Asia-Pacific, Headlines, Human Rights

INDIA: Patriarch’s Death a Big Blow to Mainstream Communism

IPS Correspondent

KOLKATA, Jan 18 2010 (IPS) - 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 tens of thousands who lined up 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 salute 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 would be donated to medical science on Tuesday, Jan. 19, 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 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, wilting under fragile unity, political “foolhardiness” and lack of pragmatic icons.

“The death of Basu is a big setback to the left 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 the Left Front constituent 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 the nearly 33-year rule, Basu presided as chief minister with iron grip on the administration until November 2000, when old age ailments forced him to pass on the baton to his then deputy, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee.

Basu was considered a pragmatic icon of Marxism who made communist movement part of India’s mainstream politics and survived the ideological crisis triggered by the Soviet Union’s collapse 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 Left Front’s land reforms initiatives.

Bhattacharjee’s policies triggered bloody conflicts and strengthened the opposition.

The Left Front seats in the new Indian parliament fell below 25 from 60 earlier in the 545-member lower house after the last 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 rise of the opposition,” said Basu Roychowdhury.

“However, I don’t think immediately left unity will crumble. It will take some time. The various constituents of the Left Front are together for vested interest, and so they will not beak the unity at one go.”

Some of the junior partners of the CPI-M in the Left Front ministry also consider the death of Basu a big loss to the communist movement in India.

“We could go to him earlier for support and in times of crises. He would listen to us, advise use, guide and direct us and ensure that we do 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 left unity can break without him,” said Goswami, who had wanted to resign from the ministry several times after gross human rights violations were committed in 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 left unity built with so much sacrifice and struggle. Now where would we go?” asked the leader whose confidence in the big ally, CPI-M, the party to which Basu belonged, has been shaken since the killing of farmers in police firing in Nandigram.

The violence in Nandigram, located about 150 kilometres south of the provincial capital of Kolkata, reached a flashpoint when, on March 14, 2007, police fired on the villagers, killing 14 people. Hundreds were injured and women were raped by armed Marxist cadres as the yearlong 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 Nano, billed as the cheapest car in the world, from Tata Motors, one of the biggest Indian carmakers.

As the communists faced repeated resistance, Basu’s retirement from the helm was felt by the partymen. “He was peerless. His absence is definitely a huge setback to the left in India,” said West Bengal Left Front chairman and party leader Biman Bose.

The party puritans also admit the crisis.

CPI-M 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 “historic blunder,” said the patriarch could put into practice what the leftists preached.

The left also paid a heavy price in the 2009 elections for withdrawing support to the Congress government in New Delhi over a civil nuclear deal with the United States, a decision taken by Karat.

According to long-time colleague and former speaker of Indian parliament’s lower house, Somnath Chatterjee, Basu’s biggest strength was his understanding of the people and non-partisan approach to national issues, which endeared him even to arch rivals like Congress, the left-of-centre party that has mostly ruled India since it attained independence in 1947.

“He understood the people and so remained a leader of the people, something no one could do later,” said Chatterjee.