CHENNAI: Veteran communist leader and two-time Lok Sabha MP D Pandiyan passed away on Friday following a brief illness. The 88-year-old CPI national committee member is survived by two daughters and his son P Jawahar.
Pandiyan was born at Keezhavellaimalaipatti near Usilampatti in Madurai district in 1932. In 1948, at the age of 16, he was arrested when the Communist party was banned in the country. He completed his graduation in English at Alagappa College in Karaikudi and joined the faculty in the same department. His wife Joyce was also a teacher.
In 1962, he left his teaching job and shifted to Chennai to nurture the party's literary wing. He also served as a trade union functionary in the railways and the harbour. He was instrumental in breaking up the CPI for the second time in the late 1970s when he left and floated the United Communist Party of India. In the late 1990s, he merged his party with the CPI. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from the North Chennai constituency in 1989 and 1991.
Pandiyan was among those to sustain serious injuries during the bomb blast that killed former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi and others. He had attended the public meeting at Sriperumbudur when the assassination took place.
In 2005, he was elected State Secretary of the CPI, a position he held for 10 years. Despite his adherence to the Communist ideology, many considered him a communist leader with a leaning toward the AIADMK.
Unlike his predecessors, Pandiyan was a big dreamer and, during his tenure as state secretary, wanted to construct a huge office complex to house the party headquarters, bring out a daily party newspaper, and launch a party TV channel. Of these, he succeeded in constructing an eight-floor office building for the party and partly succeeded in launching a daily, Janasakthi, which later became a weekly due to poor patronage.
He faced much criticism from party cadres who blamed him for pushing the party into debt by taking huge loans to construct the party headquarters.
An effective orator with deep knowledge and understanding of Communist ideology, Pandiyan was also a prolific writer, authoring over 30 books and 1,000 articles. He served as the editor of Janasakthi till his last breath.