Madhukar Katre (born 5 February 1927,

Pune Pune (; ; also known as Poona, (List of renamed Indian cities and states#Maharashtra, the official name from 1818 until 1978) is one of the most important industrial and educational hubs of India, with an estimated population of 7.4 million ...

, d. 16 January 2009,

Ahmednagar Ahmednagar (), is a city located in the Ahmednagar district in the state of Maharashtra, India, about 120 km northeast of Pune and 114 km from Aurangabad. Ahmednagar takes its name from Ahmad Nizam Shah I, who founded the town in 1494 ...

) was an Indian politician and

trade union A trade union (labor union in American English), often simply referred to as a union, is an organization of workers intent on "maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment", ch. I such as attaining better wages and benefits ( ...

ist. Katre joined the freedom struggle during his school days in

Kolhapur Kolhapur () is a city on the banks of the Panchganga River in the southern part of the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is the administrative headquarter of the Kolhapur district. In, around 2 C.E. Kolapur's name was 'Kuntal'. Kolhapur is kn ...

. He later became a

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

and an activist of the Praja Parishad ('People's Assembly', an organization that struggled for the abolition of the Kolhapur

Princely State A princely state (also called native state or Indian state) was a nominally sovereign entity of the British Raj, British Indian Empire that was not directly governed by the British, but rather by an Indian ruler under a form of indirect rule, ...

). As a result, from his activist, he was imprisoned for seventeen months.''Liberation'', February 2009
/ref> Katre was a leading figure in the trade union movement. He was General Secretary of the Maharashtra Rajya Sahakari Kamgar Mahasangh, a union of sugar plantation workers. He also led sugar-producing cooperatives in the state. Katre had also been active in movements such as

Samyukta Maharashtra Samyukta Maharashtra Movement ( mr, संयुक्त महाराष्ट्र चळवळ), commonly known as the Samiti, was an organisation in India that advocated for a separate Marathi-speaking state in Western India and Cent ...

(the struggle for a

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

-speaking state),

Goa Goa () is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is located between the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north and Karnataka to the ...

liberation and the struggle for implementation of the Maharashtra land tenancy legislation. Politically, Katre had been a leading member of the

Lal Nishan Party Lal Nishan Party (Red Flag Party, LNP) was a communist political party in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It was founded in 1965. The LNP's main work was trade union activism. The trade union of the party was called Sarva Shramik Sangh (SSS). T ...

. After the 1989 split in the party, he became the President of the

Lal Nishan Party (Leninvadi) Lal Nishan Party (Leninvadi) (Red Flag Party (Leninist)) is a communist political party in the Indian state of Maharashtra. LNP(L) was formed a splinter group of Lal Nishan Party in 1988. LNP(L) was critical to that LNP had gotten closer to the ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Katre, Madhukar 1927 births 2009 deaths Indian communists Trade unionists from Maharashtra Marathi politicians Maharashtra politicians