02/25/2026
Veteran Communist leader and freedom fighter R Nallakannu, one of the tallest mass leaders of the Communist Party of India in Tamil Nadu, passed away in Chennai. He was 101. He had been undergoing treatment at Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital following prolonged illness.
Born on December 26, 1924, at Srivaikuntam near Thoothukudi to Ramasamy and Karuppayi Ammal, Nallakannu grew up in a middle-class peasant family and entered public life during the peak of the freedom movement. As a student, he joined protests inspired by Mahatma Gandhi before turning to Marxist thought under the influence of his teacher Pallavesam. He participated in the Quit India movement and was imprisoned as a young activist. In 1943, while studying at Tirunelveli Hindu College, he joined the CPI and soon emerged as an organiser of landless agricultural labourers across the undivided Tirunelveli region.
Following the ban on the Communist Party in 1948, the 23-year-old Nallakannu went underground but was arrested in December 1949 at Puliyoorkurichi in Nanguneri. In custody, he was subjected to brutal torture for refusing to betray his comrades; a police officer burned off his moustache with a cigarette - an ordeal he rarely spoke about later. Named an accused in the Nellai Communist conspiracy case, he spent seven years in prison until his release in 1956. In Madurai Central Prison, prisoner No. 9658, he organised protests against custodial excesses and ran literacy programmes that enabled inmates to pursue formal education.
Deeply committed to social equality from his youth, Nallakannu challenged caste discrimination in his native Srivaikuntam and later led sustained struggles of agricultural labourers against exploitative landlords and religious institutions. His leadership helped secure permanent habitation rights for tenant labour families who had long faced eviction and insecurity. Over decades, he played a foundational role in building the farmers’ and agricultural labourers’ movement in Tamil Nadu through the Kisan Sabha and the All India Agricultural Labourers Union.
Nallakannu served as CPI Tamil Nadu State Secretary from 1992 to 2005 and led numerous statewide agitations on land rights, wages, and social justice. In 2010, he personally argued a case before the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court against illegal sand mining in the Thamirabarani river, securing a judicial ban on quarrying.
Married to Ranjitham, daughter of anti-caste activist Annachamy, Nallakannu continued to inspire generations of Left activists with his life of sacrifice, simplicity, and unwavering commitment to social justice. With his passing, the CPI and the broader Left movement in Tamil Nadu have lost a historic bridge to the freedom struggle era and a moral voice of the working poor.
