I WAS in Kolkata when, hardly a few hours after reaching there, I got the news that Comrade M K Pandhe had expired in the night before. I therefore immediately rushed back to Delhi. The first question in my mind during this travel was whether the void created by his demise would be filled up at all.
My association with Comrade Pandhe spanned over half a century or more --- since the days we were working together in the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) --- and we came still closer after the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) was formed in 1970, at its foundation conference in Kolkata. As its office was then established in Dharamtalla Street in Kolkata and Comrade Pandhe got based there, our meetings became much more frequent; we used to meet almost daily there. Together we took part in numerous meetings, conferences, demonstrations and processions.
GUIDING THE MOVEMENT
The CITU’s founder president, late Comrade B T Ranadive, was also based there at that time and he as well as late Comrade P Ramamurthi, our founder general secretary, used to guide our activities with a lot of intimacy. Yet it is quite safe to say that after these two leading comrades, Comrade Pandhe’s was the biggest role in guiding the CITU and bringing it to the present stage where its membership has crossed the 50 lakh mark.
An important point in this regard is that here was a comrade whose interest was not confined to any one area or two of our economy. In fact, he took a keen interest in promotion of trade unions and their struggles in several sectors, and most notably among the coal, steel, electricity, shipping and road transport workers. As I was looking after our federation among the road transport workers, the frequency and intimacy of our interaction further grew even after the CITU shifted its head office to Delhi. I learnt many things from him in this process.
I was elected the general secretary of the CITU at its conference in 2007, of which he was the president, and then I again came into regular face to face contact with him, after a gap of some three decades. Now, at the CITU secretariat meetings, he, myself and other leading comrades began to meet almost on a daily basis, consult each other and divide work among ourselves. All through this process, I felt that his behaviour not only with me but with all the members of the CITU secretariat was quite intimate. My intimacy with him continued even after we both were relieved of our responsibilities by the 2010 conference of the CITU.
While running from one part of the country to another, Comrade Pandhe also guided the party’s subcommittee on trade unions and all the trade union fractions concerned with various sectors of our economy.
The big thing about Comrade Pandhe was that he did not sit idle for a single day and engaged every moment of his life in taking the trade union movement forward. He in fact remained active till the last evening of his life. Equally significant was the fact that he retained his sharp memory till his demise and the overripe age of 86 could not make a dent into it.
INTERNATIONALIST PAR EXCELLENCE
It was in 1984 that Comrade BTR asked Comrade Pandhe, me and M M Lawrence to go to Moscow. The express purpose of our visit was to meet the Soviet trade union leaders and try to understand as to what was the state of the trade union movement in the Soviet Union and which direction it was then moving in. The data and the statistics given us by the Soviets during our discussions clearly showed us that industrial production was declining in the country. However, the Soviet trade union leaders did not give us any satisfactory reply about why this decline was taking place. Nor did they have any reply as to why Khruschev and others, who had let loose a whole propaganda barrage against Stalin, remained silent during his lifetime. On our return, we conveyed to BTR whatever impressions we had gathered during this visit. Yet, while I had had unhappy kinds of premonitions about the future of the Soviet Union, I had never visualised that the USSR itself would be made to disintegrate within a few years.
However, Comrade Pandhe’s interest in the trade union movement outside India was not confined to the USSR or China alone; he had had a close tab on the status of the movement in other parts of the globe as well. He was a true internationalist who felt that the movement in any of the countries was his own movement; its losses and gains were his own losses and gains. It was not accidental that he played a seminal role in forging the CITU’s ties with the trade union organisations in several countries.
I must also recall here that we were part of the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) and during our AITUC days we both had been taking part in its activities, but that our relationship with the WFTU got ruptured after we formed the CITU. However, it was at Comrade Pandhe’s initiative that the CITU got affiliated to the WFTU this very year, after decades of mutual alienation. This was quite natural for a man who, all through his life, strove for forging and continually strengthening the unity of the working class at the national as well as international level. How can we forget that, insofar as India is concerned, his was a leading role in bringing several trade union organisations and industrial federations on one platform?
It is such a comrade whose loss now we have to bear with a heavy heart. On this occasion, I convey my condolences to his wife, son and other kins.
Courtesy: People’s Democracy
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