Sreelatha Swaminathan Is No More

Veteran leader of the CPI-ML (Liberation) Sreelatha Swaminathan, 73, passed away in Udaipur (Rajasthan) in the early morning of February 5, 2017. She had suffered a brain stroke on January 28 night and was rushed to a hospital in Udaipur where she eventually breathed her last following a cardiac arrest. 

Born in Chennai in April 1944 she joined the National School of Drama in Delhi after finishing college and later went to London to pursue dramatics. She returned to Delhi in 1972 and thereafter joined the CPI-ML while organising farm workers in Mehrauli. During the Emergency she was initially imprisoned for ten months in Tihar Jail and then interned in Chennai where she took up trade union work among port and dock workers. In 1977 she shifted to Rajasthan and worked among adivasis, women and rural bonded labour. In 1999 she joined the CPI-ML (Liberation) and became a Central Committee member. She was also elected President of the All India Progressive Women’s Association. 

She was close to N.C. and participated in a discussion on “Media and Human Development†in New Delhi to mark N.C.’s 87th birth anniversary on November 3, 2000, a year after N.C.’s demise on June 27, 1998.

As the CPI-ML weekly news magazine ML Update has noted, “Comrade Sreelatha was a natural bridge between the CPI-ML and various streams of progressive democratic ideas and action.â€

While mourning her death Mainstream offers sincere homage to her memory and shares the grief of her departure with her husband Mahendra Chaudhary and the CPI-ML (Liberation).