Buddhadeb & the literary politician

The passing of Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee earlier this month brings to an end the career of not just a Marxist politician but also an individual whose grasp of literature was the envy of many across the political spectrum. Bhattacharjee, a humble man as all socialists are, could converse easily on Tagore and indeed on every major figure in the Bengali literary pantheon. More significantly, his studies of world literature often raised questions among his admirers as to why the world could not throw up more political figures like him.
Losing Bhattacharjee to the slings and arrows of mortality is indeed a tragedy we who loved to listen to him will feel for a very long time. Politicians are there aplenty whose preoccupation is naturally with the quotidian concerns of the people they mean to serve. But it is quite rare to have political beings whose flair for the literary, in understanding poetry, indeed in composing literary tracts themselves, accords them a place in history that is underscored by permanence. One will remember the literary personality which existed side by side with the political in Deshbandhu Chittaranjan Das. His poetry and his prose inform us that had he not gone into politics, his literary life would have ensured a prominent place for him in the history of the South Asian subcontinent.
Creativity is consistently that part of the personality which educates men and women looking for sunshine through the depths of life's darkness. Poets and novelists are all representative of creativity, naturally. But when the creative urge, the drive for intellectual excellence defines politicians, life for people everywhere takes on a whole new meaning. People are fascinated by images of the literary politician, an instance here being the late President of Senegal, Leopold Sedar Senghor. His poetry, his focus on what he termed Negroid literature gave him a stature above many other politicians and writers not only in Africa but beyond the continent as well.
Or move on to the Czech Republic, where the intellectual Vaclav Havel combined in himself the roles of a crusader for democracy and a spokesperson for literature. Long before he plunged into politics, Havel produced literature which resonated with the people of what was then Czechoslovakia. His Velvet Revolution was carried a large part of the way by his literary reputation. It was a tragedy that Czechoslovakia broke up into two states, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, on his watch. But that did not take away from the power which his literary career brought into the struggle to free his people from Stalinist communism.
A remarkable instance of an intellectual politician is Francois Mitterrand. The late French President was a socialist to the core in his view of the political world and yet he brought into that view a literary perspective which was reflected in his pronouncements. Literature fascinated him; reading was a passion with him. There were all those charming moments when, stepping out of the Elysee, Mitterrand walked into bookshops, browsing for a long time before coming away with works he knew he needed to read. One could spot a similar figure of literary inclinations in Jawaharlal Nehru, whose hold on literature was exemplified by the works he produced even as he stayed engaged in the political battle to free India of colonialism. Apart from Atal Behari Vajpayee, Nehru has hardly been emulated in his literary pursuits by his successors.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's death only has the world of literary politicians shrink a little more. As America's Democratic Party politicians prepare to anoint Kamala Harris as their presidential nominee for the November election, one recalls that it was in Chicago, where the Democrats' convention is taking place, that Eugene McCarthy lost his bid for the presidential nomination to Hubert Humphrey in 1968. It was a chaotic convention, with protesters engaging in pitched battles with police at a time when the Vietnam War was dividing America politically. McCarthy, a Senator, was a reputed poet as well. Had he won the nomination and gone on to win the White House, Americans would have had the wondrous spectacle of a literary personality running their country. It would be a reminder of the times of Woodrow Wilson, the scholar who served as President in the run-up to the First World War.
Mario Vargas Llosa is a remarkable writer in his native Peru. Aged eighty-eight, he remains among the giants who have enriched the literary landscape of Latin America. One is not quite sure if Llosa would have made a remarkable President for his country, but he did attempt once to get Peruvians to elect him to that high office. His people did not grant him his wish; he lost the election. But that literature can bring about a change in political perspectives and reshape the trajectory of a nation was a belief Llosa never let go of. His country did not want him as President, but was saddled with the corrupt and authoritarian Alberto Fujimori. That was Peru's tragedy.
Literature ennobles life, gives it a richness which restores the beauty of the world as it used to be and as it ought to be. When political leaders read literature, recite and compose poetry, it is their basic humanity which shines through. Politicians view the world through the roughness of their profession; but with literary politicians it is a different image altogether, a rainbow they shape for the world to experience.
A good number of years ago, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee enlightened some visiting journalists from Bangladesh on his politics and on his views of life as it ought to be lived. It was a time when he was preparing to replace Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister of West Bengal. At a point in the conversation, he sought, in his humble way, permission from his visitors to smoke a cigarette. It was his own office and yet here he was, with absolutely no hubris in him, asking those visiting foreign journalists if he could smoke.
Politics and literature in an individual raise a society to heights of beauty. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee was one man who did that work with finesse.

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