It was sometime in 1998, when I met Praful in person for the first time at the Dadar residence of our friends Sandhya Gokhale and Mihir Desai. He was in town - had already shifted from the then Bombay to Delhi quite some time back, and came to attend a discussion meet to deliberate the prevailing political situation organised at the initiative of Jairus Banaji.

Praful was of course very much a well-known figure in the left circles and well beyond. Incidentally, the Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), in those days, had carried two write-ups of mine in rather quick succession. The earlier one had tried to prefigure the shape of the things to come if the BJP comes to power, which it in fact did, and the second one was the expression of my deep outrage over the nuclear explosions carried out by the BJP/NDA regime that May. Praful was apparently aware of both. We had a brief one-to-one chat.

The next time was in 1999. Praful and Achin (Vanaik) were on an all-India tour to promote their jointly authored book, ’South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament’, organised by the publisher. In that process, they were in Mumbai to attend a public event deliberating the issues dealt with in the book. If my memory serves me right, Rohini Hensman had chaired the meet.

Achin and Praful were trying to make use of the promotional trip to connect with various anti-nuke groups and individuals. At the end of the meet, I had some talks with Achin, who had been a friend since 1981, about the feasibility of forming an all-India network to fight against India’s nuclear weaponisation. As a follow up, with the very active help of my friend Arvind Ghosh, two preparatory meetings, attended by anti-nuke activists from different corners of India, were held in Nagpur. This eventually culminated in the inauguration of the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) via a hugely successful national conference in Delhi in end-2000. It was attended by a good number of international delegates as well.

While there were quite a few others, including (rtd.) Admiral Ramdas, who played very prominent roles, Achin and Praful were undoubtedly the two main props right from the very beginning.

As a consequence, in the course of the CNDP works, over the last one and a half decade, I had pretty intimate interactions with Praful.

So, the sudden news of Praful’s untimely death, on the last 23^rd June evening while in Amsterdam, came as a severe shock to me - a veritable bolt from the blue.

Praful was of course a person of many parts with wide ranging interests and concerns, but also, and arguably above all, a spirited and extremely knowledgeable leading anti-nuclear campaigner and activist. It’s a terrible loss.

Praful, born in Nagpur on June 12 1949, was understandably radicalised during his college days in the IIT, Bombay. Would turn out to be one of the founders of a left group called ‘Magowa’ (Pursuit) which came up in early seventies. Praful and Sudhir Bedekar were reportedly the ‘mentors’ of the group. The group actively joined and reinforced the struggle of Adivasis which had been taking place at Shahada, in the Dhule district of Maharashtra. So Did Praful. The Shahada struggle would subsequently become a legend in the Maharashtrian leftist folklore.

Post-Magowa, he would be actively involved with at least two bold and imaginative ventures, rather off the beaten tracks, viz. Workers’ Democratic Union (WDU) and Revolutionary Bolshevik Circle (RBC). And, later, the Movement in India for Nuclear Disarmament (MIND). The MIND would be a sort of precursor of the CNDP.

As theoretical explorations and transmission of ideas to a much larger audience were at the very core of his activism, he took to journalism like a fish takes to water.

His first notable work as a journalist was reportedly as a columnist for the EPW in 1972. In a career spanning over decades, he worked for several magazines and newspapers including Business India, Financial Express and the Times of India, eventually becoming a Senior Assistant Editor for the last one. Subsequently he became a freelancer. He wrote a regular column for Frontline and Hindustan Times for several years. He also wrote for a number of international publications including The Guardian (London), The Nation (New York), Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris), and Il Manifesto (Rome).

Besides serving as a TNI (Transnational Institute, headquartered in Amsterdam) Fellow, he was also a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Studies and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi.

He served on the Board of the Dag Hammarskjöld Foundation in Sweden as well as the ETC (Action Group on Erosion, Technology & Concentration) Group in Canada.

His most major publications include, apart from ’South Asia on a Short Fuse: Nuclear Politics and the Future of Global Disarmament’ co-authored with Achin Vanaik, ’The Politics of Climate Change and the Global Crisis: Mortgaging Our Future’. His voluminous work on the crisis of the Indian left, ’The Phoenix Moment: Challenges Confronting the Indian Left’, is due to be published later this year.

In 2000, Praful and Achin were jointly awarded the Sean McBride International Peace Prize by the International Peace Bureau in recognition of their work opposing nuclear weapons development in South Asia.

Quite interestingly, he was trained in and a connoisseur of classical Indian music.

As the account above amply testifies he was a tireless and indomitable fighter for a better, just and peaceful world with a brilliant and independent mind. Relentlessly looking for ways and means to achieve that goal. And his professional life, particularly since he became a freelancer, was seamlessly fused with his activist self.

Finally coming back to the death, which was too sudden and unanticipated and thereby profoundly shocking, is also pretty much untimely – especially in two ways.

One, he has left us before his time, at a comparatively young age of 66 when he was performing at his peak.

Two, it is a terrible loss also because of the fact that the recent rise of a jingoist, pro-nuclear, neoliberal, right-wing, sectarian Hindutva forces in India to pre-eminent position direly needed his multidimensional contributions to and interventions in the fights against these evil forces. His departure right at this point of time is just too unsettling.

It is, however, not a mere cliché to assert that the best way to pay tribute to his memory is to carry on the fight nevertheless.

Sukla Sen