for five years.

His restless urge for social transformation led him in 1971 to quit his well-paid job and join the Shramik Vidyapeeth at Somnath in the Chandrapur district of Vidarbha. A renowned social worker Baba Amte, who had been working for the rehabilitation of leprosy victims, was the guiding force behind that institution. Here Kumar came into contact with the adivasis of Chandrapur and Gadchiroli districts and was moved by their plight. There he also met like-minded youth who wanted to work for a change in society.

Kumar, along with his middle-class colleagues, then decided to go to Dhule (later divided into Nandurbar and Dhule) district to organise the adivasis there. An adivasi leader, Ambarsingh Maharaj, was already working there and fighting the landlords. Intense class struggles of adivasi and dalit agricultural workers against upper caste landlords took place, in which several of them were badly beaten and some even killed. There were serious physical attacks on Kumar too. It was this direct experience of class struggle that led Kumar to Marxism.

On April 22, 1972, the ‘Magowa Group’ began in Pune with the participation of Kumar, Sudhir Bedekar, Praful Bidwai, and many other youth who were attracted to Marxism.     

On May 1, 1972, Kumar and others formed an organisation in Nandurbar called the ‘Shramik Sanghatana’. It led the bitter class struggles of adivasi and dalit agricultural labourers for many years against their economic exploitation and social oppression by the landlords.

In the Emergency, Kumar was first arrested, then released, but was then underground for several months. After the lifting of the Emergency and the defeat of the Congress in the 1977 elections, there was an ideological churning in the Shramik Sanghatana. Some members formed other small local organisations. But Kumar and his comrades, after careful study and discussion, joined the mainstream Left and the CPI(M) in 1982. They contacted the first Party state secretary, S Y Kolhatkar, who guided them well and inducted them into the Party.

MULTI-FACETED CONTRIBUTIONS

The AIAWU was formed in 1982. Its first state conference was held at Shahada in Nandurbar district the same year, and Kumar was elected its first state general secretary. For the next three decades, Kumar was state general secretary and later state president, and also national joint secretary of the AIAWU. He took immense pains to build the AIAWU in Maharashtra.           

In 1983, a year after Kumar and his comrades joined the CPI(M), the shocking Shelti massacre took place in Nandurbar district. The ‘Purushottam Sena’ of the landlords killed five adivasi agricultural workers in the village Shelti over a wage and land dispute. The CPI(M) immediately organised a massive statewide protest march on the state assembly in Mumbai to denounce the Shelti massacre. Thousands of adivasis were mobilised from districts like Thane, Palghar, Nashik, Dhule and Nandurbar. The march was led by the then Party state leadership which comprised S Y Kolhatkar, Godavari Parulekar, Ahilya Rangnekar, Prabhakar Sanzgiri, Dr A B Sawant and Narendra Malusare, along with Kumar and his team.

Both the then CPI(M) adivasi MLAs Lahanu Kom and J P Gavit raised hell in the state assembly on the issue, and Lahanu Kom even brandished a chair to attack the ringleader of the massacre and MLA, Purushottam K Patil, in the state assembly. It was Patil’s first name that was given to the Sena which killed the adivasis. Action had to be taken against the culprits.

Kumar formed the CPI(M) in Dhule and Nandurbar districts. He built up a team of excellent fighting activists there. He inspired many more young activists in the state. He was elected to the CPI(M) Maharashtra state committee in 1985, to the Maharashtra state secretariat in 1988, and to the Central Committee in 2005. He was a member of the editorial board of the Party’s state weekly Jeewan Marg for several years. He made valuable contributions in discharging all these tasks for over 33 years till 2015, when he stepped down from all Party and mass front posts due to failing health and family responsibilities.

After the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was enacted in 2006 due to the pressure of 61 Left MPs, the government set up a committee for framing the FRA rules. Kumar was assigned by the Party to work in that committee. He did an excellent job. He was also one of the founding members of the Adivasi Adhikar Rashtriya Manch (AARM), to which he made important contributions. 

While always being in the forefront of all the Party’s struggles and campaigns, Kumar played a leading role in several other struggles on political and social issues. They included the struggle for the renaming of the Marathwada University after Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, Committee for the Protection of the Rights of the Landless, a statewide Convention against Social Atrocities, the setting up of Comrade B T Ranadive High School at Mod village in Taloda tehsil of Nandurbar district, the struggle against Enron, sterling work for relief and rehabilitation during the massive earthquake at Killari in Latur district, the long march against the killing of a dalit boy at Kharda village in Ahmednagar district, helping the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti (BGVS), and several initiatives on environmental issues.           

Kumar was a living example of the Marxist tenet of combining theory with practice. He was one of the ideological pillars of the Left movement in Maharashtra. His small 1974 Marathi pamphlet addressed to youth, titled “Wake Up, and Break the Chains!” became a hit and caught the imagination of thousands of young people. It ran into many editions. In 2015, he wrote a Party education pamphlet called “Religion, Caste and Class”. In the same year a collection of his writings titled “New World, New Disquiet” was published. He was a prolific writer on political and social issues. He always severely castigated the fascistic attacks of the RSS-BJP on the constitution, democracy, secularism, and socio-economic justice.

Along with Marxism, Kumar also had an excellent grasp of the thought of Phule-Ambedkar and Gandhi. Due to his earlier touch with various ideological streams, he had wide contacts with the leaders and activists of all these organisations. As per the basic Party objective of building a Left democratic front, he always tried to bring these streams together in unity.

PERSONAL REMINISCENCES         

Kumar’s personal qualities were exceptional - selflessness, sacrifice, simplicity, balance, love, care, humour, but at the same time complete dedication to principles, and staunchness when fighting the class enemy. All of us were witness to these qualities on innumerable occasions.

Many are my own personal reminiscences of Kumar of the last four decades. For lack of space, I shall mention only two of the most recent ones. From March 6-12, 2018, the AIKS in Maharashtra organised the iconic Kisan Long March from Nashik to Mumbai. In spite of his ill health, I shall never forget that Kumar walked with us for over 40 km on the last day and night until we reached Mumbai. Due to the immense public support and media pressure, the Fadnavis-led BJP state government was forced to bend, accept all the AIKS demands in writing, and place the agreement before both houses of the state legislature. Kumar was overjoyed with our victory, and warmly embraced all Kisan Sabha leaders at the Azad Maidan.

Kumar also carefully followed the course of the unprecedented Delhi farmers’ struggle of 2020-21. He sent me encouraging messages from time to time. When the Modi-led BJP government was forced to repeal the three farm laws and also concede the other SKM demands in writing on December 9, 2021, leading to a historic victory, Kumar sent me a warm and touching message of congratulations, which I shall preserve and treasure all my life.    

In his last battle with cancer since 2019, Kumar was well taken care of by several comrades in Nandurbar, Mumbai, Nashik and Pune districts, like Jaising Mali, Nathu Salve, Vivek Monteiro, D L Karad, Kiran Moghe, Dnyaneshwar Mote, Maharudra Dake, Amol Waghmare and others.

On October 1, the day before Kumar died, AIAWU president A Vijayaraghavan and general secretary B Venkat met him in Nashik. He raised his hand in a red salute. That was his last action. AIAWU joint secretary Vikram Singh attended his funeral in Nandurbar district, along with a galaxy of leaders of the CPI(M) and of other Left, democratic and secular forces.     

On October 3, 2022, thousands of people bade him a tearful farewell and, at the insistence of our local adivasi comrades, Kumar was buried in the compound of Comrade B T Ranadive High School, following the local adivasi custom. This itself was a huge break from tradition, and showed how much a part of their lives Kumar had become.  

Ever since 1972, Kumar had stayed with the family of an adivasi comrade, Narayan Sajan Thakare, of Gunjali village. Thakare attended Kumar’s funeral, was heartbroken, and died of a heart attack the same night. Such was their unbreakable comradeship.

Several large condolence meetings to pay homage to Kumar were held all over Maharashtra, in which leaders of the CPI(M) and other Left, democratic and secular forces took part. The CPI(M) state committee weekly Jeewan Marg brought out a special issue in his memory.       

On behalf of the CPI(M) and the AIKS, I raise my fist in a last red salute to an extraordinary communist revolutionary, Comrade Kumar Shiralkar. All of us taking forward his work with even more strength and determination will be the true homage that we pay to Kumar.