People's Democracy

Dr Shiv Kumar Mishra

RENOWNED Hindi critic and researcher, Dr Shiv Kumar Mishra, breathed his last on June 21, 2013, in an Ahmedabad hospital where he was under treatment for the preceding 15 days. He was cremated at 8 a m next day in Vallabh Vidyanagar.

He had been the national president of the Janvadi Lekhak Sangh (JLS).

Dr Shiv Kumar Mishra was born in Kanpur on February 2, 1931. He received his MA, PhD and DLitt degrees from Sagar University (Madhya Pradesh) and law degree from Agra University (Uttar Pradesh). He worked as a Lecturer of Hindi in Sagar University from 1959 to 1977 and then as a professor and head of the Hindi Department in Vallabh Vidyanagar (Gujarat) from 1977 to 1991.

With financial grants from the University Grants Commission (UGC), Dr Mishra worked on completed two big research projects, while some 25 students did PhD under him during his three decades long teaching career. He got the Soviet Land Nehru Award on his well-read book Marxvadi Sahitya Chintan (Marxist Literary Thought) in 1975. He toured through the Soviet Union for two weeks in 1990 under the cultural exchange programme of the government of India.

Dr Mishra played a lead role in the formation of the JLS; in fact he was the first to ask for it after the experience of the Emergency (1975-77). One of the founder members of this organisation, he was elected its general secretary at its Jaipur conference in 1992 and its president at the Patna conference in September 2003. He even later continued to play a guiding role in the JLS and remained committed to its ideology till the last. He was a member of the CPI(M) till the time of his death.

Apart from having penned about a dozen works in Hindi, he also edited two selections of Hindi poetry – one of the poems by Bhakti saints and the other of poems related to the independence struggle.       

In a statement issued by its general secretaries, Dr M M P Singh and Dr Chanchal Chauhan, on June 21, the Janvadi Lekhak Sangh described the demise of Dr Shiv Kumar Mishra as a big loss to the organisation, the loss of a senior and leading comrade, apart from a loss to the whole Hindi world. The JLS has sent its condolences to the bereaved family and admirers.