In April 2006, activist Medha Patkar sat on an indefinite hunger strike at Jantar Mantar against the Sardar Sarovar Dam on Narmada river in Gujarat. On the night of April 5-6, Delhi police detained her and took her to AIIMS.Following the crackdown, Prof Kamal Mitra Chenoy from JNU joined the protest and fasted for the next four days.“If Kamal had been alive, he would have been on the streets of Delhi, protesting with the students,” says his wife Prof Anuradha M Chenoy. Both retired as professors from JNU.Prof Chenoy, who taught comparative politics and the Indian Constitution at JNU’s School of International Studies (SIS), died on Sunday. He was 75. He retired from SIS in 2018.In 2020, he was diagnosed with fast-progressing Alzheimer’s. Between 2021 and 2022, he was infected with Covid-19 thrice. “Each time, it worsened his condition,” says Anuradha. The cause of his death was internal haemorrhage.Prof Chenoy is survived by Anuradha and their two children, Ayesha and Ajit Chenoy.From Army to student politicsChenoy was born in 1950 in Delhi. His father was an IFS officer, while his mother, Shanta Chenoy, came from a Baghdadi Jewish family.Story continues below this adStraight out of Doon School, he joined the Indian Military Academy (IMA), Dehradun. Three months in, he realised his love for literature and poetry. He left IMA and in 1969 joined DU’s Kirori Mal College to study economics. Student politics drew him organically and never quite left him. That same year, he was elected to the executive committee of the Delhi University Students’ Union (DUSU). He became secretary of AISF in 1973.He never left activism after that.“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.” He would speak at Ganga Dhaba every week and debate with students and colleagues. He stood for what he believed in: secularism, pluralism, socialism, liberty and equality. And he would go out of his way to help students.”One morning in 2010, Chenoy was leaving for a work trip to Bangladesh when 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.Story continues below this ad“He said, ‘You are my student. You sit in my class,” Anuradha recalls. “And the doctor replied, ‘Yes, sir. Your ideas inspire me so much that I often go to JNU just to sit in on your lectures.”The classroom and the ConstitutionIn the classroom, Chenoy’s oratory skills mesmerised students. He carried a copy of the Constitution.“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 Indian political system in 2006. “He taught us the values the Constitution holds: liberty, freedom of expression, equality, secularism, socialism. It was the most sacred document to him. 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.”That same year, Tripathi sat with him on the hunger strike at Jantar Mantar.A scholar who asked the right questionsStory continues below this adChenoy’s work was built around one question: who reaps the benefits of economic growth and industrialisation? He wrote on political economy, democracy, secularism and sustainable development.In “Sustainable Development in India: A Radical View”, published in 1993, he challenged the IMF and World Bank-led projects that pushed a single, Western model of development on the Third World.On human security, particularly wage and work rights, he travelled for 53 days by bus with Jean Drèze and Annie Raja to build a consensus for MGNREGA, which led to the passage of the Act in 2005.Secular politics was just as close to his heart. He wrote reports and conducted independent fact-finding missions after communal riots. His extensive report on the 1984 anti-Sikh violence was cited by the International Human Rights Council (IHRC).Story continues below this ad“He believed in secularism and pluralism,” says Anuradha. “In the past 30 years, he prepared detailed reports on most communal riots, and he was always on the ground with the survivors. He would say there is no majority, only multiple minorities that together make up a majority, and that majority politics is an artificial construct.”He took those ideas abroad as well. Chenoy was on the core committee of the 2004 World Social Forum summit in Mumbai, a global civil society movement of academics, activists and world leaders.Over 100,000 participants from more than 100 countries took part. Chenoy wrote in an article in Politico, “more than 90 countries and many political tendencies make the WSF much more representative than the World Economic Forum to which it is in part a counterpoint.”At WSF, he pushed his case for sustainable development. The Forum’s agenda was not a single, unified programme but the idea of an alternative future: that globalisation is not equitable, that GDP growth is not development, and that every country, with its own colonial experience, needs its own path to development.“A presence in our drawing room”Story continues below this ad“Kamal bhaiya was an elder brother to me,” filmmaker Kabir Khan told The Indian Express. “We were neighbours in JNU for more than a decade. My father, Prof Rashiduddin Khan, was the founder chairman of the Centre for Political Studies, and Kamal was his student and had joined JNU as a junior lecturer. Kamal’s mother, Shanta, was a family friend. I spent much of my childhood in awe of him. He was six feet two, a boxer, a vociferous, flamboyant presence, passionate about politics. After moving to Mumbai, I used to watch him often on TV debates. The last conversation I had with him was when he paid us a visit a few years ago. We were up all night, so engrossed in the conversation.“I am grateful I grew up in a house where stalwarts like Kamal bhaiya were a common presence in our drawing room. We grew up listening to his ideas, and the churning he left behind cannot be put into words.”