OBITUARY: RAM NARESH RAM (1923-2010)
Veteran leader of historic struggles in Bhojpur, Central Committee Member and leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) CPI(ML)’s legislative group in the Bihar Assembly from 1995-2010, Comrade Ram Naresh Ram passed away around 4 pm in Patna Medical College Hospital (PMCH), Patna, where had been in a coma and battling a cerebral stroke for the past several days. 87-year old Comrade Ram Naresh Ram, popularly known as ‘Parasji,’ is among the tallest leaders of the revolutionary struggle and is an icon for the downtrodden and oppressed people, not only of Bhojpur and Bihar but the whole country.
Hailing from a dalit family of Shahabad (Bhojpur) region in Bihar, he became a full-time communist organizer in the 1940s, participating actively in the freedom struggle as an activist of the undivided CPI. When the CPI(M) was formed in 1964, he became one of its founding members in the Shahabad region. In 1967, he contested the mukhiya election and was brutally attacked by feudal goons. Inspired by the Naxalbari struggle, he became one of the founders of the CPI(ML) movement in Bihar, along with other legendary leaders like Jagdish ‘Master.’
In the 1980s, he was the Secretary of the Bihar unit of the CPI(ML). Ever since 1995, he consistently represented the CPI(ML) in the Bihar Assembly, and was the leader of the party’s legislative group. In 2003, when the founding conference of the All India Agricultural Labourers’ Association (AIALA) was held in Ara, he was elected the founding President of the AIALA.
Sahajanand Saraswati galvanized the peasantry of central Bihar in militant anti-feudal and anti-colonial struggles during the pre-Independence period; Comrade Ram Naresh Ram played a comparable role along with others like Jagdish ‘Master’ in galvanizing the rural poor in the post-Independence period in anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggles.
Comrade Ram Naresh Ram had a deep sense of respect for the legacy of the First War of Indian Independence of 1857 as well as for the freedom struggle. As a legislator, he had had a memorial to the 12 peasant martyrs of 1942 constructed at Lasarhi village in Bhojpur.
In his simplicity and his life-long organic link with people’s struggles, combining both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles, he was a model for communist parliamentarians and people’s representatives.
His abiding legacy will inspire the entire communist movement and the struggles of the oppressed for time to come.
Red Salute to ‘Parasji’!
(From ML Update October 26, 2010)