Mallikarjun Rao joined: the students movement in Andhra in the thirties. In 1936 he went to Bombay to attend Sydenham College. There he joined the Bombay Girni Kamgar Union, the biggest trade union-led by the Communist: party of India, .. becoming assistant secretary. He also worked: as a journalist on the... staffs of the Free Press Journal and the Bombay Chronicle. -
~ Repelled. by Stalinism, he. became a Trotskyist. In 1941, along. with Dr.M.G. Purdy and others, he founded the. Mazdoor Trotskyist. party of India. An active participant in the 1942 "Quit India" movement
which was directed against. British imperialism:as part of the struggle to win freedom for India, Mallik worked in the underground.
‘In 1942-43’ he moved to Secunderabad’ where he- helped organize the’ railwaynen ‘and other workers in the then Nizam state under difticult conditions. He’ was arrested in Bombay in:1944° and ‘imprisoned © for more than two years. He’ once made a daring but unsuccessful attempt’ to escape.
Released from: prison in 1946, he organized the first squatters movement in Bombay in the postwar: period. He- led thousands of’ home— less workers in occupying empty. army barracks at Sion-Koliwada,.¢compelling the” authorities: to! “recognize the squatters” as rightful ten-"' ants.
~ In 1949. 48, he participated. in the anti-Nizam- movement ‘in Hyderabad. He led a’ group of guerrilla-type freedom fighters in operating from the Sholapur borders inside the Yizam territory.
After Hyderabad was integrated with the Indian’ Union, hesettled in Secunderabad, soon becoming a prominent trade-union leader. He was elected general Secretary of the Central Railway Workers Union (Secunderabad Zone), was a founding leader of’ the United Trades Union Congress in 1948 and was elected for a term to the: Secunderabad Municipal Corporation.
As a leader of the Trotskyist movement, Mallik initiated a move in 1954 to unify the various Marxist parties in India under the banner of the "Mazdoor Kisan Party of India." When this did not succeed, he joined in sponsoring a merger in 1958 of the different Trotskyist groups to form the Revolutionary Workers party of India.
This organization then joined with the Revolutionary Communist party of India in 196C. But serious differences arose between’: the two components, particucarly after the Sino- Indian border war, and a break occurred in 1963.
In 1965, the Trotskyists from various states met in Bombay _ and founded the Socialist Workers party as a Section of the: Fourth : International. Ee
“Mallik’: s health broke down after he: was jailea by - she Congress government in 1959 because of his role in:connection with the’ all- India strike of the Central government employees. He directed the strike in Andhra Pradesh as chairman of the Joint Action Committee in that area.
Mallik suffered ‘persecution from the: pourgeois state because of his revolutionary activities and he was maligned by the Stalinsts because of his loyalty to-the principles of revolutionary socialism, But he never buckled under the tremendous pressure.