AIKS Dips its Banner in Memory of Legendary Leader of Peasants and Toiling Masses Comrade N Sankaraiah

Comrade N Sankaraiah, veteran trade union and Kisan leader, General Secretary of All India Kisan Sabha from 1986-1989 and its President from 1992-1995, passed away on the morning of November 15, 2023 at the age of 102. Sankaraiah was a freedom fighter who had spent eight years in jail during the anti-imperialist independence movement and also after the country became free. His first prison term when he was a student had extended up to 18 months under the colonial Defense of India Act. He joined the Communist Party in 1940.

During his Presidentship at the cusp of India’s economic liberalisation, Sankaraiah played a crucial role in the AIKS formulating its first alternative agricultural policy in 1993 which challenged the neoliberal order of export-oriented agriculture and the Dunkel draft that created a conducive atmosphere for the hegemony of international finance capital and sought to weaken the masses of India’s peasantry. In contrast, the AIKS document stood for completion of land reform measures, distribution of land to agricultural workers and poor peasants, expansion in irrigation, more public investment in agriculture, assuring remunerative prices for all crops, reduction in the cost of inputs, cheap institutional loans, comprehensive crop insurance, and other measures in a similar vein.

When Com N Sankaraiah turned 100 years old, a team of AIKS and AIAWU met him at his residence. They greeted him and felicitated him on the occasion. He donated the ₹10 lakh cash prize he received as part of the Thagaisal Thamizhar award (given on his centenary) in 2021 to the Tamilnadu government for COVID-19 relief.

Comrade N Sankaraiah was one of the 32 National Council members who walked out of the CPI to form the CPI(M). He was a popular leader who helped build the CPI(M) in Tamilnadu and went on to become its State Secretary from 1995 to 2002 and Central Committee member. He was thrice elected to the Tamilnadu Assembly in 1967, 1977 and 1980. A powerful speaker, he became a steadfast voice against all forms of economic exploitation and social oppression.

He remained a voracious reader throughout his life, and took a keen interest in Tamil Sangam literature.

Sankaraiah till his last breath continued to guide and follow the latest developments in the country’s democratic and progressive movements. On 6th December 2022, through video conference he inaugurated the Shaheed Jyoti Yatra/Martyrs Flame Yatra that started from Keezhvenmani that was held in the run-up to the 35th All India Conference of AIKS and he gave a clarion call for strengthening Worker-Peasant Unity, advancing towards an alternative agricultural policy and defeating the anti-people BJP Government.

With his passing away, the AIKS and the left democratic movement has lost a towering leader for whom personal difficulties were always secondary, and the cause – liberation of the working class, peasantry and all the oppressed – remained supreme. The AIKS will always remember him with love, respect and pride, and shall strive to fulfil his ideals of a democratic, secular and socialist society.

Sd/-

Ashok Dhawale
President

Vijoo Krishnan
General Secretary

Illustration by: The Hindu