Krishna Pillai who began his political life as a Gandhian and a member of the Indian National Congress in his early youth had gradually transformed into a socialist with communist leanings.

By 1936, Krishna Pillai who until then had concentrated his political activities to the Malabar region now campaigned in the Cochin and Travancore.

In 1938, he organized the famous worker's strike in Alappuzha (Alleppey), which turned out to be a great success and one of the inspiring factors behind the Punnapra-Vayalar Struggle of 1946 and the eventual downfall of the rule of C. P. Ramaswami Iyer in Travancore.

Years later in 1948 when the CPI accepted the Calcutta Thesis which included in it the express need for an armed struggle against the Indian state, CPI faced a nationwide ban and most of its leaders including Krishna Pillai were forced into hiding.

While hiding in a worker's hut in Muhamma, Krishna Pillai sustained a snakebite and succumbed to it, aged just 42.