People's Democracy

COMRADE Dasan, member of the CPI(M) Kerala state committee and secretary of the Kozhikode district committee, died of lung cancer on June 29 at Kozhikode. He was 50 years old and survived by his wife Sathee Devi.

Comrade Dasan’s life was a story of struggles against poverty, injustice and for establishing social equality in society. That is how he was attracted to the communist movement in his very young days.

After finishing his school, Comrade Dasan joined a handloom society to work for sustaining his family. A leader was being created there. He learnt the problems of the weaving workers and began to organise them and spoke on their problems. He developed his oratorial skills at this place.

In 1979, he was elected the president of the Chorode village panchayat at a very early age of 26 years.

Comrade Dasan was elected the first Kozhikode district president of the Democratic Youth Federation of India in 1980. In 1983 he became the state president of the DYFI and was the chief organiser in the conduct of the all-India conference of the DYFI at Calicut in 1984.

In 1986 Comrade Dasan was elected the state secretary of the DYFI and also worked as the national vice president of the organisation for about eight years. While he was the secretary of the DYFI, youth agitations came to the forefront, braving severe police assaults. Comrade Dasan and his colleagues overcame such attacks with utmost tolerance and sacrifice. They were arrested and put behind bars many times.

In the 1987 assembly elections Comrade Dasan won from the prestigious Kozhikode 1 constituency. By defeating the then minister M Kamalam by a good margin, he earned the title of 'giant killer'. He was re-elected to the assembly in 1996. He was a good legislator and was eager to tackle people’s problems after thoroughly studying them. He always did his home work whenever he spoke or did a political work.

Comrade Dasan has been the state committee member of the Party since 1988. He was elected as the Kozhikode district secretary in the last January conference. The CPI(M) state committee has condoled the death of Comrade Dasan.