In 1932, a youth was standing in front of a textile store at Flower Bazaar in Madras, dissuading customers from buying foreign clothes. He would be beaten up mercilessly by the police. But nothing could stop B. Srinivasa Rao, the freedom fighter-turned-communist leader, popularly known as BSR, from propagating Mahatma Gandhi’s call to boycott foreign clothes.
One day, the police beat him until he lost consciousness. They threw him in a gutter, assuming that he was dead. But a woman, living nearby, found him alive and nursed him. Thus Rao was reborn, and built a strong working class and agrarian movement.
Rao could not believe the scene that had changed completely on August 15, 1947, when the country achieved Independence. Only on the night of August 14 had he emerged from underground. “The same textile stores were illuminated with strings of lights. Huge tricolour flags, made of silk, flutter atop the stores. How times have changed?” Rao writes to his friend and comrade Sharma, referred to as Sagar.
Letters to Sharma
It was one of the 20 letters by Rao under the pseudonym Sundararaj to Sharma between January and August 1947 when the Communist Party faced a brutal suppression by the British. The letters in English were translated into Tamil and published as a book in October 1947, with a preface by the party’s State secretary, M.R. Venkataraman.
The book, Thalaimaraivu Vazhkaiyil Enathu Anubhavam’ (My Experiences Underground), republished after 76 years by Parisal, a publishing house, runs like a thriller. It offers glimpses into the working class and peasant movement vis-à-vis the selfless and dangerous saga of Rao, who worked tirelessly to build it. In one letter, he vividly describes the bedbugs and mosquito-infested room in which he stayed in Madurai, reminding the experience of English writer George Orwell in his book Down and Out in Paris and London. It would have been possible only for a person with an unwavering commitment and abnegation as Rao knew little Tamil when he plunged into the freedom movement in Madras. Born in a privileged family in Karnataka, Rao quit the Christian College in Bangalore against the wishes of his family and joined the struggle against the British.
“The word Swarajya encouraged all youths to the fire of sacrifice. Like a magic word, it woke us up. It gave me the encouragement to leave my mother, brothers, relatives, friends, education, and college. I was sent out of home for having joined the national movement,” veteran communist leader R. Nallakannu quotes Rao as saying in his biography of the leader.
When he was in the Madras Central Prison, he met Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose who was also lodged there. They became close. Rao was among the Congress leaders who voted for Netaji for Congress president against Pattabhi Sitaramayya, the candidate of Gandhi. But a meeting with Amir Haider Khan, who established the Communist Party in south India, in the prison and his introduction to the Communist Manifesto turned him into a communist. “I became his student, and the manifesto became my favourite book,” he writes.
League launched
Subsequently, he was shifted to the Vellore prison and then to Salem. On his release, he launched the Labour Protection League with P. Sundaraiah, who later became the general secretary of the CPI(M). “I started a union for workers of snuff manufacturing units in Madras. When the Congress-Socialist Party was established, I became its secretary,” Rao recalls.
It was Rao who brought leaders such as M.R. Venkataraman, a leading lawyer, and P. Ramamurthy, who was running a ghee shop, to the communist movement. He was in charge of the party organ Janasakathi in Tamil and New Age in English launched in 1937.
“Those were dangerous times. Nobody would rent out a house, because the police would arrest the house-owners. He would sleep on the verandas of the houses in George Town and regularly change the place to escape from the police,” P. Ramamurthy said while speaking at a condolence meeting for Rao in 1961.
Rao is remembered as one of the greatest organisers of the peasant movement in Tamil Nadu, particularly in the composite Thanjavur district. He was sent to organise the peasants after it was decided at the first conference of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1943 in Mumbai to form the Kisan Sabha.
The composite Thanjavur, the rice bowl of Tamil Nadu, was under the thumb of a few families of landlords. Peasants who resisted their control would be tied to a pole or tree, whipped, and forced to drink dung mixed in water. “He told the peasants to hit back. If the landlords send their henchmen, catch them and tie them to a tree. All come together to chase them away. I am with you,” late communist leader A.M. Gopu wrote, recalling the advice of Rao to the peasants.
He worked for almost 20 years among the peasants and built a strong movement with the support of other leaders, including Manali Kandasami. His relentless struggle resulted in the first agreement between the landlords and the peasants in 1944 at Kalappal, which is known as the Mannargudi agreement. The practice of whipping and forcing peasants to drink dung was stopped. The agreement also increased the daily wages of the agricultural labourers.
Foundation for communist movement
He travelled the length and breadth of Tamil Nadu. It was he who laid the foundation for a strong communist movement in Thanjavur. Mr. Nallakannu, who once saw him off at the Tirunelveli railway station, says Rao refused to travel in the first class, though he had a severe asthma attack. “I spread out a cloth in the compartment and asked him to lie on it. He wanted to wait till the train left. I never realised it was his last journey,” writes Nallakannu. He died on September 30, 1961, at the party office in Thanjavur.
