The year was 1995. Four villagers were brutally murdered in the erstwhile V.O. Chidambaranar district of Tamil Nadu, now Thoothukudi. One of them was Annasamy, 84, the father-in-law of R. Nallakannu, the then State secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI).

Annasamy was hacked to death when asleep in his home in Maruthanvalavu village. A senior policeman later told me the killer was a trusted farm worker from his fields. That was a time of intense caste violence in southern Tamil Nadu, the conflict mainly between the Pallar, a Scheduled Caste (SC) group, and the Marava, a land-owning backward caste group. It was a decade of violence and arson that saw nearly 400 people killed and properties worth crores of rupees destroyed, an era that remains a blot on Tamil Nadu’s social justice credentials.

I filed a news report about the killings in The Hindu dated December 4, 1995, but when I asked Nallakannu for a quote, he politely declined. He rushed to Thoothukudi where, instead of attending his father-in-law’s funeral, he took part in a peace march held in the riot-affected villages. In fact, he harboured no ire despite his personal loss. That was Comrade RNK, as he was affectionately called.

End of an era

A freedom fighter and dedicated Communist, he remained faithful to his ideals until his passing on February 25, 2026, aged 101. His death marks the end of an era in Tamil Nadu politics—one shaped by a generation of iconic leaders whose public lives were defined by personal sacrifice, ideological conviction, and a commitment to social justice. His Marxian comrade N. Sankaraiah, who too lived to be a hundred, died aged 101 in 2023.

Nallakannu was born in the temple town of Srivaikuntam in 1925 (December 25), coincidentally the year the CPI was founded. Last year, there were centenary celebrations for both the party and this leader. His parents Ramasamy and Karuppayi were farmers. Before completing his degree, Nallakannu too, like hundreds of other youths, became fully immersed in the freedom movement.

His eight-decade-long public life of resistance was not limited to the freedom struggle and the mobilisation of farm and factory workers. He was also deeply involved in the social justice movement against caste and untouchability. As a politician-activist, he stood against social evil in all forms.

There were three important influences on Nallakannu’s life: the magnetism of V.O. Chidambaram Pillai and the Swadeshi Movement he had launched in Thoothukudi; the strike at Harvey Mills in Thoothukudi in the mid-1930s, when Nallakannu as a young lad joined his friends to collect rice from households and distribute it among the striking workers. This was the launchpad for his political activism. The third influence was the works of the Tamil poet Subramania Bharati, whose poems and songs shaped his political thinking and taught him to understand class disparities and social discrimination.

A stint in Congress and shift to CPI

With the country on the threshold of Independence, the Indian National Congress was set to take over governance and Nallakannu, who had a stint with the party, now believed it had become an asylum for zamindars and feudal landlords against whom he had turned his guns. For him, it had become a bourgeois party with an imperialistic attitude.

Not that the Congress could be entirely faulted. Preoccupied with serious administrative, social, and security issues such as those wrought by the Partition, and overwhelmed by the task of shaping a new state, they overlooked the core principle of social emancipation, which Ambedkar and the Constitution had envisioned, believing instead that Independence in itself would solve everything.

At this point, Nallakannu’s political perspective underwent a distinct shift—from anti-colonialism to anti-feudalism and from political intervention to politico-social activism. He believed that the working classes, particularly the peasantry, needed his support the most. He realised that the Congress was no longer the place for this battle.

At that time, the Communist movement was emerging as a pan-Indian alternative to the Congress, emphasising the interests of peasants and the working class. It regarded Independence as merely a transfer of power from one coloniser to another. Under the leadership of Sahajanand Saraswati, the CPI’s Kisan Sabha, formed in 1936, played a pivotal role in mobilising agricultural labourers and peasants across the country. The movement demanded the abolition of the zamindari system and spearheaded militant agrarian struggles. It went on to launch the armed uprising in Telangana, while simultaneously laying the organisational and ideological groundwork for similar movements in other regions.

Young leaders like Nallakannu and Sankaraiah found this new political movement inspiring. It gave them an opportunity to pursue their ideal of empowering vulnerable communities. Along with kisan leader B. Srinivas Rao, they mobilised peasants and challenged the influence of powerful feudal landowner lobbies. The movement brought significant improvements to the lives of agricultural labourers, especially in the combined delta and southern districts of Tamil Nadu. In fact, the push for minimum wages for farm workers began to gain momentum.

CPI’s rise upset Congress

The rise of the CPI’s popularity disturbed the ruling Congress, which unleashed a fierce crackdown. The party was banned in 1948, forcing frontliners to go underground. In 1949, Nallakannu was arrested for organising a “land for tillers” agitation, charged with waging war against the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in what became known as the “Nellai conspiracy” case. He was tortured in custody. In those days, Nallakannu sported a bushy moustache; a police inspector singed his moustache with cigarettes while interrogating him. It was after this incident that he chose to stay clean-shaven until his death.

Nallakannu was released after seven years, in 1956. Sankaraiah, with whom he shared a close friendship until the end, had been imprisoned in the “Madurai conspiracy” case in 1946 and released in 1947.

Then, the unexpected happened. The split in the CPI in the 1960s caught him off guard. “It was like a sword in my heart,” he once told me. He knew it would be a great disaster for the working classes. However, he chose to stay with the CPI along with stalwarts like K. Balathandayutham, K.T.K. Thangamani, M. Kalyanasundaram, and P. Manickam; his friend Sankaraiah. Others such as P. Ramamurti, R. Umanath, and M.R. Venkataraman chose to go with the CPI (Marxist).

Nallakannu strongly believed that India, where over half the population lived below the poverty line and faced inhuman social oppression, critically needed a united Left movement. “The Left alone will be relevant for all times,” he said. He was not averse to later moves to unify the CPI and CPI(M). “If it happens, it will be good,” he told me.

A suave and soft-spoken man, he was always clad in a white dhoti and shirt. Nallakannu was no idealist and believed in the constant mobilisation of the working class and farmers, which he did for two decades as a Kisan Sabha leader. Even after becoming the CPI’s State secretary, a position he held for 13 years, he maintained a close link with the grass roots. The CPI, under his guidance, addressed various issues of public interest, organised protests, and challenged those in power.

The 1990s presented a series of daunting challenges for the communist movement globally. The disintegration of the Soviet Union, the rise of neoliberalism, the dismantling of public sector corporations, and the dilution of labour laws had a significant impact on the core ideology of Communists in India too. Alongside, the emergence of right-wing identity politics and Dalit parties weakened the clout of the Left. To retain its relevance among the masses, the CPI and the CPI (M) had to redraft their ideological strategies.

In their eagerness to stay politically relevant, both parties became deeply involved in electoral politics, forming alliances with everyone. In 1999, Nallakannu contested the Coimbatore parliamentary constituency against the BJP’s C.P. Radhakrishnan, currently the country’s Vice President. He lost despite securing an impressive 43.21 per cent of the total votes. Previously, he had also contested for the State Assembly from Ambasamudram but was unsuccessful.

Nallakannu was more an activist than a politician. Unlike Sankaraiah, who stayed within the boundaries of the party’s political ideology, Nallakannu went beyond it. In the 1980s, he organised a padayatra from Kanyakumari to Chennai to demand the resignation of the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi over the Bofors scandal. At the age of 95, he personally argued before the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court, which was hearing a petition against the sand mafia that was digging up the Thamirabarani river, the lifeline of Tirunelveli and Thoothukudi districts. He undertook a fast that lasted nearly 20 days, resulting in the court banning sand mining for five years.

At a time when politics is defined by pomp, wealth, and the trappings of power, Nallakannu used a simple and straightforward approach that characterised his resistance politics. He was a humble leader who lived in a modest government-allotted house in Chennai, paying a monthly rent for it. His family survived on a monthly income of Rs.2,500 from the CPI and a pension of Rs.4,500 that his wife, Ranjitham, a retired teacher, received. C. Mahendran, a senior CPI leader, remarked: “Social change cannot occur without an ideology grounded in austerity.”

Senior Congress leader Peter Alphonse, a fellow traveller in politics, described Nallakannu as a fine human being, full of compassion and concern for the marginalised. “Our relationship started when we were young, as both of us are from the same region. He was a very simple man with a strong commitment to his ideology. He never aspired for power and wealth, a rare phenomenon in today’s public life.”

The State government honoured him with the “Thagaisaal Tamilar” (Scholarly Tamil) award in 2022 with a cash prize of Rs.15 lakh. Nallakannu donated the money to the Chief Minister’s relief fund. When he received Rs.1 crore and a car as gifts from his party cadres, he donated them to the party itself. In 2007, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi gave him the “Ambedkar Award”.

Dr. G.R. Ravindranath, a senior CPI functionary and founder leader of the Doctors Association of Social Equality, who had known Nallakannu since his All India Students’ Federation days, said that his simplicity and sacrifices left a great impression. “His deep historical knowledge about Tamil Nadu was amazing. He used to share his experiences on the heroic struggles of the Communist movement against feudalism and the caste system.” he said.

Nallakannu’s life of simplicity, honesty, and dignity stands in in stark contrast to the morally vacuous politics of today. His perception of society and politics was one of hope, not pessimism. When I last met him, we had an engaging conversation about how and whether the country could overcome the anxiety, hatred, and deep political divisions.

It is no surprise that even those opposed to Communism respected Nallakannu. But the tragic irony is that such a dedicated leader was never elected by the Tamil Nadu people to represent them either at the Centre or in the State Assembly.

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