Chandan Mitra says Jyoti Basu’s mystique overpowered his myriad failures

India has always defied Shakespeare’s famous observation in Julius Caesar: “The good that men do are oft interred with their bones.” Here, cultural norms dictate silence about a dead person’s faults, no matter how glaring, while his achievements are showered with fulsome praise, even if concocted and mythical. It was not surprising therefore to be subjected to a barrage of purple prose extolling the virtues of Red baron Jyoti Basu — ranging from his contribution to the Communist movement, to success in hanging on as Chief Minister of West Bengal for 23 uninterrupted years and, finally, his allegedly Spartan lifestyle. Much of what was said by way of tribute to the 95-year-old Communist patriarch consisted of large doses of hyperbole and retrospective imagination.

Jyoti Basu was an astute politician who skillfully crafted an image of being an upright but aloof, unsmiling man, intimidating rather than loving, stern and determined. In reality, he made no spectacular contribution to ideology or governance. His critics rightly point to his deliberate hands-off policy with regard to the party-backed trade union movement which brought industry and commerce to its knees during the ’80s and ’90s, drove talent and capital out of Bengal in multitudes and virtually laid to waste what was one of India’s foremost States before CPI(M)’s untrammeled (and ongoing) reign of 33 years began in 1977.

As he looked on with benign indulgence, his party created a frightening stranglehold on Government officials through the dreaded Coordination Committee. Against all laws, the Committee became almost a closed shop which forced everybody except all-India service officials to join. So much so that even today, salaries at the West Bengal Government headquarters at Writers’ Building are disbursed in cash: The Coordination Committee stonewalled incumbent Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee’s move to pay the staff by bank transfer. The reason is not far to seek. On pay day, Committee apparatchiks move from table to table in the head office of babudom to immediately collect its monthly “levy”. None dare refuse. This organisation systematically spawned a non-work ethic whereby files that should get routed in one day take at least one week. Recently, it threatened an indefinite strike against the proposal to introduce a biometric system to enforce timely office attendance. The Government bowed again to its blackmail.

Finally, Spartan is an adjective that ill-adorns Basu’s bhadralok persona: He had suits tailored in the global capital of men’s fashion, Bond Street in London, and to his credit was not hypocritical about his fondness for Scotch. A cultured offspring of a distinguished family from erstwhile East Bengal, he studied law at Inner Temple but barely practiced, preferring instead to internalise tenets of Marxism-Leninism at the feet of 1930s Marxist ideologue Rajani Palme Dutt whose seminal work India Today is still regarded as the Indian Communists’ Bible. Impatient with theoretical propositions, Jyoti Basu was a devoted pragmatist, but unlike, say, Deng Xiaoping, could never lead his party and remained only its acceptable middle-class face.

However, this critique still begs the question as to what was it that enabled him to become India’s longest-serving Chief Minister (Gegong Apang of Arunachal Pradesh has since beaten his record) and die such a widely venerated man? What, indeed, was the secret of Jyoti Basu’s charisma? This is probably one of the biggest mysteries of post-Independence Indian politics. Basu was no public speaker of repute. His speeches were staccato, devoid of both depth and humour, consisting primarily of banalities, which surprisingly, were lapped up by adoring crowds.

I distinctly remember his address at a huge CPM rally at Kolkata’s Brigade Parade Grounds in 1984 when a shell-shocked nation was trying to come to grips with Indira Gandhi’s assassination and looking to her son for succour. “Ei je Rajiv Gandhi. Uni ekhaney eshechhen, bhashon dichhen chari dikey. Onar maa ke aami chintaam. Uni to Emergency lagiye amader jailey purey diyechhilen. Ore chhele ki kortey parbey? Oder bishshas korben na. (This fellow Rajiv Gandhi. He has come here and is making speeches everywhere. I used to know his mother. She imposed Emergency and put us behind bars. So, what can her son achieve? Don’t trust them)”. The crowds broke into spontaneous applause and cries of “Jyoti Basu Lal Salaam” rent the air. The rest of his long speech consisted of similar inane, simplistic comments. Anyone else would have tested a crowd’s patience with a string of statements like this. But such was his mass appeal that coming from Basu, even such trivial remarks evoked huge response.

He was also given to cutting but insensitive responses to media queries on many occasions. When the gruesome Bantala incident happened (a woman was dragged out of a vehicle and gangraped by CPM goons in a Kolkata suburb in full view of assembled people), he cursorily dismissed it by saying “E shob toh hoeyi thakey (Such things keep happening)”. There was hardly a murmur of protest against the Chief Minister’s shocking comment. Jyoti Basu was seen as above such mundane administrative or police lapses.

Thus the CPM got away with the Bijon Setu massacre of 17 Ananda Margis, burnt alive on a flyover in Kolkata, Barddhaman’s Sai Bari killings and a host of other grisly crimes. Each time, the police and administration, thoroughly infiltrated into by party cadre, looked the other way and even colluded with the murderers. At Marichjhampi, an island in the Ganga delta of Sundarbans, the police opened indiscriminate fire on hapless, tormented East Pakistan refugees, killing an unknown number of people, estimated by locals to run into hundreds. They had forcibly settled on the sparsely inhabited island after being tossed around among States that broke all promises made to them. An inactive and partially indoctrinated media virtually blacked out the horrifying tale of Bengal’s Gulag. Basu never believed he owed an explanation for anything.

Maybe it was his aloofness and stentorian attitude that helped weave a web of charisma around him. He was inaccessible to everyone — from party cadre to the media and even the “sarbohara” (proletariat) in whose name he ruled. Accountability was a word that didn’t exist in his dictionary although he was feted for being a moderate and firm believer in parliamentary democracy in contrast to hard-line party leaders like BT Ranadive who propagated armed insurrection as the road to power.

He was celebrated by Kolkata’s high society for being “People like us” (PLU), who talked no politics when he breezed into parties and interacted with self-serving, fawning industrial barons who were in complete awe of his personality. I recall that at a dinner hosted by La Martiniere for Boys’ to release a volume authored by me on the school’s sesqui-centennial in 1986, Basu walked in sporting his legendary rapid gait, became the cynosure instantly, happily heard praises lavished upon him by the city’s Who’s Who, barely spoke as he consumed two drinks and left the venue in the same brisk manner after just about 20 minutes. It was in his time that a clutch of Marwari land sharks grabbed prize property in and around Kolkata for real estate purposes and in exchange liberally funded a party that had once vowed to eliminate the bourgeoisie.

Probably another factor adding to Basu’s charisma was that he was the only man of consequence in a party with whom people could identify. Especially after organisation boss Pramod Dasgupta died, there was no other leader of any stature in the party or Government. Stalwarts like Harekrishna and Binoy Konar were too “rustic”, while the younger leaders were perceived as rowdy and uncouth. Till the early ’90s the CPM continued to spew venom against the affluent and this rhetoric unnerved the urban upper strata. Although Basu rarely lifted a finger to rectify the brazen wrongs committed by his party workers, the middle class continued to live in the illusion that he was one leader they could turn to for reassurance. And then there was fear. The CPM had erected a merciless mechanism whereby its Local Committee supplanted the police and administration. Even petty disputes required the Local Committee’s intervention and the message was loud —‘Come to us, not the police’.

On the back of Operation Barga, initiated during Basu’s first stint as Chief Minister (1977-82) — which merely entailed implementation of laws enacted by preceding Congress Governments — his party crafted a rigorous network in the countryside that was subsequently institutionalised through the Panchayati Raj mechanism. From the appointment of schoolteachers to contracts for rural road building and compensation for flood damage, every minute detail of rural governance was overseen by the party cadre. It is only in the ’90s that an opposition emerged for the first time in the shape of the fire-breathing Mamata Banerjee who has since successfully outflanked the CPM from the Left. As the CPM merrily went about demolishing the existing State apparatus, permitting policemen to form a trade union and reducing even the District Magistrate to a harried rubber-stamp, Jyoti Basu presided over this edifice unconcerned about continuing in office since elections were perfectly stage-managed starting with doctored voters’ lists. Cultivating a posture of being above it all, Basu was content to be CPM’s showpiece, cheerfully accepting accolades from all.

Over the years he also got mesmerised by the propaganda around him that created a personality cult. His friend and one-time Finance Minister of the State, Ashok Mitra, once described Basu as Bengal’s greatest contemporary leader, at par with Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose! All such praise may have convinced Basu that he was the ideal man to be Prime Minister when a motley Opposition combine in Delhi offered it to him in the aftermath of PV Narasimha Rao’s defeat in the 1996 Lok Sabha poll. Basu never forgave party hardliners for scuttling his job. In a rare instance of defiance, he famously described the Politburo’s decision as a “historic blunder”. But given his disastrous track record as Chief Minister, his detractors are probably right in asserting that the bigger blunder would have been to install him at Race Course Road.

A short-tempered man, Basu never took criticism kindly. Once, as he passed by a lobby in Writers’ Building that had been refashioned into a Media waiting room, he was aghast to find a few hundred clerks enthusiastically watching the telecast of a cricket match. For once, the Chief Minister’s proverbial authority collapsed. “E shob ki hochchhey? Choloon nijer jaygay kiye kaaj koroon shokoley (What is going on? Come on, get back to your own places and start working)’, he sternly ordered. His very own staff, hand-reared by his own party into anti-work culture derisively chanted “Jaan-jaan moshai apni bari jaan” (You please carry on and go home) followed by “Jyoti Basu Murdabad” in response to his admonition. An aghast Basu quickly climbed down the stairs and exited, sparing himself further embarrassment. Next day all TV sets at Writers’ Building were removed and the Media Corner permanently sealed. Livid with the media’s new-found aggression in the ’90s, Basu frequently exhorted people to stop reading “bourgeois newspapers” (naming them with varied epithets), and subscribe to the party’s own daily Ganashakti instead. Although the cadre dutifully bought copies of the mouthpiece they continued to carefully read the spicier “bourgeois” alternatives, much to Basu’s eternal frustration.

In the final analysis, it must be admitted that Jyoti Basu remains an everlasting enigma. He was probably at the right place at the right time for Bengalis who were ready to clutch at straws to relive their dreams that progressively slid away through the ’60s and ’70s. Tired with sectarian violence, Naxalite depredations and Congress counter-terror, in cahoots with the police between 1972 and 1977, the average Bengali wanted respite. Above all they wanted peace, even if it was the peace of a graveyard. Jyoti Basu ensured Bengal got just that.