Khitishbabu was against economic exploitation, caste oppression
Khitish Biswal (1934-2022) was born in Tipuri village of Kanasa block in Puri district. He has been fondly remembered more as a people’s leader by the marginalised sections, landless Dalit farm labourers, socially oppressed communities engaged in forced caste based occupations, sharecroppers of Puri, fisher folk of Chilika and Adivasies of Koraput for his uncompromising struggle and life time commitment to radical social transformation in the life of the suffering masses.
Born in a farmer’s family of caste Hindu, he aspired for a revolutionary change to see a better society ahead of his time. In his early life he was instrumental in setting up schools to spread education and worked as a teacher and village agricultural worker for the development of the farmers. Though it was progressive work in those days, later he preferred to be a political full-timer for the cause of building an egalitarian society in line with principles of socialism taking inspiration from the great November Revolution of 1917 which was the inspiration of those days for many in India and around the world.
It was quite challenging for many political full timers of those days like him who had to strike a balance between party life and family without any viable regular livelihood source to manage family and party work. His life has always been an inspiration and an example of sacrifice for radical politics. It was because he was convinced that politics is a means to bring radical transformations in society.
The post World War II witnessed a sea change in political mobilization of the working class and almost one-third of the world had been converted to socialist block as the very idea of socialism emerged as an political alternative against feudal and imperialistic rule of those days. In India, the post-independent political development had witnessed dissatisfaction in Left politics by a section of those who saw the freedom movement as a betrayal against the working class aspiration for building socialism in India and they were critical of the Nehruvian socialism and his model of development with a mixed economy approach.
Khitishbabu’s political mobilisation was against economic exploitation of feudal –agrarian economy which was combined with brutal caste oppression in form of heinous practice of untouchability against the socially and economically oppressed sections. These sections were the fisher folk and forest dwellers who constituted a large section of people of the State primarily engaged in land, water and forest based activities for life and livelihood. Though he started political activism with CPI and then CPM where he stayed as a disciplined member for a long time but he later shifted to the Odisha Communist Party (OCP) in a fraction and finally preferred to be with an all India party -CPIML (Liberation)-- in a team of his supporters for political and ideological questions. He was there as a prominent leader representing Odisha till his last breath. The approach of Naxalbadi and Bihar experiment of Charu Majumdar, Khanhu Sanyal, Jangal Santal, Binod Mishra, Nagabhusan Pattnaik and many others was more convincing to answer his search for political questions aiming to build a movement of class and caste oppressed marginalised sections in Odisha by promoting their organic leadership in the path of socialism. He was more convinced to make a protracted struggle against class and caste oppression combined to liberate the rural working class by bringing a structural change in socio-economic setup.
He challenged the political hegemony of the upper caste, feudal land owning class and Matha Mahanta with the slogan of land reform. He demanded land to the tiller and abolition of caste based forced occupations in Puri districts and other parts of the State.
Puri district even today has a vast section of landless poor without homestead land to construct houses for a dignified living. Many of them live in coconut groves, on the bank of river, ponds and canals on the outskirts of the villages and though they have been living under wretched conditions for generations, the ROR in respect of land has not been transformed to them from the feudal lords. The sharecroppers have no land of their own to cultivate and have been facing many odds. Rights over homestead land and agricultural land are being seen as a foundation for food security and to make a dignified living that can give strength to the rural poor to move forward.
The social status of the landless Dalits can be improved through distribution of land especially for homestead and agriculture purposes. Khitishbabu along with others fought for democratization of resource and its access to the most deprived section of our society. He was also in the forefront of the struggle against State repression against progressive political and social activists for whom he was a friend and well wisher in the legal battle and street fight. In this way he was closer to many of those who had suffered brutal police atrocities and false court cases while taking the side of the poor in asserting their rights and entitlements.
He was always looking for larger coalition of the democratic- Left and secular forces as a viable political alternative against rightist politics, against capitalist mode of development and prevailing social inequalities. It is worth remembering him in time while inequality has been growing in all spheres, and democracy and egalitarian values have been facing more challenges than before.