Farewell, Comrade Kitty Menon

Comrade Kitty Menon is no more. A remarkable life of commitment, dedication and fortitude has ended in its Ninetieth year.

It was sometime in early 1970s, before Indira Gandhi imposed emergency, that I met Kitty for the first time at a small meeting along with Professor Thavaraj in order to discuss how to strengthen the Indian School of Social Sciences and its publication Social Scientist. Some of us, students and research scholars, were asked to participate in this effort.  Kitty was then on the faculty of Delhi School of Economics along with such giants as Sukhomoy Chakraborty, K N Raj, Amartya Sen et al. Soon, some of us were attending the study classes conducted by Kitty which systematically discussed Marx’s Capital chapter-wise. Little is known about this important role she played in building the SFI in Delhi as well as the teachers movement in Delhi University. She was the secretary of the Party students and teachers’ branch in late 1960s. She was also an elected member of the Delhi University Academic Council for many years.