S.A. Ganapathy was a veteran of the communist underground resistance during Japanese occupation and postwar trade unionist in then Malaya. He was once the president of Malaya's largest trade union, the Pan Malayan Federation of Trade Unions (PMFTU).

The Malayan Communist Party (MCP), officially the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), was a Marxist–Leninist and anti-imperialist communist party which was active in British Malaya and later, the modern states of Malaysia and Singapore from 1930 to 1989. It was responsible for the creation of both the Malayan Peoples' Anti-Japanese Army and the Malayan National Liberation Army.