George Fernandes

After the strike, George came in contact with renowned Bombay based Trade Union leader Placid D’Mello (1919-1958).

George's first guru was a Mangalorean activist and a freedom fighter Ammembala Balappa (1922-2014).

Balappa identified and groomed a young George, who had taken refuge at places surrounding Nehru Maidan in Mangalore city, after being thrown out of the house.

Initially, with Balappa's mentorship George gathered hotel workers and other menial labourers in the city.

He was associated with Ram Manohar Lohia lead Praja Socialist Party (PSP) in its Mangalore division.

George Mathew Fernandes (3 June 1930 – 29 January 2019) was an Indian trade unionist, statesman, and journalist, who served as the 22nd Defence Minister of India from 1998 until 2004.

George Fernandes was born on 3 June 1930 to John Joseph Fernandes and Alice Martha Fernandes (née Pinto), in Mangalore to a Mangalorean Catholic family.

The eldest of six children, all sons, his siblings are Lawrence, Michael, Paul, Aloysius, and Richard.

His mother was a great admirer of King George V (who was also born on 3 June), hence she named her first son George.

His father was employed by the Peerless Finance group as an insurance executive, and headed their office of South India for several years.

George was fondly called "Gerry" in close family circles.

He attended his first few years of schooling at a government school near his house called "Board school", a municipal school and a church school.

He studied from fifth grade at the school attached to St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, where he completed his Secondary School Leaving Certificate (SSLC).

In an interview with E TV, he described his decision to stop studies after matriculation despite his father wishing him to study and become a lawyer.

His premise was that he did not want to become a lawyer and fight cases for his father who often evicted tenants from a patch of land that they owned on the outskirts of Mangalore.

He was instead enrolled in a seminary for studies to become a priest.

A native of Mangalore, Fernandes was sent to Bangalore in 1946 to be trained as a priest.

He went to St Peter's Seminary in Bangalore at the age of 16, to be trained as a Roman Catholic priest, studying philosophy for two and a half years from 1946 to 1948.

At the age of 19, he left the seminary due to sheer frustration because he was appalled that the rectors ate better food and sat at higher tables than the seminarians.

He later confessed that, "I was disillusioned, because there was a lot of difference between precept and practice where the Church was concerned."

He began work at the age of 19, organising exploited workers in the road transport industry and in the hotels and restaurants in Mangalore.

For some time, he worked as a insurance agent and also tried wholesale businesses of shaving blades.

In 1949, he moved to Bombay, where he joined the socialist trade union movement.

George and few other union workers lead Mangalore's earliest labour strikes on behalf of the workers of Canara Public Conveyance (CPC)in 1949.

The Strike was cracked down as Mangalore Police resorted massive Lathi Charge.

Becoming a trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes and bandhs in Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s while working with the Indian Railways.

George later left to Bombay in 1950 and faced tremendous hardships.

A veteran socialist, he was a member of the Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay (present-day Mumbai) in 1967 till 2009 mostly representing constituencies from Bihar.

He was a key member of the Janata Dal and the founder of the Samata Party.

He defeated S K Patil of the Indian National Congress in the 1967 parliamentary elections from the Bombay South constituency.

George Fernandes won nine Lok Sabha elections from 1967 to 2004.

As president of the All India Railwaymen's Federation, he led the 1974 railways strike.

Fernandes went underground during the Emergency era of 1975, while challenging Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for imposing a state of emergency, but in 1976 he was arrested and tried in the infamous Baroda dynamite case.

In 1977, after the Emergency had been lifted, Fernandes won the Muzaffarpur seat in Bihar in absentia.

As industries minister, he revoked the licences for multinationals IBM and Coca-Cola to operate in India, due to investment violations.

As railways minister from 1989 to 1990 he was the driving force behind the Konkan Railway project.

As defence minister in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led second and third Atal Bihari Vajpayee ministries (1998–2004), he oversaw the outbreak of the Kargil War and the implementation of nuclear tests at Pokhran.

Fernandes has been dogged by various controversies, including the Barak Missile scandal and the Tehelka affair.

He died on 29 January 2019 at the age of 88.

Holding several prominent ministerial portfolios during his career, including communication, industry, railways, and defence, he was posthumously awarded the Padma Vibhushan, India's second highest civilian award, in 2020.