P. KRISHNA PILLAI

P. KRISHNA PILLAI  (19.08.1906- 19.09.1948)

P. Krishna Pillai is the founder leader of the Communist movement in Kerala. His life, style of social and public work, leadership, humanism and above all his communist ethics will always be a textbook for all generations to learn and imbibe. Popularly known as ‘Comrade’ .

P. Krishna Pillai was born in 1906 in a lower-middle-class family of Vaikom as the son of Narayanan Nair and Parvathiamma. He lost both his parents at the age of fourteen and had to drop out of school at the fifth grade. Leaving his home in 1920, he travelled extensively in the north of the Indian subcontinent.

 He went to Allahabad at the age of 21 to learn Hindi and returned to work as an activist of Dakshin Bharatha Hindi Prachar Sabha. When he took the position of flag bearer in the march from Vadakara to Payyannur to participate in the salt sathyagraha in January 1930. Krishna Pillai’s life became intertwined with modern Kerala’s history.

He was an active volunteer of Vaikom Satyagraha (1924) and Salt Satyagraha march from Kozhikode to Payyanur (1930). In 1931 he became the first non Namputhiri Brahmin (he was from Nair Community of Kerala) to ring the temple bell of the Guruvayoor temple.

Krishna Pillai who began his political life as a Gandhian and a member of the Indian National Congress in his early youth had gradually transformed into a socialist with communist leanings. And when in 1934 Congress Socialist workers formed the Congress Socialist Party in Bombay, Krishna Pillai was appointed its secretary in Kerala, all the while functioning under the banner of the Indian National Congress.

He was in the forefront of organizing the national movement, Congress Socialist Party and late the Communist Party in Kerala. Krishna Pillai became a part of all these movements which came into being in the onward course of progressive Kerala. These were hardly any nook or corner in the state where he had not set foot, ushering in the minds of change and proclaiming the spirit for struggle.

Krishna Pillai was the Secretary of the first Communist group formed in Kozhikkode in 1937. he had to do many jobs for a living. At the same time he was active in Hindi teaching and in the national movement. Suffering and imprisonment became part of his life. He was one of the Pioneers in organizing the coir workers in Alappuzha, cotton mill workers in Kozhikkode, Beedi and weaving workers in Kannur and the peasants in Malabar.

By 1936, Krishna Pillai who until then had concentrated his political activities to the Malabar region now campaigned in the Cochin and Travancore. In 1938, he organized the famous worker's strike in Alappuzha (Alleppey), which turned out to be a great success and one of the inspiring factors behind the Punnapra-Vayalar Struggle of 1946 and the eventual downfall of the rule of C. P. Ramaswami Iyer in Travancore.

The successful transformation of the Malabar unit of the Congress Socialist Party into the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI) was mainly due to the untiring work of Krishna Pillai. The formal formation of the CPI unit in Kerala was on January 26, 1940. Years later in 1948 when the CPI accepted the Calcutta Thesis which included in it the express need for an armed struggle against the Indian state, CPI faced a nationwide ban and most of its leaders including Krishna Pillai were forced into hiding.

He participated in the secret conference in Pinarayi - Parappuram which saw the birth of Indian Communist Party unit in Kerala and became its first secretary. He travelled extensively across the state. He could recall by name almost all the important activists of the party in Kerala. Moving from one village to another he recruited cadres into the party and set up underground shelters for the party workers when the party was banned. His legendary life came to an end during one of his underground days. Krishna Pillai became inseparable from the working class movement and the life of ordinary people in the state. The undying spirit of a Communist could be seen in his last moments also, when he was bitten by a snake on 19 August 1948. While hiding in a worker's hut in Muhamma, Krishna Pillai sustained a snakebite and succumbed to it. The last words uttered by him ‘Comrades, Forward!’ are a constant source of inspiration for the Communists in Kerala then and now

P. Krishna Pillai's role in building the Communist party is Kerala is second to none. He was a great organizer who succeeded in reaching out to the oppressed masses of Kerala and making them aware of their rights and the need for uplifting their social and economic conditions of life. His dedication to the Communist party could be understood from a short sentence by which he proposed marriage to his prospective wife Thankamma. Krishna Pillai said: "Life with me will be difficult, different. My wife should stand by me, the party and its cause. Then alone will she be happy".

RED SALUTE.

C.Sunish.