Patriarch's death a blow to communism
By an IPS correspondent
KOLKATA - On Sunday, when this eastern India metropolis of moderate winter
experienced one of the chilliest days of the season, the weather was no
deterrent for the tens of thousands who lined the streets to catch a glimpse of
a 95-year-old communist leader's body soon after a teary-eyed comrade announced
his death.
The red flags fluttered and chants of red salutes filled the air as a sea of
communist foot soldiers joined the common people who thronged the streets, many
breaking down in tears, as they paid
their last respects to Jyoti Basu, the communist patriarch and architect of
India's mainstream parliamentary communism.
People began bidding a tearful farewell to Basu, who came close to becoming the
first communist prime minister of India but for his own party puritans. Basu,
born on July 8, 1914, died of multiple organ failure. His body was due to be
donated to medical science on Tuesday, after a funeral to be attended by
India's political royalty and foreign dignitaries.
The passing away of Basu - India's longest-serving chief minister whose
unbroken 23-year-old rule from 1977 to 2000 of a left front coalition in West
Bengal state is a history in itself - is seen as a blow to the communist
movement in India as a whole, wilting under fragile unity, political
"foolhardiness" and lack of pragmatic icons.
"The death of Basu is a big setback to the left's unity in India, especially in
West Bengal, one of the three Indian states where communists have a presence,"
said political analyst Sabyasachi Basu Roychowdhury.
Ashok Ghosh, a left veteran and leader of a left front constituent, the All
India Forward Bloc, admitted the passing away of Basu would weaken the
communist front.
The left front in West Bengal has ruled the eastern state since 1977 after
Basu's party, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), led a coalition of
small left outfits to power.
During its nearly 23-year rule, Basu presided as chief minister with an iron
grip on the administration until November 2000, when old age ailments forced
him to pass the baton to his then deputy, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.
Basu was considered a pragmatic icon of Marxism who made communism a part of
India's mainstream politics and survived the ideological crisis triggered by
the Soviet Union's collapse in the early 1990s with his sheer charisma and
practical policies.
But after his retirement, his reformist successor Bhattacharjee's shift from
agriculture to industry met with debacles over his land acquisition policies
that angered the communists' traditional electorate, the farmers, who were the
biggest beneficiaries of the left front's land-reform initiatives.
Bhattacharjee's policies triggered bloody conflicts and strengthened the
opposition.
The number of left front seats in the new Indian parliament fell below 25 from
60 earlier in the 545-member Lower House after the most recent general
elections, in April-May 2009.
"The absence of Basu, who was a left liberal accepted by all, will certainly
affect the left in West Bengal ahead of state elections in 2011. They are
already weakened by the rejection of farmers and the rise of the opposition,"
said Roychowdhury.
"However, I don't think the left's unity will crumble immediately. It will take
some time. The various constituents of the left front are together for vested
interests, and so they will not beak that unity at one go."
Some of the junior partners of the CPI-M in the left front also consider the
death of Basu a big loss to the communist movement in India.
"We could go to him for support and in times of crises. He would listen to us,
advise use, guide and direct us and ensure that we did not disintegrate. Now we
are without a guardian," said Kshiti Goswami, a West Bengal minister and leader
of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, a constituent of the left front.
"I think the left's unity could break without him," said Goswami, who had
wanted to resign from the left front several times after gross human-rights
violations were committed in the Nandigram region in West Bengal, where the
government wanted to set up a low-tax special economic zone and a chemical hub.
"When I wanted to resign over the human-rights violations, he held my hand and
asked me to preserve the left's unity built with so much sacrifice and
struggle. Now, where will we go?" asked the leader whose confidence in a big
ally, the CPI-M, the party to which Basu belonged, has been shaken since the
killing of farmers during police firing in Nandigram.
The violence in Nandigram, located about 150 kilometers south of the provincial
capital, Kolkata, reached a flashpoint when, on March 14, 2007, police fired on
villagers, killing 14 people. Hundreds were injured and women raped by armed
Marxist cadres as the year-long conflict raged.
Although the government promised no land would be acquired in Nandigram after
the resistance, the farmers remained unconvinced after farmlands in Singur near
Kolkata were seized to build a factory for the manufacturing of the Nano,
billed as the cheapest car in the world, from Tata Motors, one of the biggest
Indian carmakers.
The CPI-M's general secretary, Prakash Karat, who was opposed to Basu attaining
the seat of prime minister in 1996, a decision the late leader had termed as an
"historic blunder", said the patriarch had been able to put into practice what
the leftists had preached.
The left also paid a heavy price in the 2009 elections for withdrawing support
for the Congress government in New Delhi over a civil nuclear deal with the
United States.
According to long-time colleague and former speaker of parliament's Lower
House, Somnath Chatterjee, Basu's biggest strength was his understanding of the
people and his non-partisan approach to national issues, which endeared him
even to arch rivals like Congress, the left-of-center party that has mostly
ruled India since it gained independence in 1947.
"He understood the people and so remained a leader of the people," said
Chatterjee.
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