Veteran revolutionary leader Comrade Dilip Mondol (Probodh Bardhan) breathed his last at around 8 am today on 22 November 2013 at Sangamahal village (Shyampur-B colliary), Nirsa area of Dhanbad district. He was around 70. He was a member of the Jharkhand State Committee of the party.
After passing his junior engineer training Comrade Probodh Bardhan had joined Chittaranjan Locomotive Works in West Bengal as a supervisor. He spent his early childhood and got his primary education in Comillah, now in Bangladesh. Thereafter his father shifted to Behala, Kolkata, where he continued with his education. It was in Chittaranjan that he came into contact with Naxalbari movement. A very popular leader among co-workers, he led workers’ militant movements within the CLW before he became underground and left his service in 1972 and started working as a whole timer among coal workers in Kumardhubi area of Dhanbad.
To integrate with coalworkers he himself joined a coalmine as worker and soon assumed leadership of trade union activities. It was then he took the name of Dilip Mondol as a cover and started residing in Sangamahal village of Nirsa area. However, this cover was to become his real identity and the family he lived with became his real family for the rest of life.
He undertook fractional work within Bihar Colliery Kamgar Union led by AK Roy and soon became a very popular leader, in fact one of its top leaders. After 1973, when the Party got disintegrated, he lost contact but never went back and still continued to work among coalworkers on his own. In 1978 he renewed his contact with the Party and took an active role in building Party organization from scratch in Dhanbad district. Since then he has served in different responsibilities in Jharkhand and became a member of its State Committee and Standing Committee.
Comrade Dilip was a hardworking revolutionary full of initiative who considered no difficulty as insurmountable. He strictly followed the principle of plain living and high thinking and was a model of self-sacrifice. He integrated himself fully with the masses he was working among and adopted their language and style of living so closely that he became one among them.
A revolutionary of the first Naxalbari generation, Comrade Dilip was always prepared to go anywhere to assume any responsibility entrusted by the Party, even if it was to build an organization from a scratch. He was sent to Santhal Pargana region and there he started developing the Party organization. He was instrumental in the Party’s expansion in the Dumka and Jamtara districts and the Santhal Pargana region as a whole. He gave energetic and inspiring leadership in struggles of sharecroppers and resistance to corporate landgrab.
It was there that he, along with a promising young leader Babudhan Kisku, contracted the fatal disease of cerebral malaria before the 8th Congress of CPI(ML). While Comrade Babudhan could not survive, Comrade Dilip could not recover fully from the attack and his health deteriorated day by day. Later he developed Parkinson’s Disease that made him nearly immobile and he had to stay at his home in Sangamahal. He attended the Charu Bhawan inauguration ceremony held in Delhi and recently the 9th Congress of our Party braving his illness. But at last he suffered a stroke and died of heart failure.
Comrade Dilip’s untimely demise is a great loss of the Party and with his departure the Party lost one more valuable and longstanding asset of the first Naxalbari generation.
The sad news of Comrade Dilip’s demise has sent a wave of grief among comrades throughout the Party. His example will continue to inspire comrades to accept every challenge and build the communist movement in the most tough of conditions.
