People's Democracy

Comrade Gobindo Kundu Passes Away

VETERAN of the historical aadhiyar and tebhaga movements and a veteran leader of the CPI(M), Gobindo Kundu passed away at the age of 85 at Jalpaiguri on May 31.  He was a member of the district secretariat of Jalpaiguri of the CPI(M). 

Born in 1919, Comrade Kundu joined the students’ movement against British imperialism in the 1930’s.  An LMF doctor from the Jalpaiguri Jackson medical school, Comrade Kundu spurned his profession and plunged into the struggle for social change. A communist by conviction from his younger days, Comrade Kundu took part in the aadhiyar and tebhaga peasant movements.

A member of the Communist Party, Comrade Kundu was incarcerated during the Indo-Chinese border imbroglio.  Earlier he had taken part in the food movement of 1959 and had been jailed. Earlier he had gone underground and had posed as a railway porter to evade the police when the Party had been banned back in 1948.

Comrade Kundu, who joined the CPI(M) in 1964, had an important role to play in the dooars area, organising the Party and especially the kisan movement.  He was for along time the main drive behind the Jalpaiguri publication. He was renowned for bringing up cadres of the Communist Party and had a deep knowledge in Marxism-Leninism.

His cortège was attended by many thousand men and women and was also participated in by party leaders including Mridul De, Montu Basu, Ashok Bhattacharya and others, including Left Front leaders and leaders of other parties.

Jyoti Basu, Anil Biswas, and CPI(M)’s Jalpaiguri unit secretary, Manik Sanyal (at present in Kolkata for medical treatment) paid hearty and handsome tributes to the departed Communist stalwart’s memory.