The passing away of a people's icon
Saturday, 23 January 2010
Nerun Yakub
Jyoti Basu, the great Bengali Marxist of India, left this mortal world last Sunday, aged 96, bringing to an end a phenomenal political career dedicated to the weal of the common people. His aura ---- when he lived, as also in his passing ---- was never confined to the political firmament of West Bengal or India alone. Jyoti Basu was a people's icon, a true friend of Bangladesh, during the liberation war and after.
Although born in Kolkata, this phenomenon of a man can rightly be claimed as a native son. His ancestral home still stands in Sonargaon upazila of Narayanganj, which he had visited a couple of times, gifting it eventually to Bangladesh, to 'do with it whatever the government wishes'---- he was quoted as saying in an interview carried by a contemporary in Dhaka in 2000.
Jyoti Basu's life has been, and will continue to be, truly inspirational for many, even beyond his country's borders, for he had shown what dedication in pro-people politics could achieve. He had won mass adulation and had given communism an honorable face at a time when its ideologues had clearly fallen from grace.
His socialist dream for India was sown in the pre-partition period when he went to study law in London (1935-40), after graduating in English Literature from Hindu (Presidency) College. In England he went over completely to communism under the influence of socialist philosopher Harold Joseph Laski and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Rajani Palme Dutt. He joined the India League, the Federation of Indian Students in Great Britain and became Secretary of the London Majlis, another organization of Indian students in England.
In 1940, he returned to India as a barrister and, to the great consternation of his parents, joined the Communist Party of India, which was then banned by the British rulers. Jyoti Basu could not be dissuaded. His political journey would remain steadfastly on this road, developing, along its ups and downs, as a principled leader who had stood by his ethics throughout his political career.
As a party worker at age 26 his first assignment was to see that the party's leaders,who were driven underground, were safe and secure and could maintain links with the party, of course with Basu as the conduit. He was also given the responsibility of organizing the railway workers, which was his first hands-on experience with trade unionism; then he struggled to establish the rights of those labouring in tea gardens; as well as those in agricultural fields as sharecroppers and landless workers. Bye and bye, he had learned the art of public speaking and had arrived, what one comrade-in-arms Ashok Mitra, says in an article in The Telegraph, 'at the exhilarating awareness of reaching emotional integration with the down-and-outs in society.' This he called Jyoti Basu's inimitable 'charisma'.
Indeed, he had the magical personality that could win the respect and admiration even of people with widely differing political beliefs and positions. He was a pragmatic and astute politician, moulding Marxism, as it were, to the socio-economic and political realities of his country in general and West Bengal in particular and emerging as a natural leader of the Left Front. He had won power through elections over and over again, 'thereby advancing the cause of popular democratic revolution,' even while constrained by the 'feudal-capitalist power structure.'
He served as Chief Minister of West Bengal for five consecutive terms, beginning 1977 up to 2000, which year he decided to resign from government ---- not politics ---- on account of his failing health. During this long tenure he had brought stability to West Bengal, going to the roots of people's problems and seeking to address them sustainably through land reforms and the Panchayat system, which others in India have been trying to replicate.
Jyoti Basu is understandably deeply loved and revered by the beneficiaries of his reform moves ---- the deprived masses ---- and admired even by his political adversaries at the national level. It was through him that the disparate elements of India's multi-lingual,multi-ethnic, multi-party polity could be brought together in the early 1980s to form a third alternative to the two dominant national parties. One wonders how this 'architect of modern West Bengal' would have fared as Prime Minister of India had Prakash Karat, General Secretary CPI(M) not prevented him from accepting the top job in 1996 on the grounds that the party was not ready yet for the Centre. Although Jyoti Basu went along with the party decision ---- as was his wont ---- he did remark that it was his party's 'greatest blunder !' He was then an 80 year old veteran. Analysts claim an earlier opportunity was very much on the horizon, through the 1985 Lok Sabha elections, had Indira Gandhi not been felled by her own bodyguards in October 1984.
The Marxist patriarch had chosen neither cremation nor burial but to continue serving humanity even after his demise. His eyes have been preserved in an eye bank soon after, waiting to give 'jyoti' to a needy-someone without sight. And his body has been handed over to a designated hospital for the cause of medical science after the last official tributes were done with on Tuesday, 19 January 2010.
Jyoti Basu, the great Bengali Marxist of India, left this mortal world last Sunday, aged 96, bringing to an end a phenomenal political career dedicated to the weal of the common people. His aura ---- when he lived, as also in his passing ---- was never confined to the political firmament of West Bengal or India alone. Jyoti Basu was a people's icon, a true friend of Bangladesh, during the liberation war and after.
Although born in Kolkata, this phenomenon of a man can rightly be claimed as a native son. His ancestral home still stands in Sonargaon upazila of Narayanganj, which he had visited a couple of times, gifting it eventually to Bangladesh, to 'do with it whatever the government wishes'---- he was quoted as saying in an interview carried by a contemporary in Dhaka in 2000.
Jyoti Basu's life has been, and will continue to be, truly inspirational for many, even beyond his country's borders, for he had shown what dedication in pro-people politics could achieve. He had won mass adulation and had given communism an honorable face at a time when its ideologues had clearly fallen from grace.
His socialist dream for India was sown in the pre-partition period when he went to study law in London (1935-40), after graduating in English Literature from Hindu (Presidency) College. In England he went over completely to communism under the influence of socialist philosopher Harold Joseph Laski and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain, Rajani Palme Dutt. He joined the India League, the Federation of Indian Students in Great Britain and became Secretary of the London Majlis, another organization of Indian students in England.
In 1940, he returned to India as a barrister and, to the great consternation of his parents, joined the Communist Party of India, which was then banned by the British rulers. Jyoti Basu could not be dissuaded. His political journey would remain steadfastly on this road, developing, along its ups and downs, as a principled leader who had stood by his ethics throughout his political career.
As a party worker at age 26 his first assignment was to see that the party's leaders,who were driven underground, were safe and secure and could maintain links with the party, of course with Basu as the conduit. He was also given the responsibility of organizing the railway workers, which was his first hands-on experience with trade unionism; then he struggled to establish the rights of those labouring in tea gardens; as well as those in agricultural fields as sharecroppers and landless workers. Bye and bye, he had learned the art of public speaking and had arrived, what one comrade-in-arms Ashok Mitra, says in an article in The Telegraph, 'at the exhilarating awareness of reaching emotional integration with the down-and-outs in society.' This he called Jyoti Basu's inimitable 'charisma'.
Indeed, he had the magical personality that could win the respect and admiration even of people with widely differing political beliefs and positions. He was a pragmatic and astute politician, moulding Marxism, as it were, to the socio-economic and political realities of his country in general and West Bengal in particular and emerging as a natural leader of the Left Front. He had won power through elections over and over again, 'thereby advancing the cause of popular democratic revolution,' even while constrained by the 'feudal-capitalist power structure.'
He served as Chief Minister of West Bengal for five consecutive terms, beginning 1977 up to 2000, which year he decided to resign from government ---- not politics ---- on account of his failing health. During this long tenure he had brought stability to West Bengal, going to the roots of people's problems and seeking to address them sustainably through land reforms and the Panchayat system, which others in India have been trying to replicate.
Jyoti Basu is understandably deeply loved and revered by the beneficiaries of his reform moves ---- the deprived masses ---- and admired even by his political adversaries at the national level. It was through him that the disparate elements of India's multi-lingual,multi-ethnic, multi-party polity could be brought together in the early 1980s to form a third alternative to the two dominant national parties. One wonders how this 'architect of modern West Bengal' would have fared as Prime Minister of India had Prakash Karat, General Secretary CPI(M) not prevented him from accepting the top job in 1996 on the grounds that the party was not ready yet for the Centre. Although Jyoti Basu went along with the party decision ---- as was his wont ---- he did remark that it was his party's 'greatest blunder !' He was then an 80 year old veteran. Analysts claim an earlier opportunity was very much on the horizon, through the 1985 Lok Sabha elections, had Indira Gandhi not been felled by her own bodyguards in October 1984.
The Marxist patriarch had chosen neither cremation nor burial but to continue serving humanity even after his demise. His eyes have been preserved in an eye bank soon after, waiting to give 'jyoti' to a needy-someone without sight. And his body has been handed over to a designated hospital for the cause of medical science after the last official tributes were done with on Tuesday, 19 January 2010.