Prakash Karat

Some Lesser Known Facts About Prakash Karat

• Prakash Karat belongs to a Maliyali Nair family in Kerala.

• He lived in Palakkad, Kerala, till age five and later moved with his family to Burma.

• After completing his schooling, he secured the first prize in an all-India essay competition on the topic of the Tokyo Olympics as a result in 1964, he was sent on a ten-day tour to the Tokyo Olympics.

• On the graduation day, he won the best all-around student prize at Madras Christian College in Chennai.

• He was encouraged by one of his professors Duncan B. Forrester and got a scholarship to study master’s in politics at the University of Edinburgh in the UK.

• Thereafter, he became an active member of student politics while studying at the University of Edinburgh.

• In 1970, he completed his thesis on Language and Politics in Modern India.

• After joining student politics at the University of Edinburgh, he was rusticated from the university for anti-apartheid protests. The rustication later was suspended due to his good behaviour.

• In 1971, he joined the CPI(M) Leader A.K. Gopalan as an aide and worked with him until 1973.

•  In 1973, he became one of the founders and President of the Student Federation of India (SFI) at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

• After that, he was elected as the third president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union.

• Some of the books that he has written are Language, Nationality and Politics in India (1973), A World to Win-Essays on the Communist Manifesto (1999), and Across Time and Continents: A Tribute to Victor Kieran (2003).

• He served as the Second president of the Student Federation of India from 1974 to 1979.

•  He worked underground during the Emergency of India from 1975 to 1977.

• Some of the associates who worked with him while he became the president of the Student Federation of India were N. Ram, Mythili Sivaraman, and P. Chidambaram.

• During the 1975-1977 Emergency of India, he was arrested twice and spent eight days in prison.

• In July 2008, he announced that CPI(M) would withdraw support from the UPA (United Progressive Alliance) over the Indo-U.S. nuclear deal.

• As of 2024, he is an active senior member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India, which focuses on internal party affairs, strategy, and debates.

• In 2024,  he was appointed as the interim leader of the CPI(M) after the death of Sitaram Yechury.