Prakash Karat

Prakash Karat (born 7 February 1948) is an Indian Communist politician. He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) from 2005 to 2015.^[1][2][3][4] He served as interim coordinator of CPI(M) after the death of incumbent General Secretary Sitaram Yechury.

Prakash Karat
Prakash Karat
Member of the Polit Bureau of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
In office 10 January 1992 – 6 April 2025
General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
In office 11 April 2005 (2005-04-11) – 19 April 2015 (2015-04-19)
Preceded by	Harkishan Singh Surjeet
Succeeded by	Sitaram Yechury
Interim Coordinator, Communist Party of India (Marxist)
In office 29 September 2024 – 6 April 2025
Personal details
Born	(1948-02-07) 7 February 1948 (age 77) Letpandan, Kachin State, Burma
Nationality	Indian
Political party	Communist Party of India (Marxist)
Spouse	Brinda Karat ​ (m. 1975)​
Relatives	Radhika Roy (sister-in-law)
Residence(s)	New Delhi, India
Alma mater	University of Madras University of Edinburgh Jawaharlal Nehru University

Early life and education

Prakash Karat was born in Letpadan, Burma, on 7 February 1948, to a Nair family.^[5] His father worked as a clerk in the Burma Railways, where he had sought employment during the British Raj.^[6] Prakash Karat's family hailed from Elappully, Palakkad, Kerala. Prakash Karat lived in Palakkad till the age of five before returning to Burma where he lived with his family till the age of nine, when his family left Burma and returned to India in 1957.

Karat studied at the Madras Christian College Higher Secondary School^[7] in Chennai. On finishing school, he won the first prize in an all-India essay competition on the Tokyo Olympics. He was sent on a ten-day visit to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 as a result. He went to the Madras Christian College, Chennai as an undergraduate student in economics, winning the prize for best all-round student on graduation.^[8]

Encouraged by the Scottish theologian Duncan B. Forrester, one of his college professors, he got a scholarship to Britain's University of Edinburgh, for a master's degree in politics. In 1970 he received an MSc degree from the University of Edinburgh for the thesis "Language and Politics in Modern India".^[9] At Edinburgh he became active in student politics and met Professor Victor Kiernan, the well-known Marxist historian. His political activism began with anti-apartheid protests at the university, for which he was rusticated. The rustication was later suspended on good behaviour.^[10]

Political career

Karat returned to India in 1970 and joined Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He worked as an aide to A.K. Gopalan, the legendary communist leader from Kerala and leader of the CPI(M) group in Parliament from 1971 to 1973, while doing his Ph.D. in JNU.^[11] Karat was one of the founders of the Students Federation of India (SFI), in Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was involved with student politics and was elected the third president of the Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union. He also became the President of the Students Federation of India between 1974 and 1979. During this period his associates included N. Ram, later editor of The Hindu daily, the radical women's activist Mythili Sivaraman and, less closely, P. Chidambaram, who later became India's finance minister. He worked underground for one and a half years during the Emergency in India in 1975–76. He was arrested twice and spent eight days in prison.

He was the secretary of the Delhi State Committee of the CPI(M) from 1982 to 1985. Karat was elected to the CPI(M) Central Committee in 1985 and became a member of the CPI(M) Politburo in 1992. He took over as the CPI(M) general secretary in 2005 at the 18th Congress of the party held in Delhi.^[12] During his era the Communist Part of India (Marxist) saw a sharp downfall due to his rigid behaviour on party line.

He was succeeded by Sitaram Yechury in 2015 at the 21st party Congress held in Visakhapatnam.

After the sudden demise of Sitaram Yechury on 12 September 2024, Karat was chosen as interim coordinator of the Politburo and the Central Committee of CPI(M) on 29 September 2024.^[13]

Lok Sabha Election Results during tenure of Karat as general secretary

Performance of Communist Party of India (Marxist) in Lok Sabha elections

Lok Sabha	Year	Lok Sabha constituencies	Seats contested	Won	Net change in seats	Votes	Votes %	Change in vote %	Reference
Fifteenth	2009	543	82	16	27	22,219,111	5.33%	0.33%	[14]
Sixteenth	2014	543	97	09	07	17,986,773	3.24%	2.09%	[15]

Personal life

He is married to activist-politician Brinda Karat. They got married on 7 November 1975. The couple has no children, according to their own wish.

Academic and political writings

He is considered to possess a deep understanding of Marxist philosophy, which enables him to provide insightful theoretical analyses of political developments. Despite his busy schedule of organizational activities, he have managed to author numerous well-received studies and articles in various newspapers and journals.

His research on agrarian relations in the Malabar region of Kerala has garnered significant attention and discussion within academic circles, demonstrating his expertise in the field. His post-graduate thesis, ‘Language and politics in Modern India’, was also notable.^[16]

Since 1992, Karat has been on the editorial board of CPI(M)'s academic journal, The Marxist. He is also the managing director of Naya Rasta Publishers, the parent company of Leftword Books. He is the author of several books.

• Language, Nationality and Politics in India (1972)
• A World to Win—Essays on the Communist Manifesto (1999), edited
• Across Time and Continents: A tribute to Victor Kiernan (2003), edited
• Subordinate Ally: The nuclear deal and India-US strategic relations (2008)
• Politics and policies(2008)
• Revolution! Lenin in 1917 (edited) (2017)