Puthiyapurayil Gopalan popularly known as Prahladan Gopalan was an

Indian National Congress The Indian National Congress (INC), colloquially the Congress Party but often simply the Congress, is a political party in India with widespread roots. Founded in 1885, it was the first modern nationalist movement to emerge in the British E ...

politician from

Kerala Kerala ( ; ) is a state on the Malabar Coast of India. It was formed on 1 November 1956, following the passage of the States Reorganisation Act, by combining Malayalam-speaking regions of the erstwhile regions of Cochin, Malabar, South ...

, India. He represented

Madayi Madayi (a.k.a. Madai). is a Census Town and Grama panchayat in Kannur district of Kerala state, India. Bhagavathy shrine, Madayi Kavu (Thiruvar Kadu Bhagavathi Temple) where devotees worship Bhadrakali, is located here. The Goddess is on ...

Assembly constituency in the second Kerala Legislative Assembly.

Biography

Puthiyapurayil Gopalan was born on 1922, as one of the five children of R. Kunhiraman Master and P. Madhavi Amma, a

Malabar District Malabar District, also known as Malayalam District, was an administrative district on the southwestern Malabar Coast of Bombay Presidency (1792-1800) and Madras Presidency (1800-1947) in British India, and independent India's Madras State (19 ...

School Teacher. His father was a man who was widely criticized for the

Dalit Dalit (from sa, दलित, dalita meaning "broken/scattered"), also previously known as untouchable, is the lowest stratum of the castes in India. Dalits were excluded from the four-fold varna system of Hinduism and were seen as forming ...

upliftment put forward by

Mahatma Gandhi Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (; ; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948), popularly known as Mahatma Gandhi, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist Quote: "... marks Gandhi as a hybrid cosmopolitan figure who transformed ... anti- ...

and had to accept humiliation even from his own community. Gopalan became an untrained teacher in 1938 at the age of 16. At that time he participated in a teachers' strike against a meeting called ''Gurujan Sabha'', which is compulsory every Saturday, conducted in RKUP school where his father was the manager. His father was in favor of the meeting. People started calling Gopalan along with the name of Prahlada in Hindu mythology after he succeeded in his struggle against his own father over the issue. He died on May 20, 1969, at the age of 47 in a road accident in

Malappuram Malappuram (also Malapuram) () is a city in the Indian state of Kerala, spread over an area of including the surrounding suburban areas. The first municipality in the district formed in 1970, Malappuram serves as the administrative headquarter ...

Career and activism

Gopalan was evicted from his home for protesting against his father and later moved to

Bombay Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second-m ...

. While in Bombay he was attracted to

. He was appointed General Secretary of the Bombay Youth Congress and returned home in 1940 to form Youth Congress in his native place. He later took part in several freedom struggles, including the Quit India movement, and was imprisoned. He also fasted inside the jail in protest of being given unhygienic food in jail. In the 1960 elections to the Second Kerala Legislative Assembly, Prahladan defeated K. P. R. Gopalan by 261 votes. In 1965, he again contested for the Third Kerala Legislative Assembly, but lost to K. P. R. Gopalan. He also served as the president of Kannur District Congress Committee.

Controversies

On September 25, 1962, on his way to Peachy,

P. T. Chacko Pulloli Thomas Chacko (9 April 1915 – 31 July 1964), was an Indian politician from Kottayam in central Kerala. A member of the Travancore and Travancore-Cochin Assemblies and the Constituent Assembly, Chacko served as the first Leader of Opp ...

MLA's official car was involved in an accident. The controversy was sparked when locals saw a woman in the car. Prahladan Gopalan went on a hunger strike in front of the Assembly on January 30, 1964, demanding the resignation of Chacko from his own party. Chacko was forced to resign on February 16, 1964.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gopalan, Prahladan 1922 births 1969 deaths Indian National Congress politicians from Kerala Malayali politicians Kerala MLAs 1960–1964 Indian independence activists from Kerala