Bhubaneswar: Veteran Communist leader Gananath Patra passed away in Rourkela, on June 6, at the age of 81, after a prolonged illness.But his demise went unnoticed in Odisha’s local media. Followers, friends and well wishers, however, offered glowing tributes to him on social media.Observers who have followed his work are not surprised. Patra was never part of electoral politics and his final days were spent in illness, in a forgotten area of the steel city.Nevertheless, in the history of Odisha’s grassroots people’s movements Patra is as towering a figure as he was in his heyday. As a well known Leftist thinker and leader of Odisha, he had left his footprints on almost all movements for land rights and against displacement due to mining and industrialisation in the state.“He was a true revolutionary who went through all the difficulties and sufferings a revolutionary usually goes through. Throughout his life, he worked for the downtrodden and oppressed people,” said Rabi Das, veteran journalist, activist and Patra’s long time friend.Patra with his wife, in his later days. Photo: Bighneshwar SahuA brilliant student, Patra had done his post graduation in chemistry from Ravenshaw College (now University) of Cuttack and started his career as a college teacher in the late 1960s. While teaching in Paralakhemundi of undivided Ganjam district (now Gajapati), he was drawn towards the Naxal movement for farmers’ land rights, led by leaders like Kanu Sanyal and Charu Majumdar.He left the teaching job to join the Srikakulam peasant uprising in Andhra Pradesh, which was an underground resistance movement against landlords over land, food grain and property. As the movement subsided, Patra remained underground. He was eventually disillusioned with underground politics and the violence of the annihilation theory.He thus joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) that was formed subsequently by some leaders including Odisha’s Nagbhushan Pattnaik who preferred over-ground activities and open mass mobilisation.After moving back to Odisha, Patra became involved with several grassroots movements for land rights. He was seen everywhere, as a master organiser who attempted to unite all those who were struggling against displacement.In a booklet, Dake Odisha Mati (‘Call of Odisha’s Earth’) written during the movement against steel major Posco’s proposed steel plant in Jagatsinghpur in mid-2000, Patra had warned that multinational companies had completely taken over Gujarat and wanted to replicate the same formula, which meant to divide people in the name of religion to further capitalist ends, in Odisha and Karnataka. He cited the anti-Christian riots in Kandhamal in 2008 as an example.Also read: In Odisha’s Villages, Returning Migrant Workers Stare at Severe UncertaintyHe devoted most of his time to two important movements. First was the Baliapal movement – a mass protest against the establishment of India’s first missile test range in Baliapal and Bhogari blocks of Balasore, his home district, in the 1980s. The second was the anti-liquor and land rights movement in Narayanpatna block in Koraput district in the 1990s and 2000s.The missile test range project was supposed to displace more than 50,000 people. Patra effectively organised women and children who were at the forefront of the movement, playing a major role in its success.People associated with the movement said that Patra’s vast knowledge of mythology and ability to connect it with contemporary problems helped attract the rural people to the resistance. He also used to write revolutionary songs, set them to tune and stage street theatre to raise awareness.Patra’s intervention in Narayanpatna started as discontentment brewed among the tribals who had become landless over the years. The tribals felt that outsiders had gradually snatched away their land by cheating them with liquor. Patra was instrumental in the formation of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangathan (organisation of farmers and landless) to organise the tribals. The CMAS had a tribal youth Nachika Linga as its president while Patra remained its advisor.Photo: Bighneshwar SahuCMAS launched an anti-liquor drive in mid-2000 and hundreds of liquor outlets were demolished in the area by the tribals, mostly women. Flushed with the success of its anti-liquor movement, CMAS, launched an agitation to bring the land back to tribal fold. Within a year, tribals had asserted their right over 4,000 acres of land that they claimed were snatched away from them by landowners. They also started cultivation on those lands.The movement saw mass exodus of the landowners from the area for fear of attacks by tribals and this triggered a law and order situation. It reached a flashpoint in November 2009 when two tribals were killed in police firing when CMAS was holding a demonstration in front of the Narayanpatna police station.Even as police crackdown started in Narayanpatna, Patra was arrested in 2010 and sent to jail. Cases slapped against him ranged from sedition, attempt to murder to even theft of bicycle and cow. Despite being old, frail and diabetic, he was kept in jail for 30 months.The district and police administration of Koraput justified their action saying that CMAS was a frontal organisation of Communist Party of India (Maoist), which had raged an armed war on the Indian state. The administration buttressed its claims saying that the Maoists had, in 2012, listed Patra’s release from jail as one of the demands for the freedom of an Italian tourist who they had abducted.Also read: Rural Healthcare in India Often Fails to Meet the Smallest of ExpectationsBut according to human rights lawyer Bishwapriya Kanungo, Patra had always said CMAS had nothing to do with CPI (Maoist). “He used to believe in open action and the mass line, which was a position contrary to the Maoists’ military squad principle,” Kanungo, who had represented Patra in many cases, said.When Patra’s health condition deteriorated, prominent citizens appealed to the government to release him. But he was shifted from Koraput jail to Choudwar jail in Cuttack where access to medical facilities were better. Finally, he was released from jail after having been acquitted of all charges.Sudhir Pattnaik, editor of progressive Odia journal Samadrusti, who has closely followed Patra’s association with grassroots movement, said that the veteran leader was a very active man, always moving across Odisha to touch base with different mass movements. But his health deteriorated rapidly after he was jailed.“When he was arrested, he was able to drive a scooter. When he came out, he was unable to walk without the help of a walking stick,” he said.The last two years of his life were spent in isolation. There was requirement of medicine and he and his wife survived on her meagre pension as a school teacher. But despite all hardship, Pattnaik said, Patra never compromised on his values and lifestyle.A person who could have retired as a vice chancellor or college principal had preferred to live, and die, in a working class settlement on the outskirt of Rourkela, he said.Patra leaves behind his wife, a son and a daughter.
