Nimai Ghosh–a Tribute

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Nimai Ghosh, a veteran of the radical movement in West Bengal, passed away on 4 July at the SSKM hospital at the age of 83. In his youth, he got involved in the surging left movement and began to publish a journal named Howrah Hitaishi, which later merged into Deshhitaishi. The latter became the weekly organ of the CPI(M). After the Naxalbarri uprising, he, along with many of his colleagues, stood in support of it and as a result, was ousted from Deshhitaishi. Then he began to work as a fulltime activist of the Bengali weekly Deshabrati and English monthly Liberation, both organs of the All-India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries and then of the CPI(ML). Liberation was printed and published in his name. In April, 1970, he was arrested from Deshabrati office and implicated in several cases. He was also an accused in the famous fifth tribunal case, where Charu Majumdar, Sushital Raychaudhuri, Asim Chatterjee, Kanu Sanyal, Souren Basu, Santosh Rana etc were his co-accused. He had to spend nearly eight years in prison, and was released following the vigorous movement for the release of political prisoners in 1977. Then, he had to take up some odd jobs in order to earn a living, but never lost touch with the democratic movements. The last time he was seen was at a memorial meeting held on 11 June in tribute to Vaskar Nandy. He was also associated with the progressive periodical Purbasha, the monthly version of which (Purbasha Ekhan) was published in his name. He also wrote quite a few short stories and a novel named Sangspatak, dealing with people's struggles.

Frontier
Vol. 51, No.2, Jul 15 - 21, 2018