Professor Kamal Mitra Chenoy, who taught comparative politics and the Indian Constitution at the School of International Studies (SIS), Jawaharlal Nehru University, died on October 11. He was 75. A political scientist and public intellectual, he was known for his work on international relations, peace and conflict resolution, human rights and democratic values, and for his solidarity with students.
In 2020, he was diagnosed with fast-progressing Alzheimer's. Between 2021 and 2022, he contracted Covid-19 three times. The cause of his death was internal haemorrhage. He retired from SIS in 2018. He is survived by his wife, Prof Anuradha M Chenoy, and their two children, Ayesha and Ajit.
Chenoy was born in Delhi in 1950. His father was an IFS officer, and his mother, Shanta Chenoy, came from a Baghdadi Jewish family. Straight out of Doon School, he joined the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, but three months in he realised his true passion was literature and poetry. He left and, in 1969, joined Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, to study economics. Student politics captured him there. That same year he was elected to the executive committee of the Delhi University Students' Union, and in 1973 he became secretary of the AISF. He never left activism after that.
At JNU, he served as Vice-President of the Students' Union and later as President of the JNU Teachers' Association, and he contributed with distinction to SIS. He was a friend and guide to teachers and students alike, and the backbone of many campus movements, quick to express outrage and to act. He backed every secular and democratic cause, argued for peace with all of India's neighbours, particularly Pakistan, remained a true friend of Palestine, and was a vocal opponent of nuclear weapons. For much of his life he was a member of the CPI, though he made his decisions with his own head and heart, and often, as colleagues joked, in favour of whoever convinced him first. His influence on the campus lasted at least two decades and extended to Delhi's wider intellectual and progressive circles, where he brought reason and clarity to public debate.
"At heart, he always remained a student activist, even as a professor," says Prof Sanjay Pandey, a colleague at SIS. "He brought together voices from every political spectrum and encouraged debate and discussion." Every week he spoke at Ganga Dhaba, debating with students and colleagues, and he stood for secularism, pluralism, socialism, liberty and equality. He would go out of his way to help students.
In April 2006, when activist Medha Patkar sat on an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar against the Sardar Sarovar Dam, Delhi police detained her on the night of April 5-6 and took her to AIIMS. After the crackdown, Chenoy joined the protest and fasted for four days. "If Kamal had been alive, he would have been on the streets of Delhi, protesting with the students," says Anuradha.
His classroom was equally memorable. He carried a copy of the Constitution and treated it as the most sacred of documents. "He was one of the finest orators JNU has had," says Dr Dhananjay Tripathi, Associate Professor of International Relations at South Asian University, whom Chenoy taught the Indian political system in 2006. "He would say it was the social contract between the people of India and the state, and that if it was altered, India would no longer be India."
One morning in 2010, as he was leaving for a work trip to Bangladesh, a dog bit him on the JNU campus. Anuradha rushed him to a nearby Fortis hospital. When the treating doctor walked in, Chenoy was startled to recognise him. "You are my student. You sit in my class," he said. The doctor replied, "Yes, sir. Your ideas inspire me so much that I often go to JNU just to sit in on your lectures."
As a scholar, Chenoy examined who reaps the benefits of economic growth and industrialisation, writing extensively on political economy, democracy, secularism and sustainable development. In Sustainable Development in India: A Radical View (1993), he challenged IMF and World Bank-led projects that promoted a single, Western model of development for the Third World. He also worked tirelessly on wage and work rights, travelling for 53 days by bus with Jean Drèze and Annie Raja to build consensus for MGNREGA, which became law in 2005.
Secular politics defined his outlook. He conducted independent fact-finding missions after communal riots and, over the past 30 years, prepared detailed reports on most of them, always standing on the ground with survivors. His report on the 1984 anti-Sikh violence was cited by the International Human Rights Council. He argued that there is no majority, only multiple minorities that together form one, and that majority politics is an illusion.
Chenoy was on the core committee of the 2004 World Social Forum in Mumbai, which drew over 100,000 participants from more than 100 countries. He pressed the case for sustainable development there, and the Forum's agenda reflected his convictions: that globalisation is anti-people, that GDP growth is not real development, and that every country, shaped by its own colonial experience, must design its own path.
Those who knew him say he left behind not only ideas but a way of being. To think of Kamal, one colleague said, is to remember a JNU that may never return.
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*Freelance journalist
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