Krishna Pillai (Aged 42), a communist revolutionary and poet from Kerala, India, was born on 19 August 1906 in Vaikom, Kottayam. He was among the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India in Kerala. Pillai belonged to a middle-class Nair family of Vaikom and lost both his parents at a young age, which forced him to discontinue his education at fifth grade.
In 1920, he left his home and travelled extensively in the north of the Indian subcontinent. Two years later, upon his return, he found Kerala in a state of social unrest and became an active participant in a number of popular movements, including Vaikom Satyagraha (1924) and Salt Satyagraha march from Kozhikode to Payyanur (1930).
In 1931, he became the first non-Namputhiri Brahmin (belonging to the Nair community of Kerala) to ring the temple bell of the Guruvayoor temple. When Congress Socialist workers formed the Congress Socialist Party in Bombay in 1934, Pillai was appointed its secretary in Kerala, functioning under the banner of the Indian National Congress. He organized the successful worker’s strike in Alappuzha (Alleppey) in 1938, which became 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.
Krishna Pillai’s untiring work led to the successful transformation of the Malabar unit of the Congress Socialist Party into the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI). However, in 1948, when the CPI accepted the Calcutta Thesis, which included 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. While hiding in a worker’s hut in Muhamma, Krishna Pillai was bitten by a snake and succumbed to it on 19 August 1948, in Muhamma, Alleppey, Keral, India.
P. Krishna Pillai
(1906 – 1948) – (Kerala)
Krishna Pillai (Aged 42), a communist revolutionary and poet from Kerala, India, was born on 19 August 1906 in Vaikom, Kottayam. He was among the founding leaders of the Communist Party of India in Kerala. Pillai belonged to a middle-class Nair family of Vaikom and lost both his parents at a young age, which forced him to discontinue his education at fifth grade.
In 1920, he left his home and travelled extensively in the north of the Indian subcontinent. Two years later, upon his return, he found Kerala in a state of social unrest and became an active participant in a number of popular movements, including Vaikom Satyagraha (1924) and Salt Satyagraha march from Kozhikode to Payyanur (1930).
In 1931, he became the first non-Namputhiri Brahmin (belonging to the Nair community of Kerala) to ring the temple bell of the Guruvayoor temple. When Congress Socialist workers formed the Congress Socialist Party in Bombay in 1934, Pillai was appointed its secretary in Kerala, functioning under the banner of the Indian National Congress. He organized the successful worker’s strike in Alappuzha (Alleppey) in 1938, which became 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.
Krishna Pillai’s untiring work led to the successful transformation of the Malabar unit of the Congress Socialist Party into the Kerala unit of the Communist Party of India (CPI). However, in 1948, when the CPI accepted the Calcutta Thesis, which included 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. While hiding in a worker’s hut in Muhamma, Krishna Pillai was bitten by a snake and succumbed to it on 19 August 1948, in Muhamma, Alleppey, Keral, India.
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