The Hindu : New Delhi News : Homage to Rajendra Sadangi

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Monday, Apr 07, 2008
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Homage to Rajendra Sadangi

Staff Reporter

NEW DELHI: A public meeting “A Crusader for Anti-Displacement Movements” was held at Gandhi Peace Foundation here over the weekend in memory of Lok Pakhya convener Rajendra Sadangi for his contribution to the ongoing struggle against forced displacement.

Presided over by eminent poet and social activist Pankaj Singh, the meeting recounted the life of Mr. Sadangi with participants expressing a profound sense of personal and political loss on his demise.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr. Singh said: “Rajendra Sadangi was able to energise and mobilise the intellectuals as well as the peasantry for the issues of forced displacement, neo- colonial exploitation and the agrarian crisis. He was instrumental in exposing the murky role of the comprador ruling elites.”

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (New Democracy) Delhi Secretary Aparna called Mr. Sadangi a “very close associate and comrade”. She spoke about Mr. Sadangi’s growth from a believer in reformist interventions and how after getting close to the people and understanding their problems he became convinced of the need for a New Democratic Revolution.

“The Kalinganagar movement which rejected rehabilitation compelled him to direct his energy towards anti-displacement movements and to becoming a spokesman of this position. He was a colossus in coordinating several anti-displacement movements in Orissa and was beginning to take this role to the national level,” she added.

Aparna insisted that the best homage to Mr. Sadangi would be by working towards his idea of a new society that could only be built though a concerted people’s struggle against forced displacement and imperialism.

Mainstream editor Sumit Chakravarthy highlighted the fact that Mr. Sadangi’s life was an example to all those who went to management schools and did not bother about the dispossessed and the poor struggling for their rights.

“In these troubled times when all ruling class parties from the left to the right are becoming increasingly ‘corporatised’, Sadangi who was himself a management graduate, grew into a people-centric revolutionary,” he added.

Mr. Sadangi died of cerebral malaria on March 27.

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