Veteran Communist leader Yashwant Chavan dies at 97

Throughout his long innings as a dyed-in-wool Marxist, Yashwant Chavan was witness to innumerable doctrinaire and factional splits within the Indian Communist ranks.

Veteran Communist leader and noted trade unionist Yashwant Chavan passed away at a private hospital in Pune on Tuesday following a brief illness. He was 97.

Born in 1920, Mr. Chavan, a bright student and son of a judge, was the last of the Marxist luminaries in the heyday of the Indian Communist Party (CPI) in the late 1930s and 40s, which included such legendary firebrands as S.K. Limaye and Shripad Amrut Dange - both of whom served as his ideological mentors.

Mr. Chavan’s ideological convictions were fortified at the tender age of 17 when Limaye came looking for volunteers in Kolhapur and the young Chavan eagerly signed on.

By 1938, he had his first brush with trade unionism, addressing gate meetings during the 1938 textile strike led by Dange.

A split within the CPI ranks occurred in 1942 when Limaye along with his group which included Chavan were expelled for opposing the cooperation to the British war effort.

Limaye’s group founded the Navjivan Sangathana (‘New Life Organization’) in 1943 in which Mr. Chavan played a leading part.

Throughout his long innings as a dyed-in-wool Marxist, Mr. Chavan was witness to innumerable doctrinaire and factional splits within the Indian Communist ranks. In 1965, he founded the ‘Lal Nishan Party’ (Red Flag Party) following the major schism within the Communist Party ranks in 1964 brought on by Sino-Soviet tensions.

Mr. Chavan based the Lal Nishan Party on the doctrines of Vladimir Lenin, with the party’s trade union arm called the ‘Sarva Shramik Sangh’.

A man of tireless energy and foresight, he recognized the pressing need for unity within leftist ranks. One instance was Chavan’s willing dissolution of his own ‘Kapda Kamgar Sangh’ to merge it with influential trade unionist Datta Samant’s union in the 1980s.

History came full circle for Mr. Chavan when the Lal Nishan Party merged with the CPI in August last year – the centenary year of the Russian revolution.

Mr. Chavan’s last rites are to be performed at Dadar’s Shivaji Park in Mumbai.

He is survived by his family including his son, Madhav Chavan, who is the founder of the noted non-governmental organization (NGO) ‘Pratham’ which works in the field of primary education.