Public CompanyA gentleman communist
Business Standard / New Delhi January 19, 2010, 0:34 IST
Former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu, who died on Sunday at the ripe age of 95, was a communist party apparatchik and a bhadralok gentleman. Very Bengali and very English, a trade union leader and a liberal democrat, an indulgent father and a tough party soldier. He was a bundle of contradictions and that is why he endeared himself to so many. The initial hypocrisy of unalloyed praise for a dead leader will in time yield place to a more balanced assessment of his contribution to his home state of West Bengal. It is a pity, though, that apart from lamenting the “historic blunder” of the politburo of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in denying him the opportunity to become India’s prime minister, one can say very little about his impact on national politics. Jyoti Basu will always be remembered as the unquestioned leader of West Bengal, and India’s longest serving chief minister, with very little lasting impact on national politics and policies. His contribution to West Bengal’s development cannot be under estimated, though it is easy to see and say that he could have done much more. Basu inherited a strife-torn state in a politically explosive region. That West Bengal was saved from the extremism of the Naxalite movement, regained its economic buoyancy even though it is surrounded by backward states, and was able to absorb the social and economic impact of the creation of Bangladesh, will forever remain a testimony to the wisdom of Basu’s leadership. That he outlived and outsmarted the more radical elements in his party, like Pramode Dasgupta and P Sundarayya, and that he had the backing of party theoreticians like EMS Namboodiripad and BT Ranadive helped. If limits were imposed on him, it was by a politically misguided younger generation that not only prevented him from trying out his “left and democratic” experiment in New Delhi, as the prime minister of a left-of-centre coalition, but also disagreed with his assessment of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the politics of a Gorbachev and the economics of a Deng.
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Jyoti Basu was among the first in the CPI-M to understand the rot that had set in in the erstwhile Soviet Union and the urge of European communists to become part of the democratic mainstream. If he had the courage and stamina of a Deng Xiao Peng, he could have reversed the de-industrialisation of West Bengal. For all his political longevity, Basu was an isolated man, not respected and listened to in his own party. Which is why it is not surprising that he was unable to keep his word to Manmohan Singh that the Left would never withdraw support to the United Progressive Alliance government and that Manmohan Singh would have an uninterrupted five years in office. Some among his own who give him the “red salute” today were precisely the ones who ignored his advice and cared not for his admonishments. In the past week, this newspaper published two contrary views on Basu’s legacy. One in praise and the other critical. But such would be the legacy of any politician who has been a head of government for almost a quarter century! Jyoti Basu deserved a Bharat Ratna in his lifetime, but should certainly be awarded one at least posthumously.