The history of independent India is peppered with the violent deaths of prominent politicians. Indira Gandhi was murdered in her late sixties, Rajiv Gandhi in his mid-forties, Pramod Mahajan in his mid-fifties. Now add those whose lives were cut off in mid-stream by plane or road accidents – Sanjay Gandhi, Rajesh Pilot, Madhavrao Scindia, YS Rajasekhara Reddy. How might their subsequent careers have turned out had they lived another 20 years?
In my view, the premature death of the remarkable thinker and trade union leader, Shankar Guha Niyogi, arguably hurt India more than any of the deaths of the politicians mentioned in the previous paragraph. It dealt a body blow to the civil society movement in India, from which it has perhaps not yet recovered. Guha Niyogi was murdered in 1991, when he was still in his forties, killed by hired goons of the capitalists who hated him for giving workers self-respect and the belief that they could be equal citizens of the land.
I have written an anecdotal piece about Guha Niyogi before. I must now write about him again, and in a more analytical vein. This is because the sociologist, Radhika Krishnan, has just published a fine book about what his life and work...
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