GREAT INDIANS

Jyoti Basu
The humanitarian leader (1914-2010)

Stymied by his own dogma-bound partymen Jyoti Basu missed an opportunity to become the Prime Minister of India first in 1990 and then again in 1996. His own partymen dragged him back from the august chair which had been offered to him by a distraught nation on a platter. But unlike his protégé, Somnath Chatterjee, Jyoti Basu accepted the majority decision in the true spirit of democracy, ungrudgingly. Later, he dismissed the entire episode as a “historic blunder.” His place in Indian political history remains intact, however, as the longest serving Chief Minister of any state. He ruled West Bengal from June 21, 1977 to November 6, 2000 – an unbroken twenty three and a half years.
Born to a US-trained medical practitioner, Dr. Nisikanta Basu and Hemalata Basu, Jyoti Basu was sent to join the Indian Civil Service. Instead, he chose to qualify as a Barrister and returned to India in 1940. Despite his elitist background and English education, Jyoti Basu chose to join the Communist movement. He was influenced by the teachings of Prof. Harold Laski of the London School of Economics and Rajni Palme Dutt and Harry Polit, two of the early British Communist leaders. His classmate and colleague, Rajni Patel, too became a Communist but later, Rajni Patel came into the Congress to emerge as one of the key advisers of the Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. Both established themselves as people’s leaders, espousing people’s causes and influencing national politics. While Patel influenced politics at the Centre through Mrs. Gandhi and in Maharashtra, Basu did the same in West Bengal. In the troubled era of fast changing vulnerable coalition politics at the Centre, Rajiv Gandhi offered Jyoti Basu the Prime Ministership with Congress supporting him from outside, in 1990.
The second time, in 1996, the offer had the backing of the entire nation, for by then Jyoti Basu had proved his dexterity at running difficult coalition governments in his own West Bengal. The Bengali bourgeoisie, who had become the voice of the proletariat, was told by the Central Committee of the Marxist Party that with just 36 Members of Parliament in a house of 540, there was little he could do to fulfill Marxist aspirations or programmes.
But, the party did not realise that the very fact of a Marxist becoming the Prime Minister through the democratic process would have been as momentous as the democratic election of the first Communist government in world history in Kerala in 1957. Given the chaotic political situation in the country during that period, Jyoti Basu with his innate charm, sagacity and political skills in managing coalition politics could have transformed the politics of the country for good. Jyoti Basu had the innate capacity to be the heart of a true classless society – the ultimate objective of Communism. Unlike most other diehard Marxists, Jyoti Basu was a true democrat, disciplined to the core and conceding everyone the freedom to hold his own opinion. It was mainly due to his own manner of expressing his own views that he was able to popularise Communism in West Bengal. True, in the government, he did commit mistakes – like accepting the party’s decision to abandon education in English and banning large-scale computerisation of the state.
But his achievement in rural development and introduction of the Panchayati Raj system in his state was monumental. He fought superstition and stood for the popularisation of science. He carried the poorest of the poor with him – the farmers, labourers, minorities, scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. As Chief Minister, he introduced large-scale land reforms in West Bengal empowering millions of landless peasants and share-croppers. This enabled him to consolidate his electoral base in the state. He also gave the state the Haldia petrochemical complex, a huge industrial initiative. He also ensured communal harmony in the state and through it political stability.
– P. K. Ravindranath, veteran journalist