Prakash . KaraT

Prakash Karat was born in Letpadan, Burma on 7 February 1948. His father worked as a clerk in the Burma Railways, where he had sought employment during the British Raj.Prakash Karat is a Malayali, as his family hailed from Elappully, Palakkad, Kerala. Prakash Karat lived in Palakkad till the age of five before returning to Burma where he lived with his family till the age of nine, when his family left Burma for good in 1957.Karat studied in the Madras Christian College School in Chennai. On finishing school, he won the first prize in an all-India essay competition on the Tokyo Olympics. He was sent on a ten-day visit to the Tokyo Olympics in 1964 as a result. He went to the Madras Christian College as an undergraduate student in Economics, winning the prize for best all round student on graduation. Encouraged by the Scottish theologian Duncan B. Forrester, one of his college professors, he got a scholarship to Britain’s University of Edinburgh, for a master's degree in politics. In 1970 he received an MSc degree from Edinburgh University for the thesis "Language and politics in modern India". At Edinburgh he became active in student politics and met Professor Victor Kiernan, the well-known Marxist historian. His political activism began with anti-apartheid protests at the university, for which he was rusticated. The rustication was suspended on good behaviour.. His constituency is located in Central Delhi district.