Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: The Pioneer
Date: March 20, 2007
When in power, veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu,
who presided over West Bengal's decline and death, was as ruthless and callous
as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
Even before West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee's critics, both within and outside the CPI(M) and the Left Front
it leads, could articulate their opposition to the ghastly atrocities that
were committed by the police and Marxist cadre at Nandigram on March 14, one
man had set himself to the task of cranking up criticism with remarkable energy
and alacrity for his age.
Veteran Marxist and former Chief Minister
Jyoti Basu did not lose any time in making public his disagreement with the
"anti-people action" of his successor at Writers' Building. And,
if stories emanating from Kolkata are to be believed, he promptly contacted
leaders of the CPI(M)'s partners in the Left Front, notably those of the RSP
and the Forward Bloc, and urged them to lash out at Mr Bhattacharjee.
At an informal meeting among the Left Front
partners on March 15 in Kolkata, Mr Basu, having worked himself into a right
royal rage, is believed to have pitilessly castigated Mr Bhattacharjee, demanding
to know, with all the pomposity that he could command, as to who had ordered
the police action. As a sullen Chief Minister decided against converting the
meeting into a slanging match, Mr Basu continued with his fulminations: Why
did the police resort to firing? Why were protesters shot in their bellies
and their heads? In the end, he accused Mr Bhattacharjee of being "arrogant"
and "uncaring".
In Delhi, Mr Basu's criticism found resonance
in the timid response of the CPI(M)'s tele-friendly leaders, Mr Prakash Karat
and Mr Sitaram Yechury. Both let it be known that had Mr Basu been at the
helm of affairs in West Bengal, they would have been spared the ignominy of
having to justify such barbarity. Almost taking a cue from them, the feisty
Trinamool Congress chairperson, Ms Mamata Banerjee, told newspersons that
"even a respected person like Jytoibabu has condemned the police firing".
Suddenly, it would seem, Mr Basu has emerged
as a better Chief Minister, a more humane administrator and a farsighted leader
compared to Mr Bhattacharjee. Many of those who are spitting venom at West
Bengal's accidental Chief Minister - had it not been for Promode Dasgupta,
Mr Bhattacharjee would have been penning poetry overladen with darkly haunting
metaphors much like his uncle Sukanto Bhattacharjee who died at the young
age of 21 raging against hunger and poverty or his favourite Russian poet
Vladimir Vladimirovich Ma-yakovsky who committed suicide - it would appear,
are yearning for the good old days when Mr Basu held the 'Red Fort'.
The truth, however, is that there are no good
old days to recall. If anything, Mr Basu's record in office, first as Deputy
Chief Minister in two successive United Front Governments beginning 1967 (for
all practical purposes he was the de facto Chief Minister with a hapless Ajoy
Mukherjee reduced to indulging in Gandhiana) and later as Chief Minister for
nearly a quarter of a century at the head of the Left Front Government which
has been in power for three decades now, the "longest elected Communist
Government" as party commissars untiringly point out to the naive and
the novitiate, is a terrible tale of calculated destruction of a State in
the name of ideology.
It was Mr Basu, whose feigned outrage over
the police going berserk at the behest of their political masters at Nandigram
is now being cited to paint him in bright colours, who actively politicised
West Bengal Police. It was he who instructed them, as Deputy Chief Minister
during the disastrous UF regime, to play the role of foot soldiers of the
CPI(M), first by not acting against party cadre on the rampage, and then by
playing an unabashedly partisan role in industrial and agrarian disputes.
The 'humane administrator' and the 'farsighted
leader', few would recall today, presided over the destruction and death of
industry in West Bengal, denuding the State of its wealth and disinheriting
future generations of Bengalis. Within the first seven months of the United
Front coming to power, he ensured 43,947 workers were laid off because of
strikes and gheraoes and 4,314 rendered unemployed after their factories were
shut down. Flight of capital in those initial days of emergent Marxist power
amounted to Rs 2,500 million. In 1967, there were 438 'industrial disputes'
involving 165,000 workers and resulting in the loss of five million man hours.
By 1969, there were 710 'industrial disputes' involving 645,000 workers and
a loss of 8.5million man hours.
That was a taste of things to come in the
following decades. By the time Mr Basu demitted office, West Bengal had been
reduced to a vast industrial wasteland. The only beneficiaries of the policies
and programmes actively promoted by Mr Basu were a clutch of Marwari asset-strippers
and promoters who moved in to convert industrial wasteland into housing projects.
Mr Basu remains loyal to both; even in retirement he ensures promoters violating
environment and other laws have their way while those who feathered their
nests thanks to 'industrial disputes' instigated by Marxist trade unionists
swear by him and his able tutelage.
Mr Basu is aghast that the blood of innocent
men and women should be spilled in so callous a manner by the Government headed
by Mr Bhattacharjee. Yet, Mr Basu, while in office, did not brook any criticism
of the Marich Jhapi massacre by his police in 1979 when refugees were shot
dead in cold blood. Till date, nobody knows for sure how many died in that
slaughter for Mr Basu never allowed an independent inquiry. Neither did the
man whose heart bleeds so profusely for the lost souls of Nandigram hesitate
to justify the butchery of April 30, 1982 when 16 monks and a nun of the Ananda
Marg order were beaten to death and then set ablaze in south Kolkata by a
mob of Marxist goons. The man who led that murderous lot was known for his
proximity to Mr Basu, a fact that the CPI(M) would now hasten to deny. Nor
did Mr Basu wince when his police shot dead 13 Congress activists a short
distance from Writers' Building on July 21, 1993; on the contrary, he continues
to justify that incident.
Mr Bhattacharjee's initial reaction to the
horrifying killings of March 14 was no doubt that of a cynical politician
not unduly perturbed by the loss of a few lives. His subsequent "regret",
which party apparatchiks insist does not amount to an apology, is not becoming
of a man with pretentious claims to being a poet and a playwright. But was
Mr Basu any more sensitive to the plight of those who suffered at the hands
of his party's thugs? Did his heart cry out when women health workers were
gang-raped and then two of them murdered by thugs with Marxist affiliation
on May 17, 1990 at Bantala on the eastern margins of Kolkata? Or when office-bearers
of the Kolkata Police Association patronised by the CPI(M) raped Nehar Banu,
a poor pavement dweller, at Phulbagan police station in 1992? If we were to
recall his response to such gross abuse of power by party cadre and party-affiliated
policemen - "Emon to hoyei thaakey" (Such things happen), much like
former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's comment, "Stuff happens"
- and his sly insinuations that the victims of such barbarity deserved what
they got, Mr Basu would neither shine in comparison to Mr Bhattacharjee nor
come across as an angel in red.
It's amusing to watch the name-calling in
the wake of the violence in Nandigram. It brings to mind an old idiom fallen
into disuse, that of the pot calling the kettle black. The Bengali version,
popular in north Kolkata, is too risque to be repeated here.
