Jyoti Basu - A profile

Jyoti Basu, who died in Kolkatta after a brief illness aged 95, was the last of the leading ights of the communist movement in independent India whose contemporaries included giants such s A K Gopalan, E M S Namboodiripad, S A Dange, B T Ranadive and Harkishan Singh Surjeet.

It was he who steered West Bengal to the left by cobbling together a viable coalition front that has been ruling the state for the last three decades and more. He served West Bengal as Chief Minister for 23 years without break, from 1977 to 2000 when he chose to retire, an all-India record that remains unbroken till date.

When the LOk Sabha elections in 1996 produced a fractured mandate with neither the Congess nor the BJP getting absolute majority and the Vajpayee-led BJP Government bowed out of office afer 13 days upon failing to prove its majority, a post-election third front backed by the left was cobbled together. Jyoti Basu emerged as the consensus candidate for Prime Ministership of this d front because of his long experience in running a coalition government in the State. But the Communist Party of India (Marxist) shot it down under pressure from dogmatic young turks like Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri who felt that the party should wait for the day when the left would have a majority of its own so it could take independent decisions.

This stand dismayed veterans like Surjeet and Namboodiripad. Yet, Basu accepted with dignity the party decision and commented only after the heat and dust had settled down that it was a "historic blunder". Later events proved him right. In the last Lok Sabha elections in 2006, the same Mr Karat, now leader of the CPM, cobbled together a loose coalition called the third front which failed miserably in the hustings with the communists losing badly even in their strongholds of West Bengal and Kerala.

Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister was pragmatic rather than dogmatic and he ushered in far-reaching land reforms, making West Bengal No 1 in the country. He was hailed both by the masses and the Badralok, representing the middle class and the elite.

When India jettisoned over 40 years of Soviet-style socialism in favor of Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Chicken and free-market capitalism, even Mr Basu, who mischievously renamed the Calcutta address of the American Consulate as Ho Chi Minh Street, shed his Yankee-phobia and went to

Washington to seek investment for West Bengal, thus showing his other side as a skilled practitioner of realpolitik.

Even after the CPM made rigging in elections a fine art and goondaism a political trade mark in ater years, people continued to hold Basu in an exalted position. When his successor Buddhadeb Bhattacharya initiated the process of industrialisation and acquired lands in Singur for big industrial houses like the Tatas for their small car project and in Nandigram for an Indonesian firm for a chemical hub , it led to protests from dispossessed farmers. In reaction, the CPM cadres unleashed a reign of terror in Nandigram, leading to many deaths.

The ultra-radical Maoists threw a challenge to the communists in the predominantly tribal belt of Lalgarh. It led to further violence. Basu was witness to the gradual decline of communist influence in the State and died a broken hearted man.

Born on July 8, 1914 as Jyoti Kiran Basu into an upper middle-class Bengali family in Calcutta, Basu had his early education in elite Loretta Convent. His father Nishikanta Basu was a doctor from the village of Bardi in Dhaka District, East Bengal (now in Bangladesh), while his mother Hemalata Basu was a housewife. Basu graduated with honours in English from the Hindu College (renamed the Presidency College in 1955).

After getting his degree, he went to England and studied law. It was in London that he came under the influence of communists. Basu was introduced to the Communist Party of Great Britain by another communist leader and friend in England Bhupesh Gupta. Basu attended lectures of Harold Laski in late 1930. He was inspired by noted Communist philosopher and prolific writer Rajani Ram Dutt. In 1940 he qualified as a Barrister-at-Law at the Middle Temple .

In the same year, he returned to India. In 1944 Basu got involved in trade union activities when the then undivided CPI delegated him to work among the railway labourers.

Basu was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1946. He served as the Leader of Opposition for a long time when Dr. Bidhan Chandra Roy was the Congress Chief Minister of West Bengal. Basu's admirable eloquence won for him the affection of Dr Roy.

When the Communist Party of India split in 1964, two years after the Chinese aggression on India, Basu became one of the first nine members of the politburo of the newly-formed pro-China Communist Party of India (Marxist). In 1967 and 1969, Basu served as Deputy Chief Minister in the United Front governments. When Congress returned to power in West Bengal in 1972 under the leadership of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, Jyoti Basu was defeated and complained of unprecedented rigging. The CPI(M) boycotted the Assembly till fresh elections were conducted in 1977.

Those five years saw Calcutta witness street battles between the CPM and the Congress-led Chattra Parishad with each controlling well-demarcated areas.

The CPM-led Left Front was swept to power in 1977 and it continues to rule the State till date.

From June 21, 1977 to Nov 6, 2000, Basu served as the Chief Minister. He stepped down in 2000, citing health reasons, and was succeeded by Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

The 18th congress of CPI(M), held in Delhi in 2005, re-elected Basu to its politburo, although he had asked to be allowed to retire from it. On Sept 13, 2006, Basu entreated the CPI(M) to allow him to retire due to his age, but general secretary Prakash Karat wanted him to continue until 2008. At the next party congress in early April 2008, Basu was excluded from the politburoand instead called as a special invitee, though he remained a member of the central committee.

On Jan 1, 2010, Basu was admitted to AMRI hospital,Salt Lake, after he developed pneumonia. His condition soon became critical and he suffered multiple organ failure, leading to his eventual death.

"To me, Jyoti Basu's first five years as a fearless leader in the Bengal Assembly are the finest years of his political career," opined Nikhil Chakraborty, senior political columnist who called Basu a "gutsy crusader".

Despite ideological and political differences between Congress and the CPI (M), senior Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shakar Aiyar once called Basu an extraordinary Chief Minister and said: " Only a knight can wear an armour and Jyoti Babu, as Gandhiji said of Panditji ( Nehru), is a knight sans peur et sans reproche (Without fear, without reproach)".

- Asian Tribune -