George Mathew Fernandes was an Indian politician, trade unionist, statesman, and journalist who served as the Defence Minister of India from 1998 until 2004. A veteran socialist, he was a member of the Lok Sabha for over 30 years, starting from Bombay in 1967 till 2009, generally representing constituencies from Bihar. He was the leader of the Samyukta Socialist Party and the Socialist Party, and later on, he founded the Samata Party. 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.
A native of Mangalore, Fernandes was sent to Bangalore in 1946 to be trained as a priest. In 1949, he moved to Bombay, where he joined the socialist trade union movement. Fernandes began work at the age of 19, organizing exploited workers in the road transport industry and the hotels and restaurants in Mangalore. During this period, a Mangalorean activist and a freedom fighter, Ammembala Balappa (1922–2014 was his mentor. He was associated with the Ram Manohar Lohia-led Praja Socialist Party (PSP) in its Mangalore division. Fernandes and a few other union workers led Mangalore's earliest labor strikes on behalf of the workers of Canara Public Conveyance (CPC)in 1949. Later on, Fernandes came in contact with renowned Bombay-based Trade Union leader Placid D’Mello (1919–1958). Fernandes later left for Bombay in 1950 and faced tremendous hardships. Here again, he became a prodigy of D'Mello, who was handling the arduous Dock unions. After D'Mello died in 1958, Fernandes succeeded in managing dock Unions and other major labour force unions in the city that included Taximen unions, textile mills, and Mazdoor Unions. After becoming a trade union leader, Fernandes organised many strikes and bandhs in Bombay in the 1950s and 1960s while working with Indian Railways. He defeated S K Patil of the Indian National Congress in the 1967 parliamentary elections from the Bombay South constituency. 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 liked writing and journalism in his student days. He was the editor of a Konkani language monthly, Konkani Yuvak (Konkani Youth), in 1949. The same year, he was the editor of the Raithavani Weekly in Kannada. The Dockman weekly in English, which had ceased publication, reappeared under the editorship of Fernandes in 1952–53. Though not a prolific writer, Fernandes wrote several books on politics including What Ails the Socialists (1972), Socialist Communist Interaction in India, In the year of the disabled: India's disabled government (1981), Dignity for All: Essays in Socialism and Democracy (1991), and his autobiography titled George Fernandes Speaks (1991). He was the editor of an English monthly, The Other Side, and the chairman of the editorial board of the Hindi monthly Pratipaksh. A human rights activist, Fernandes had been a member of Amnesty International, the People's Union for Civil Liberties, and the Press Council of India.
A Canada-based Mangalorean origin writer Chris Emmanuel Dsouza has published a book titled Bandh Samrat – Tales of Eternal Rebel, which has accounts of Fernandes's early days of trade union activism. Many books have been written on him, his saga, and his life. He died at the age of 88 on 29 January 2019 in Delhi following an infection.
George Fernandes was born on 3 June 1930 to a Catholic family. His mother, Alice Martha Fernandes, was a great admirer of King George V (who was also born on 3 June), hence, she named her first son George. His father, John Joseph Fernandes, was employed by the Peerless Finance group as an insurance executive. George was warmly called "Gerry" in close family circles. He attended his first few years of schooling at a government school near his house. He studied from fifth grade at the school attached to St. Aloysius College, Mangalore, where he completed his SSLC. Fernandes married Leila Kabir, the daughter of former Union Minister Humayun Kabir. They have a son, Sean Fernandes.
*Collected from public domain
*Updated on 04/04/2025
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