I first came in contact with Himmat Shah in the second half of the 1970s during one of my routine visits to Ahmedabad, my maternal hometown. I do not recall the exact year, but at that time I was working in Delhi with the CPI-owned People’s Publishing House (PPH) as its assistant editor, editing books and writing occasional articles for small periodicals. Himmatbhai — as I would call him — worked at the People’s Book House (PBH), the CPI’s bookshop on Relief Road in Ahmedabad.During my visits to Ahmedabad, I would always make it a point to go to PBH to check the PPH books I did not possess, buying them at a concessional rate — often better than what I received at PPH’s bookstall in Delhi’s Connaught Place. A Communist enthusiast, close to prominent party theoretician Mohit Sen, Himmatbhai would welcome me warmly at PBH and readily show me new books for sale, including those not published by PPH. We exchanged notes whenever I visited.
Like Himmatbhai, I too was a Communist enthusiast until the late 1970s. During one of the elections — I do not remember the year, perhaps the 1977 Parliamentary polls — a Communist candidate was contesting, and Himmatbhai connected me with a few cadres. We went around campaigning together. The candidate was a popular labour leader, and those we met in the labour areas spoke highly of him. It is another matter that he lost his deposit.
I once asked Himmatbhai whether they organised any Marxist study circles for cadres. He said he was willing to do so provided I took interest. He tried organising one, but no one turned up. I returned to Delhi disappointed and continued working on the PPH desk. At PPH, I organised a small library in a spare room and attempted a few study circles there as well. While some sessions were held, they eventually petered out.
I recall all this now because Himmatbhai passed away on November 30 at the age of 78 after remaining unwell for quite some time. He belonged to a very ordinary middle class Jain family, initially living in a small apartment in a peri-urban locality of Ahmedabad, Memnagar. One of his PBH colleagues, Abdul Vora — very close to him — informed me about his demise.
“After we left the CPI in the late 1990s following the closure of PBH, we would participate in activities of several progressive groups, especially group discussions on current issues. This continued till the late 2010s. During the Covid period, already suffering from heart problems, Himmatbhai’s health deteriorated and he could never recover,” Abdulbhai, who remained in constant touch with the family, told me.
Himmatbhai had joined the CPI in the late 1960s. “A confirmed rebel, he was denied admission to several colleges as authorities considered him a troublemaker. Finally, a college professor who knew him well ensured his admission to an Ahmedabad college, where he completed his graduation,” Abdulbhai recalled.
A prominent youth leader of the Jayaprakash Narayan-led Navnirman movement in Gujarat, Himmatbhai was jailed for several months in 1974, being sent to Kutch. Unlike the Central leadership, the Communists in Gujarat — working under Mohit Sen’s guidance — believed the Navnirman agitation to be a popular mass movement against what was widely perceived as a highly corrupt Chimanbhai Patel government. Mohit, whom I knew personally, would insist to me that Navnirman in Gujarat was “progressive” and “pro-people,” while JP’s call for total revolution nationally was “reactionary” because of its alignment with the RSS.
Even after I joined the Left-of-Centre Link newsweekly in Delhi in 1979, formally becoming a journalist, I would meet Himmatbhai at PBH along with Abdulbhai during my annual visits to Ahmedabad till 1985. In 1986 I was sent to Moscow as foreign correspondent of Link and its sister daily Patriot, where I remained till 1993.
One day, I received a letter from Himmatbhai expressing his desire to visit Moscow. As an accredited foreign correspondent, I had the privilege of inviting someone to the USSR, provided I specified where the person would stay. It was 1989, when Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and glasnost were in full swing.
To my surprise, Himmatbhai — who knew no Russian and very little English — knocked at my door one day. I do not recall whether my invitation enabled his travel or whether he came as a tourist or on a Communist contact, which seemed unlikely. Reaching my flat from Sheremetyevo airport on his own certainly was not easy — but he had my postal address.
Himmatbhai stayed with me for a few days. I did not know the purpose of his visit. One day during that summer, he asked where the headquarters of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) were located. I gave him the address, directions for the bus and metro, and an all-route pass — and off he went.
When he returned a few hours later, he told me he initially had difficulty entering because the guard wouldn’t allow him in. He then showed his Communist Party card, after which someone from the CPSU’s India desk took him inside. He said he had a long discussion about corruption involving Soviet publications being sent for sale to India, including Ahmedabad. He didn't offer more details.
Abdulbhai tells me, "It wasn't about Soviet books but with innumerable periodicals the Soviets would publish in different Indian languages. Private agents appointed for subscription would corner the money so collected, and the periodicals would never reach the subscribers, leading to a large number of complaints."
A few days after he left, I received a phone call from someone who appeared to be a CPSU apparatchik seeking a meeting. I arranged it at my flat. Around five or six officials arrived — my home was less than five kilometres from the Kremlin — to find out who Himmatbhai was and why he had come from Ahmedabad. “Is he your brother?” one of them asked.
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| Himmatbhai (front left), Nov 14, 2019 |
When I wondered why, the reply was, “You share the same surname.” I joked that they could call me his political brother, as we had once belonged to the same organisation, the CPI, whose membership I never renewed on becoming a journalist. They probed whether corruption in Soviet publications' distribution existed. I feigned ignorance.
At the time, Himmatbhai was well connected in Ahmedabad. I visited Ahmedabad twice during my Moscow assignment and met him both times. My last temporary visit came after the collapse of the Soviet Union, which also created financial trouble for Patriot and Link, both of which had Soviet support.
I was then searching for another job. I mentioned this casually to Himmatbhai, who insisted that I accompany him to meet Harish Khare, the resident editor of the Times of India, Ahmedabad, and also MK Mistry of the Indian Express, Ahmedabad.
A doyen of journalism, Khare took my biodata and offered me immediate placement in the Gujarati edition. I politely refused, saying my Gujarati was too weak. Then Himmatbhai took me to MK Mistry, who also took my biodata and forwarded it to Delhi, expressing his wish to have me cover the Gujarat government.
While Mistry’s boss in Delhi, Prabhu Chawla — considered by colleagues a Left-hater — rejected my case saying there was “no vacancy in Gandhinagar,” I received positive feelers from Times of India editor-in-chief Dileep Padgaonkar, who sent me a message in Moscow whether I could also write for TOI. When I said I couldn’t unless appointed as permanent correspondent, the paper declined.
On returning to Delhi for good in 1993, I met Padgaonkar, who asked straight, “If not Moscow, why not Ahmedabad?” He sought my biodata. I believe the credit for connecting me to the Times of India, where I worked from June 1993 to January 2013, goes to Himmatbhai.
After I was appointed Gandhinagar representative of the Times of India in 1997, I met him less frequently. During our occasional meetings, he would tell me how his simple postcard letters to government authorities had led to welfare reforms, showing me official responses. We also met sometimes at public lectures organised by well-known Ahmedabad trusts and NGOs.
After the closure of PBH in 1997, where the salaries were meagre, taking advantage of his wide-ranging contacts, Himmatbhai worked as personal secretary to Congress MPs, especially Savshibhai Makwana (1999-2004). Once he accompanied me to his residence in my Maruti fronte car. I found Makwana a down-to-earth Koli leader. His wife ran a small kirana shop in Sayla where he lived.
After the closure of PBH in 1997, where the salaries were meagre, taking advantage of his wide-ranging contacts, Himmatbhai worked as personal secretary to Congress MPs, especially Savshibhai Makwana (1999-2004). Once he accompanied me to his residence in my Maruti fronte car. I found Makwana a down-to-earth Koli leader. His wife ran a small kirana shop in Sayla where he lived.
Thereafter, Himmatbhai tried his hand at several jobs to make ends meet. One of them was an attempt to work as a builder. In partnership with someone, he constructed a small four-storey apartment building in the Vejalpur area. While he initially told me it was a promising venture, he later regretted it, saying he had lost a substantial amount of money.
Himmatbhai also tried becoming an investment agent, seeking small deposits for a little-known finance firm from anyone he met. “Give me Rs 10 or 20,000 and forget about it for the next five to ten years. I will give you excellent returns,” he once told me casually. I did not pay much attention, as I had learned from a mutual acquaintance about uncertainty of the money collected this way. This venture too failed, apparently leaving him completely dependent on his family members.
Yet, Communism in Himmatbhai didn't die. He personally knew A.B. Bardhan, the CPI general secretary from 1996 to 2012. Bardhan was also the father-in-law of leading financial expert Prof. Sameer Barua, director of the Indian Institute of Management–Ahmedabad from 2007 to 2013. Whenever Bardhan visited Ahmedabad, Himmatbhai would inform me and accompany me to meet him at Prof. Barua’s residence on the IIM-A campus.
After the pandemic, when his health deteriorated, his son — with whom he and his wife Pravinaben lived — shifted residence thrice. In one of our phone conversations, I learned he had become deeply religious, possibly under family influence, and frequently visited Jain spiritual sites, including Jinalayas and Derasars. A life-long vegetarian, he never forgot to address me as “comrade” — something he began right from our first meeting in the mid-1970s.
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