Puthiyapurayil Gopalan was born on 1922, as one of the five children of R. Kunhiraman Master and P. Madhavi Amma, a Malabar District School Teacher.
[1] His father was a man who was widely criticized for the Dalit upliftment put forward by Mahatma Gandhi and had to accept humiliation even from his own community.
At that time he participated in a teachers' strike against a meeting called Gurujan Sabha, which is compulsory every Saturday, conducted in RKUP school where his father was the manager.
People started calling Gopalan along with the name of Prahlada in Hindu mythology after he succeeded in his struggle against his own father over the issue.
[4] Prahladan Gopalan went on a hunger strike in front of the Assembly on January 30, 1964, demanding the resignation of Chacko from his own party.