Ramashankar Yadav, Indian poet and activist, Died at 58

  Writers

Ramashankar Yadav was born on December 3, 1957, and died on December 8, 2015.

Popularly known as Vidrohi among his friends and admirers, he was an Indian poet and social activist who came to Jawaharlal Nehru University as a student, but continued to live on or around its campus well beyond his student life, in the process becoming a part of the campus landscape for many generations of students.

Always present during student protests, him reciting his revolutionary poetry at such occasions, and otherwise at Ganga Dhaba, was a common sight.

Ramashankar Yadav died doing what he perhaps liked doing most, participating in a student protest.

Ramashankar Vidrohi was born in Sultanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India, to Ramnarayan Yadav and Karma Devi.

He was studying for his LLB in a college in U.P. where he was rusticated due to his involvement in student politics.

Ramashankar came to New Delhi and got enrolled as a Phd candidate in the Hindi department of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, where once again, he was rusticated for similar reasons.

The special place that he holds in the hearts of so many, and not all of them JNU regulars, owes much of his poetry, people’s poetry, but also a lot of the lifestyle he had chosen – a life devoid of almost any material possession, his clothes, that too in most cases bought by others, being the only exception – the trees of JNU, the corners of its hostels, the benches of its dhabas and the office of its student union his only abode.

No running after money, fame, power for him.

He did not even write down his poems.

Ramashankar Yadav passed away at age 68 in December 2015.