P. Krishna Pillai

Who is P. Krishna Pillai?

P. Krishna Pillai was a Communist revolutionary from Kerala, India, Kerala's First Communist, Founder of the Communist movement in Kerala, and poet.

P. Krishna Pillai was born in a lower-middle-class family of Vaikom as the son of Narayanan Nair and Parvathiamma. He lost both his parents at an early age and had to drop out of school at the fifth grade. Leaving his home in 1920, he travelled extensively in the north of the Indian subcontinent.

When he returned home two years later, he found Kerala seething with social unrest. Subsequently, he took part in a number of popular movements. He was an active volunteer of Vaikom Satyagraha and Salt Satyagraha march from Kozhikode to Payyanur. In 1931 he became the first non Namputhiri Brahmin to ring the temple bell of the Guruvayoor temple.

Krishna Pillai who began his political life as a Gandhian and a member of the Indian National Congress in his early youth had gradually transformed into a socialist with communist leanings. And when in 1934 Congress Socialist workers formed the Congress Socialist Party in Bombay, Krishna Pillai was appointed its secretary in Kerala, all the while functioning under the banner of the Indian National Congress.