GUWAHATI, May 5 - Leading Communist leader Vaskar Nandy, who led the Provisional Central Committee (PCC) of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI-ML) as its general secretary, died at a hospital at Jalpaiguri yesterday following protracted illness. He was terminally ill for the past over one year, said assistant general secretary of the party Subhas Deb in a statement received here today. He was 80.
Known as a living encyclopedia on world politics and Indian social system, Vaskar Nandy, was born on April 5, 1938 and obtained a chemical engineering degree from London University. He was working in Columbia University, USA as a teacher in sociology when in 1967 he met legendary Communist leader Charu Mazumdar, who led the Naxalbari uprising of the poor peasants. After this meeting, he gave up his job in Columbia University and left his family in the US to devote himself to the cause of the downtrodden people of the country.
Charu Mazumdar entrusted him with the job of organising the peasants and the other sections of the toiling people in Assam and it was he who initiated the CPI-ML activities in Assam. Following the �murder� of Charu Mazumdar and thousands of CPI-Ml members, when the CPI-ML movement started disintegrated, Nandy re-organised the CPI-ML in Assam, Tripura and parts of West Bengal and Bihar by forming the unity committee, which later merged with several other CPI-ML groups to form the PCC.
Nandy initiated the debate in the CPI-ML movement by favouring mass movement and mass organisations along with armed action and organisations. He also advocated for CPI-ML participation in elections taking election as a form of struggle.
However, his fundamental contribution to the communist movement is the introduction of the caste-ethnicity-tribe-nationality-gender-regionality as inseparably intertwined with the classical Marxist notion of �class�. He was opposed to all sorts of chauvinism.