Chandrashekhar Prasad

Chandrashekar Prasad was an Indian student leader from Jawaharlal Nehru University, a president of its students' union and an activist of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. He was shot dead on March 31, 1997 while addressing street corner meetings in the north-Bihar district town of Siwan in support of a strike called by his party. His assassination led to large student protests in India.

Biography

Education

Born at bindusar village in Siwan in a poor kushwaha family, Chandrashekhar was an only child. His father who was in the army died when he was a boy, and his widowed mother worked hard to pay for his education. Following his initial education in Siwan, he studied at the Sainik School Tilaiya. He joined the Indian National Defence Academy but soon left it, telling his mother in a letter that he wanted to be an activist. He joined the University of Patna before joining JNU.

Politics

Early years

From early in his student life Chandrashekhar was involved in student activism. In the mid-1980s he became the vice-president of the Bihar unit of the All India Students Federation, the student organisation of the Communist Party of India(CPI).

Soon after, he became disillusioned with what he believed to be the reformist and parliamentarist politics of the CPI and grew sympathetic to CPI-ML(Liberation).

Jawaharlal Nehru University

After joining JNU Chandrashekar played a very important role in the building of AISA, the newly formed student organization of the CPI-ML(Liberation), there.

He was elected to the JNU Students Union three times in a row, first as vice-president in 1993-94, then as president for successive terms in 1994-95 and 1995-96.

As leader of JNU Students' Union (JNUSU), Chandrashekar led a number of different campaigns for students' rights. The old admission policy of affirmative action for students from backward areas was restored. Students thwarted the JNU administration's bid to bring up privatisation in academic council meetings. Chandrashekar made serious attempts to forge close ties with student movements in other universities and institutions.

In 1995 he represented India in the UN-sponsored youth conference in Seoul, where he formed a group of third world representatives inside the conference and moved several resolutions against US imperialism, eventually staging a walkout in protest. Risking the wrath of Korean authorities, he contacted many outlawed left-wing student leaders and even addressed a huge rally of students on the issue of Korean reunification.

Assassination and Protests

At the end of his stint in JNU, Chandrashekar opted to return to Siwan as a full-time party activist. The Janata Dal (now the Rashtriya Janata Dal), which ran the government in the province of Bihar, had been waging a campaign against leading activists of the CPI-ML. More than 70 people, including leaders of the district committee, had been killed between 1990 and 1996.

On March 31, 1997 Chandrashekhar and another activist Shyam Narain Yadav were shot dead while addressing street corner meetings in support of a strike called by their party.

The CPI-ML (Liberation) alleges that the assassination was carried out at the behest of Mohammed Shahabuddin, the then Member of Parliament from Siwan who belonged to the Janata Dal.

There were protests of thousands of students against the assassination in Delhi as well as in Bihar. Students participating in one protest in Delhi were illegally fired upon by Sadhu Yadav, the brother-in-law of the then Chief Minister of Bihar.

Memorial

In JNU one of the four G Parthasarathi Endowment Fellowship is awarded in the memory of Chandrashekhar Prasad . The fellowship of Rs.1000 per month, awarded to students initially for a period of one year, renewable by another year on the basis of academic performance, is granted students coming from economically weaker sections of society, particularly Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe/Backward Class, and disabled students.

Source

• http://naxalrevolution.blogspot.com/search/label/Martyrs (a leftist website)

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Name	Prasad, Chandrashekhar
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Date of death	1997
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