tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48571374368849729202024-03-05T18:54:59.893+05:30JYOTI BASUJYOTI BASU believed that “it is man and man alone who creates history. Despite many crests and thrusts people will finally emerge victorious and go in freedom in a classless society free from exploitation of any form.”AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.comBlogger194125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-84699546880951263942020-09-05T23:08:00.001+05:302020-09-05T23:08:13.645+05:30Communists didn't support Emergency: Jyoti Basu<p><b><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Rifat Jawaid in
Calcutta</span></span></b></p><p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="http://www.rediff.com/cgi-programs/mailto.pl?article=%22http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/24basu.htm%22"></a></p>
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<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 18.6667px;"><b>June 24, 2000</b></span></span></p>
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<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">West Bengal Chief
Minister Jyoti Basu has angrily denounced recent reports that the Communists
tacitly supported the Emergency.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In an exclusive
interview to rediff.com, he said, "There cannot be a bigger lie
than this. This is absolutely rubbish. Those who level such charges should know
that the Communists were the biggest victims of the Emergency. Don't they know
that our member of Parliament, Jyotirmoy Basu, was arrested along with
thousands of workers? Such were the brutalities meted out to him that he died
in police lock-up. If we were supporters of the Emergency, as alleged by our
adversaries, we would not have extended support to Jayaprakash Narayan's
movement. The problem with journalists your age is that you were too young to
be witnesses to the Emergency. Therefore, our political rivals easily succeed
in misinforming you."</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Recalling the 19
months of the Emergency, on the eve of its 25th anniversary, Basu said while
many of his colleagues went underground, he was forced to carry on in total
secrecy. "This turned to be a blessing in disguise for us. We utilised the
ban on our public activities to our advantage. We started interacting with the
people on a one to one basis. This helped us improve our rapport with ordinary
people tremendously. That was perhaps one reason why we came to power in the
very next assembly election -- in 1977 -- and have been continuing since,"
he said.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Were the Socialists
right in their decision to align with the Jan Sangh to form the Janata Party
after the Emergency? Basu, who will be 86 on July 8, said he was averse to the
idea of an alliance with the Jan Sangh. "I warned JP not to align with the
Jan Sangh. I told him they (the Jan Sangh leaders) would put you in an awful
predicament, but he said there was no alternative in the given circumstances
but to align with the Jan Sangh. I made my party's stand absolutely clear that
none of our leaders would ever share a platform where Jan Sangh leaders are
present," he added.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">For Basu, the
Emergency was "the worst thing that could ever happen in India after
Independence."</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">"It was a
shameful act on Indira Gandhi's part," the veteran Marxist said. "It
only resulted in butchering democracy and depriving people of various liberties
including their fundamental rights. Thousands of people were sent behind bars.
But this could not suppress the masses as people came out on roads organising
rallies against the Emergency. That Indira Gandhi lost the 1977 election was
corroborative of the fact that the people did not approve of her decision. By
voting her out of power, the people rightly gave the Congress a fitting reply
for its sins that had wreaked havoc among the minds of ordinary citizens all
through the country."</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">He also criticised
the then Congress government in West Bengal, accusing it of committing human
rights violations on a large scale. "Indira Gandhi pronounced the
Emergency on June 25, 1975, but Siddhartha Shankar Ray (EM> the then
Congress chief minister of West Bengal) had begun two years ago when his party
assumed power in the state, by rigging the polls. We boycotted the assembly to
protest the large scale rigging by the Congress party. Siddhartha Shankar Ray
crossed all limits of inhuman acts. There was nothing we could do then. We had
to shut down our offices in the state. Many of our senior leaders and workers
were arrested and killed, others remained underground for months. That we have
been in power since 1977 amply indicates that Bengalis have not forgotten the
trauma of the Emergency," Basu, who will step down at the next election,
explained.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/24basu.htm">https://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/24basu.htm</a>
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.363895000000014-5.7375878361788466 53.207645000000014 50.882879836178844 123.52014500000001tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-27083213774008644272020-06-25T18:14:00.000+05:302020-06-25T18:14:26.721+05:30<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6eZgtjUz_gGF-9tf9sJAWpd7PlqGs2iWniejsjMgtQbt0TPXn5XghQVv3WdtvsE4POCsuGPxiHaDSblBxrWcTd-ttMEGc3_kn1ePr2pru5Ob3ENd952MJ80B3IlEsUCJPijRNRZG6y0M/s1600/jb+jb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEha6eZgtjUz_gGF-9tf9sJAWpd7PlqGs2iWniejsjMgtQbt0TPXn5XghQVv3WdtvsE4POCsuGPxiHaDSblBxrWcTd-ttMEGc3_kn1ePr2pru5Ob3ENd952MJ80B3IlEsUCJPijRNRZG6y0M/s400/jb+jb.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389500000001421.6350005 87.073001500000018 23.510291499999997 89.654788500000009tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-24874219137006778482019-07-16T21:08:00.000+05:302019-07-16T21:08:49.896+05:30TMC government clears land allotment for Jyoti Basu centre<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Times, serif; font-size: 14pt;"><i><b>TNN | Updated: Jul
16, 2019, 6:36 IST </b></i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSG43bg1O8Yw01uU_ACyGrbNqiEr7PPAdo-Vd0SoIxT3d0bE2bLJo0QYQIZRUrQ4gqR-lKB4dUFbbLRVKITqiMv17Z4HDxa0vipzB-GFImsJznP_UmOyNHrw9NXgkntjfJ2QcSBmTPw-o1/s1600/JB+centre+TOI+16.07.19.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="696" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSG43bg1O8Yw01uU_ACyGrbNqiEr7PPAdo-Vd0SoIxT3d0bE2bLJo0QYQIZRUrQ4gqR-lKB4dUFbbLRVKITqiMv17Z4HDxa0vipzB-GFImsJznP_UmOyNHrw9NXgkntjfJ2QcSBmTPw-o1/s320/JB+centre+TOI+16.07.19.jpeg" width="174" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><b><br /></b></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><b>KOLKATA:</b> The state
is set to allot a five-acre plot in New Town for a research centre in memory of
former chief minister <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and CPM patriarch
Jyoti Basu, raising eyebrows in political<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>circles as many see the government decision as Mamata Banerjee’s<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>bid to reach out to the Left and secular
forces. Papers for the land allocation were ready during the Left Front regime in
2010, but the deal got stuck in 2011 when Trinamool came to power. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Sources in the state
secretariat said the Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) was
instructed to bring out the old files and give sanction to the plot. “The
proposal will be placed before the state cabinet and the allotment letter will
be issued once it is formally approved,” said an official.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Located in the
central business district, the centre will be built beside the upcoming High
Court complex. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">According to
officials, the Left front government had sanctioned a five-acre plot to a trust
for setting up a centre where people would get a glimpse of different items
used by Basu and have a library to conduct research. There were plans to</span><span lang="BN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Vrinda",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN; mso-hansi-font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">have an auditorium and hold workshops
and seminars as well.</span><span lang="BN" style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Vrinda",sans-serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-ascii-font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN; mso-hansi-font-family: Times;"> </span><span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The trust paid about Rs 5 crore to the government and an allotment
letter was issued. However, the process to hand over the plot got stuck in
2011. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0cm; text-align: justify;">
<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The CPM state committee had then sought the plot from the Mamata
Banerjee government, but no initiative was taken to proceed with the proposal. “The
land which they were holding back was sanctioned and the money was paid during
the Left Front government’s time,” said CPM leader Sujan Chakraborty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #222222; font-family: "Times",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Vrinda; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/70235970.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst">http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/70235970.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst</a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br />AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6350005 87.073001499999961 23.510291499999997 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-26544798536665934372019-07-07T20:34:00.000+05:302019-07-07T20:34:35.823+05:30CPI(M) delegation meets Mamata Banerjee over Jyoti Basu centre impasse <br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 14pt;">29 JUNE 2019 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><b>OUTLOOK, Last Updated
at 12:06 AM | SOURCE: IANS</b><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #4e4c4c; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: left;"><i>Students of Golden Sand Art Institute of Sudarshan Pattnaik at Puri make a sand sculpture of former Chief Minister West Bengal Jyoti Basu</i></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #4e4c4c; font-family: "PT Serif", serif; font-size: 17px; text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;"><b>Kolkata,
June 28:</b> A CPI-M delegation on Friday met West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata
Banerjee to resolve the impasse over the left party not getting possession of a
plot of land purchased by it for setting up a research centre in the name of
late party patriarch Jyoti Basu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Member of
the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) state secretariat Rabin Deb, who
was part of the delegation, said his party had been allotted a five-acre plot
of land by the erstwhile Left Front government in January, 2011 to build the
Jyoti Basu Centre for Social Studies and Research in the Rajarhat-Newtown area.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">"Accordingly,
we paid the full amount for the land in two instalments to the West Bengal
Housing Infrastructure Development Corporation (HIDCO) by the first half of
May, 2011. However, after the present (Trinamool Congress) government came to
power, we were not given possession of the land," said Deb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The CPI-M
had originally planned to launch the centre on Basu''s centenary in 2014, and
its leaders called on Banerjee and Municipal Affairs and Urban Development
Minister Firhad Hakim to pursue the matter.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">"But
the Chief Minister had told us that the minister would take care of the matter.
But the government later told us that it was prepared to allot a separate land
for the centre.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">"We
inspected this plot, but found that it was on a marsh land. Then we told the
government that since we had already paid the full amount for a specific plot
of land on the main road, we would go for that plot only," said Deb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">On
Friday, when the CPI-M leaders met her, Banerjee told them there was some
dispute over the plot of land allotted to the party earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">"We
have told the Chief Minister that we can go for a joint inspection of the plot
with the minister and HIDCO officials to see if there was any dispute. But to
the best of our knowledge, there is no dispute," said Deb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">Jyoti
Basu, one of the founding politburo members of the CPI-M, was the Chief
Minister of West Bengal during the Left Front rule from 1977-2000 before
voluntarily stepping down owing to ill-health and old age. He passed away on
Janaury 17, 2010.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The CPI-M
plans to utilise the centre to store documents concerning the leader as also
the communist movements in India and elsewhere in the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #58585b; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-fareast-language: EN-IN;">The
proposed centre is scheduled to have digitised information on Basu, besides
housing an auditorium, a conference room, a seminar room, a library and guest
rooms.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p> <u><b>O<a href="https://www.outlookindia.com/newsscroll/cpim-delegation-meets-mamata-over-jyoti-basu-centre-impasse/1564321">utlook</a></b></u></o:p></span></div>
<br />AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6350005 87.073001499999961 23.510291499999997 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-35057514005515818182018-01-16T16:34:00.000+05:302018-01-16T16:34:22.022+05:30Now Mamata Banerjee re-christens projects named after Left leader Jyoti Basu<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; vertical-align: baseline;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">By </span><i style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Madhuparna Das</i><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">, ET
Bureau</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Updated: Oct 15, 2017, 11.56 PM IST<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgegbcpsKyMUGXc5dmdfcryiXJ2mM-n47pU-JPd0jPMTwV37FMH3fvmUprxBe3Z9HsvNOctxm5wxzP68zjwdIQondOJLrjiKykgS8uZ5Rni0pDkoefFT2BH68wvYD6RJ_H_D5qSXdsOvqLy/s1600/Subhashda+on+Saltlake+stadium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="939" data-original-width="672" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgegbcpsKyMUGXc5dmdfcryiXJ2mM-n47pU-JPd0jPMTwV37FMH3fvmUprxBe3Z9HsvNOctxm5wxzP68zjwdIQondOJLrjiKykgS8uZ5Rni0pDkoefFT2BH68wvYD6RJ_H_D5qSXdsOvqLy/s400/Subhashda+on+Saltlake+stadium.jpg" width="286" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><b>KOLKATA:</b>
In August, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress emerged as the most vocal
critic in Parliament of the Centre’s proposal to rename the Mughalsarai
station. In just two months after those protests, her government in West Bengal
appears to be on a mission to re-christen state projects, and delink them from
their Communist past.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><br />
<br />
<span style="background: white;">The foundation stone of the Salt Lake stadium,
laid by the late Jyoti Basu, the longest serving Left Front CM, has been
removed from the main entry to the Kolkata sporting arena that’s hosting the
U-17 soccer world cup. Banerjee has also changed the name of a water treatment
plant from the Jyoti Basu Jal Prakalpa to Jai Hind Jal Prakalpa. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdE_pajQvtaQSDFfHpABEZU-rRnj0B6rFCY2bZP1ViUVgtc4rf0Mekp7CIoBZm2xVjaMvXePOcglixpKsdBsukpBpfMxSS6yTmS1zXHm5_MJvXuKAhIDqxg6HnWbkgnAwplMSF3ptQv4f_/s1600/JB+on+Saltlake+Stadium.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="934" data-original-width="717" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdE_pajQvtaQSDFfHpABEZU-rRnj0B6rFCY2bZP1ViUVgtc4rf0Mekp7CIoBZm2xVjaMvXePOcglixpKsdBsukpBpfMxSS6yTmS1zXHm5_MJvXuKAhIDqxg6HnWbkgnAwplMSF3ptQv4f_/s400/JB+on+Saltlake+Stadium.jpg" width="306" /></a></div>
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<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Her
government has also removed Basu’s name from the planned satellite city of
Newtown, and did not hand over a plot of land to the CPIM that bought the
property to build a research and study centre on Basu and the Communist
movement in West Bengal. In the renaming spree, she appears to have spared only
Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin - as of now. In downtown Kolkata, important roads
were named after the greatest Communist thinkers when the Left Front ruled West
Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">These
are among the more visible moves to end the Communist legacy. More subtle,
however, are the Left defections that the Trinamool has successfully engineered
in the past five years. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Simultaneously,
her government has been quietly changing the history syllabus to dilute the
textbook portrayals of the international Communist movement. Karl Marx,
Friedrich Engels and other Communist thinkers are now given limited space in
the school and college curriculum, and her government has replaced the Left
thought with chapters on the freedom struggle and the movements at Nandigram
and Singur. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">The
Bengal government has also replaced street art and murals with the logo of
Biswa Bangla, a state initiative that seeks to burnish the state’s allure as an
investment destination. Understandably, the moves have invited criticism from
the Opposition. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt;">
<span style="background: white; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;">Bikash
Ranjan Bhattacharyya, former mayor of Kolkata, said: “How can a government
destroy history? One might love or hate a particular idea, but how can one try
to omit or alter history? If the present regime has something to say, it should
add to the existing literature. But a government should always maintain
historical reality. Banerjee’s government has removed all plates and foundation
stones that had the names of her predecessors Jyoti Basu and Buddhadeb
Bhattacharjee. This is pure autocracy.”</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16pt;"><br />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Read more at:<br />
<a href="https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/61094641.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst"><span style="color: #024d99; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">//economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/61094641.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst</span></a><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6350005 87.073001499999961 23.510291499999997 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-47700756336469633832016-09-05T21:09:00.000+05:302016-09-05T21:09:09.124+05:30`She makes me a bad Marxist, makes me believe in godliness'<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Saugata Roy | TNN | Sep 5, 2016, 04.29 PM
IST<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42v8STtZpYxGcA_dabi2nnw0_IKMo_6axs2j3M5dYhbqG6ad1huNLFyV9vJpych-O1IXSfB-a_o5kX0QukBq_AJJsraTf8Jawpoj0-H1B8HaQ8sp_EhvI7ASNiRnOaMbpkDhY_2i7ZzjO/s1600/Mother-Teresa-photo-with-Shri-Jyoti-Basu+Bengal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh42v8STtZpYxGcA_dabi2nnw0_IKMo_6axs2j3M5dYhbqG6ad1huNLFyV9vJpych-O1IXSfB-a_o5kX0QukBq_AJJsraTf8Jawpoj0-H1B8HaQ8sp_EhvI7ASNiRnOaMbpkDhY_2i7ZzjO/s400/Mother-Teresa-photo-with-Shri-Jyoti-Basu+Bengal.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<i><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">A Marxist, Jyoti Basu stayed way from the
funeral mass at Netaji Indoor Stadium, but attended mother's last journey.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">How do a Catholic and a communist get
along,"people often wondered while discussing the mu tual respect that
Mother Teresa and Jyoti Basu had for each other. Basu was a Communist and
atheist. Mother was a Catholic nun with an unflinching belief in God. Yet,
Basu's doors were always open for Mother, who used to call on the chief
minister at Writers' Buildings without hesitation. Once, she was even allowed
to interrupt a cabinet meeting because she needed to meet Basu urgently.
<b><span style="color: blue;">"We share a love for the poor,"</span> </b>Basu would say in reply to the query. In his book on the Mother, `Messiah of the Poor', B K Chaturvedi quotes Basu
as saying: "She makes me a bad Marxist since she makes me believe in
godliness."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">When Mother addressed Basu, she would prefix `My
friend' before she took his name. The mutual understanding has a parallel in
Cuba, where Fidel Castro in 1992 welcomed churchgoing Catholics to join the
Communist Party of Cuba, shunning the "atheist" tag on communists.
Known as a liberal among Mar xists, Basu didn't give up his Marxist identity
though. He stayed away from the Mass before Mother's last journey at Netaji
Indoor Stadium, where dignitaries like US First Lady Hillary Clinton,
opposition leader Atal Behari Vajpayee had assembled to pay tribute. Basu joined
the programme only after the Missionaries of Charity spokesperson announced in
the stadium: "The Mother will now begin her last journey".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">A retired state bureaucrat recoun ted how Basu
worked from behind to give Mother Teresa a fitting farewell.He micro-managed
the entire programme and also gave the Missionaries of Charity the go-ahead to
keep her remains at Mother House, something that usually doesn't happen under
the law.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">In the book `Seeking Christ in the Crosses &
Joys of Aging', Ronda Chervin recounts an incident when Basu called up the
Mother asking her to provide a home for some destitute women who were
languishing in prison for the want of a better place. She immediately took in
40 and provi sions were made to build a home for them on the land provided by
the government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Former election commissioner Navin Chawla, who
was Mother's biographer, recounts how on one occasion when Mother was visiting
Delhi, she fell ill and had to be admitted to a hospital. For a week that she
was there, Chawla recalls, Basu called every day . When she was hospitalised in
Kolkata, Basu would discreetly drop by and speak to the doctors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">It must be sheer providence that Mother House
and Pramode Dasgupta Marxist Education Centre exist cheek by jowl. While the
former was Mother Teresa's residence and continues to be the nunnery where
relatively new entrants to the Missionaries of Charity are trained, the latter
is, as the name suggests, a centre that trains comrades.</span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal 700001, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6349985 87.073001499999961 23.5102935 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-65774926814584577362016-09-05T21:03:00.000+05:302016-09-05T21:03:25.462+05:30Basu and Mother Teresa: a special association<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://www.thehindu.com/profile/author/ananya-dutta/"><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif"; text-transform: uppercase;">ANANYA DUTTA</span></a><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif"; text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="background: white; color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 11.5pt; text-transform: uppercase;"><br />
<b><span class="upper">THE HINDU, KOLKATA,</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></b></span><span style="background: white; color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 11.5pt;"><b>January 19, 2010</b></span><span style="background: white; color: #7f7f7f; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif"; text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91M8fFQDzxoExLiV0xuzYcTmvR23CsdKQiCyPjiBU9uUf_U_uviDgAp5_2Gxz3JFfzivCz-adB80lx5Xn96T4cozpd4GCzPKo0J64Mq9HsmkklkkM_vPn6XkE1CVx9GiZcrGpJvtpDduR/s1600/18jan_teresa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj91M8fFQDzxoExLiV0xuzYcTmvR23CsdKQiCyPjiBU9uUf_U_uviDgAp5_2Gxz3JFfzivCz-adB80lx5Xn96T4cozpd4GCzPKo0J64Mq9HsmkklkkM_vPn6XkE1CVx9GiZcrGpJvtpDduR/s400/18jan_teresa.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif";"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif";">PTI<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Microsoft Sans Serif";">A file photo of 1994 shows veteran Communist leader and former
West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu with Mother Teresa at a function in
Kolkata.<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">As
Kolkata mourns and prepares for the “shesh jatra” (final journey) of veteran
Marxist leader Jyoti Basu on Tuesday, many are reminded of a public funeral
more than a decade ago, when Mr. Basu, as the West Bengal Chief Minister, came
to offer a wreath to Mother Teresa to sustained applause from a stadium full of
people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“The
special association between Jyoti Basu and Mother Teresa was marked by a mutual
admiration that they felt for each other. As far as Mr. Basu was concerned,
there were standing instructions that should she ever seek an appointment with
him, there was to be no delay,” said Joykrishno Ghosh, a personal aide of Mr.
Basu since 1977.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Mr.
Basu always tried to be supportive of her work and personally oversaw the
arrangements for her funeral, Mr. Ghosh said.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“She
makes me a bad Marxist since she makes me believe in godliness,” is what Mr.
Basu reportedly remarked after one of their frequent meetings, according to<i> Messiah
of the Poor</i>, a book on the life of Mother Teresa by B. K. Chaturvedi.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">The
remarkable, if somewhat paradoxical relationship between the Catholic nun, now
known as Blessed Teresa of Kolkata, and the committed Communist leader is well
known and widely written about.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">In the
book, Seeking Christ in the Crosses & Joys of Aging, Ronda Chervin recounts
an incident when Mr. Basu called up Mother Teresa asking her to provide a home
for some destitute women who were languishing in prison for the want of a
better place. She immediately took in 40 of them and provisions were made to
build a home for them on the land provided by the government.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Mother
Teresa was once allowed to interrupt a Cabinet meeting when she needed to meet
Mr. Basu urgently, film-maker T. Rajeevnath, who has been planning a film on
the life of Mother Teresa over the past few years, told <i>The Hindu</i> over
the telephone.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">“A year
ago I was surprised to receive a call from Jyoti Basu’s secretary. Jyoti Babu
had read media reports about my film and called me up to assure me that the
whole of Bengal will be with me if I made my film. Such was his regard for
her,” Mr. Rajeevnath said.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal 700001, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6349985 87.073001499999961 23.5102935 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-47948462065981374522016-09-05T20:55:00.000+05:302016-09-05T20:55:56.859+05:30JYOTI BASU & MOTHER TERESA: An unusual friendship<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 15.05pt; margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
<b><a href="http://www.thehindu.com/profile/author/navin-b.-chawla/"><span style="background: white; color: windowtext; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 15pt; text-transform: uppercase;">NAVIN B. CHAWLA</span></a></b><b><span style="background: white; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 15.0pt; text-transform: uppercase;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="background: white; font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">THE HINDU, January 19, 2010 02:08 IST<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>PTI <o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #333333; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><i>Mother Teresa invariably prefixed
"my friend" before she took Jyoti Basu's name.</i></span><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: blue;">Asked what he, a Communist
and atheist, could possibly have in common with Mother Teresa for whom God was
everything, Jyoti Basu said with a smile: </span><span style="color: red;">“We both share a love for the poor.”</span><span style="color: #999999;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Hindu<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>requested Navin B. Chawla, Chief
Election Commissioner of India and Mother Teresa’s biographer, to share his
insights into the remarkable friendship between Jyoti Basu and the founder of
the Missionaries of Charity:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">During the course of writing a
biography on Mother Teresa, I asked Chief Minister Jyoti Basu what he, a
Communist and atheist, could possibly have in common with Mother Teresa for
whom God was everything. With a smile that reached his eyes, he said: “We both
share a love for the poor.” For her part, Mother Teresa invariably prefixed the
words “My friend” before she took his name.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">From the legendary Chief Minister
of West Bengal, Dr. B.C. Roy, who first recognised her work, to the equally
legendary Jyoti Basu who was always available to her when she needed him,
Mother Teresa’s work in the city that was beloved of her, could not have been
possible to the extent it was without their understanding and their support. It
is not that the Missionaries of Charity did not spread their wings to almost
600 centres in 123 countries around the world. It is that Kolkata was her
epicentre, the city she identified as her home.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">On one occasion when Mother Teresa
was visiting Delhi, she fell ill and had to be admitted to a city hospital. For
a week that she was there, I was at her bedside and also became her link to the
besieged hospital switchboard; there were no mobile phones in those days. With
unfailing regularity, Jyoti Basu rang each day to enquire after her health.
When I once told him that she repetitively said to me, “Let me go back to
Kolkata, I will be all right there,” he laughed understandingly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">On another occasion, when she was
admitted to the Woodlands Nursing Home in Kolkata, I saw him enter without
fuss, meet Doctor Bardhan and the Sisters, make an enquiry and quietly leave.
One of Mother Teresa’s senior-most companions, Sister Gertrude, said to me: “He
does not miss a single day.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">In turn, whenever he was unwell,
she would visit him in the nursing home or at his house, say a prayer and
leave. The good wishes of the one and the prayers of the other complemented
each other both in sickness and in health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">On one of my visits to Kolkata,
Mother Teresa asked me whether I had been to Tengra. She explained that the
Chief Minister had asked her to take charge of about 400 women inmates of the
Kolkata jail, many of whom had been undertrials for long years; others were
mentally ill. In her practical way, she asked him for some land. He gave her
about 11 acres in Tengra, near the leather tanneries.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">When I visited it, she had already
created a haven of peace and tranquillity. Just four of her Sisters had taken
charge. The women were finally at peace. Tengra was a visible demonstration
that both spoke the same language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">In July of 1997, when I was a mere
Joint Secretary in the government, I sought an appointment with the then
Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister; I do not know what made me do it. I
told him that Mother Teresa was very sick and did not have much time left to
live. Having nursed her once in Delhi, I had also become distantly acquainted
with the halls of power that called with unfailing regularity seeking a health
bulletin.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">I knew that many of these callers
would come to her funeral, and there could be a protocol nightmare. I added that
no matter where she passed away, the Sisters would bring her to Kolkata for her
burial there. “Leave it with me,” he said adding that he would need to be in
touch with Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, as he would need to look into all the
arrangements.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">She died about two months later on
September 5 that year. I was told later that Jyoti Basu had been alerted some
weeks earlier. When my family and I attended the memorial service and the
funeral in Kolkata, everything went off like clock work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">Later on, my batchmate and friend
S.N. Menon, Secretary to the Chief Minister, told me of the correspondence and
work that began at the West Bengal end. During the first part of the actual
ceremony, where religious rites were also being administered, Jyoti Basu chose
not to be present. Like a good communist, he entered at exactly the moment when
these ended, and the civic part of the ceremony began. But I saw his imprint in
every last detail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">And when at the very last, the
Missionaries of Charity Sisters asked for special permission to bury Mother
Teresa at Motherhouse, her headquarters at Acharya Jagdish Chandra Bose Road,
that permission too he accorded.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 13.0pt;">He gave his friend Mother Teresa a
befitting farewell.</span><span style="color: #3b3a39; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13pt;"> </span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal 700001, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6349985 87.073001499999961 23.5102935 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-38065017580370966442015-07-09T21:27:00.000+05:302015-07-09T21:27:40.360+05:30JYOTI BASU 102ND BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION PROGRAMME<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6349985 87.073001499999961 23.5102935 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-53467985729953515842015-03-26T20:06:00.001+05:302015-03-26T20:08:08.326+05:30Somnath Chatterjee inaugurates an exhibition of portraits and sketches on Jyoti Basu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<div style="background-color: white; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee inaugurates an exhibition of portraits and sketches on Jyoti Basu at the Academy of Fine Arts on Tuesday.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">The event, that was held to commemorate the 100th birth anniversary of Basu, will continue for a week.</span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-size: large;">"Jyotibabu is the tallest example in politics of how to serve people. People might have at times thought that he was a very reserved person. But having worked closely with him, I have seen how intense his feelings and emotions for people were. Jyoti Basu used to say politics was the only way to serve the masses. He did politics by putting his heart into it," Chatterjee said.</span></b></div>
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<a href="http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150325/jsp/bengal/story_10716.jsp#.VRQZD5c6Jik.blogger"><b><span style="font-size: large;">http://www.telegraphindia.com/1150325/jsp/bengal/story_10716.jsp</span></b></a></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-80109507232537071032014-08-02T21:53:00.003+05:302014-08-02T21:53:36.264+05:30Jyoti Basu: An energizing Communist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">By <span style="color: red;">V. S.
Achyuthanandan<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">I am having the
fortune to cherish the fond memories of Com. Jyoti Basu that spread over half a
century. Being members of the Polit Bureau and Central Committee of the CPI(M), we had
been able to work together during different occasions on various issues. Jyoti
Basu was a clear-cut example of a communist leader. How a communist should
behave in life as well as in struggles is evident in the personality of Com.
Jyoti Basu. When he was in ill bed I visited him at his residence and in
hospital more than once. On that occasions, irrespective of his ill health, we
have exchanged and recollected our old memories for a long time. That was also last
memorable movements in our friendship. One of those occasions, I proudly recollect,
he told me that “you are a good fighter and still you
have enough strength & courage to continue
the fight for people’s cause.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">We all know he was
born and brought up in an affluent family.
And he could attain the higher education
from London. So, he could have led a
comfortable life. But, it is discarding all these fortunes that he became a
staunch fighter of the working class movement in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It’s a fact that his
life at London helped him have association with Prof. Harold Lasky and many other left thinkers, later on paved way for him to have close connection with the anti-fascist & working class movements.
When Basu returned home, the fire he got from the anti- imperialist & fascist
movement in London helped him plunge into the turbulent turmoil’s of freedom
struggle. As a communist leader, he was
always with the toiling masses. The problem they faced, he took them as his own. For
their cause, he was ready to take any
risk. And gradually he grew up to the stature of a great leader. Struggles,
under-ground life, arrests, conviction – all these were part and parcel of his
life, exactly in tune with the life of a true communist.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">His life was, in its
full sense, committed to the people and the nation. So, personal sorrows never
annoyed him. At the time of the death his father, Basu was in Dum Dum Central jail.
So he could not have a look at his father before he breathed his last. But the communist in Basu was strong enough
to bear all these heart-renting moments. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">It was in 1958 that I
came to have personal association with Com. Basu when I became the national
council member of the undivided Communist
Party of India. During that time great are the memories we experienced together
in fighting relentlessly against revisionism
in the party. It was the leadership quality of Com. Basu that succeeded in keeping the comrades in West
Bengal in tune with the parties correct line.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Ultimately in 1964,
32 comrades staged a walk-out permanently from the national council of CPI and later on CPI(M) was formed. And Com. Basu was one among those 32 comrades. At
present, myself is the only one among those 32 comrades who is alive today.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In the Vijayawada
Congress in 1961, we fought strongly inside the party against the rightist deviations
under Dange. At that time Jyothi Basu was well in the fore-front of this
struggle along with Comrades Basava Punnaiah and P Sundarayiah. And Jyoti Basu had alone done a
marvelous job in making meticulous arrangements for the first organizational
conference which marked the formation of the CPI(M) in 1964 in Kolkota. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">The Bengal People are
greatly indebted to Com. Jyoti Basu for establishing
a left-front government in West Bengal emancipating
the state from the tyrannical Congress rule led by late Sidhartha Sanker Ray. In this fight, he
remained on a par with Comrades Pramod Das Gupta, Saroj Mukharjee and Binoy
Chowdhari etc. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">After this, under his
agile leadership he could lead Bengal to prosperity for a period of three
decades. He could establish novel models in Bengal by effecting land-reforms
and decentralization of power. Under his leadership, Bengal could attain the highest
rate of agricultural growth in the
country. It was his association with the peasant movement in Bengal that helped
him take these progressive measures in agricultural sector. But unfortunately
before establishing cent percent rights for the tenancy of the peasants and
agricultural workers over land, he had to move away from power. But even then,
the laws promulgated by the Basu government remain to be a land-mark in the
history not only of West Bengal, but the entire nation .<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">Basu’s fond memories
are also relevant in the fact that he
had been successful in containing and saving the state during the days of communal
struggles. It was well seen during the time of the demolition of Babari Masjid.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At one occasion,
there was a call from different corners that Basu should be made the Prime
Minister of India. Even though it was not realized, it was a great recognition
and honour for the personality of Basu and the CPI(M).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">In short, Com. Jyoti
Basu was a hard-core communist, a relentless fighter for the cause of the down-trodden
and the working class, an able administrator, a far-sighted leader, a staunch
secularist and what not.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">At this juncture,
when the country is on the brim of a collapse in the hands of the BJP-led
communal and divisive forces, the great memories of Com. Jyoti Basu would be an energizing
force for all the secular and democratic
sections to fight against these communal forces. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Bookman Old Style","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 115%;">………………………………………………………………..<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India8.4874999999999989 76.9524999999999868.2362325 76.629776499999991 8.738767499999998 77.275223499999981tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-8146384104701503412014-08-02T21:38:00.000+05:302014-08-02T21:38:42.025+05:30Bengal celebrates Jyoti Basu's birth centenary<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">IANS, Tuesday, July 08, 2014,
22:57 <o:p></o:p></span></i></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Kolkata:</span></b><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> West Bengal
Tuesday celebrated the birth centenary of Jyoti Basu - one of the most revered
Indian politicians and the state's former chief minister - with blood donation
camps, seminars and cultural programmes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Marxist patriarch, who holds the
record in post-independence India for the longest chief ministerial tenure and
narrowly missed becoming the country's prime minister, is credited with having
successfully made centre-state relations a major debating point in the late
1970s and 1980s and emerging as a central figure in anti-Congress political
space at the national level. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In the morning, Basu's portrait was
garlanded in the assembly by Speaker Biman Banerjee and Leader of the
Opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Communist Party of India-Marxist
(CPI-M), of which Basu was a founding member, organised programmes across the
state to celebrate the occasion. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu's photos were garlanded outside
CPI-M offices and those of its various mass organisations in the city and the
districts. The party organised blood donation camps, discussions and seminars,
highlighting his life and contribution and dwelling on the present political
scenario in the country and the state. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The central function was held at the
sprawling Nazrul Mancha where Left Front leaders stressed on Left unity and
reflected on the errors committed during recent elections. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">CPI-M state secretary and Left Front
chairman Biman Bose said Basu's life was a shining example for young comrades
in abiding by party discipline. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Communist Party of India (CPI) state
secretary Manju Kumar Majumdar questioned the call given for an anti-Congress
and anti-Bharatiya Janata Party alternative during the recent elections in the
absence of any solid understanding among Left parties. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">"Had Jyoti Babu been there, such
a slogan would have not come out," he said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">All India Forward Bloc state secretary
Ashok Ghosh expressed concern for the Left parties suffering a serious loss of
their mass base. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">"When we address these issues we
can pay the real tribute to Jyoti Basu," said Ghosh. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu had stewarded the state's Left
front government as chief minister from 1977 to 2000, that earned him accolades
from both within the country and abroad for his skills in running a coalition
successfully in a multi-party democratic set-up. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu's close aide Sarit Bandyopdhyay
Asaid he was a "multifaceted personality" with a razor-sharp memory
and had a open mind on all matters. He also followed sports. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Refering to the turn of events in 1996
when the CPI-M prevented Basu from becoming prime minister at the head of the
United Front government, Bose said that Basu accepted the party decision like a
"true communist". However, later Basu had dubbed the decision a
"historic blunder". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu's successor as chief minister
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said Basu had placed the struggle of peasants and
working classes at the centre of politics. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">"The fight for land was carried
forward by providing pattas (land titles) to landless farmers. The rights of
sharecropeprs was also protected," he said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The CPI-M politburo minister also
recalled how the "secular" Basu ensured that Bengal remained free
from communal strife in 1984 after the assassination of Indira Gandhi. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Economist Prabhat Patanik also
addressed the programme. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Born July 8, 1914, Basu joined the CPI
in 1940 and began his work in the railway trade union movement. In 1946, he was
elected to the Bengal legislative assembly from the Railway constituency. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He played a key role in the
development of the CPI in India and was the secretary of its provincial
committee from 1954 to 1960. He became a member of the central committee of the
CPI in 1951. When the CPI-M was formed in 1964, he became one of the founder
politburo and central committee members. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He passed away Jan 17, 2010. His body
was handed over to the SSKM hospital in deference to his wish that it be
donated for medical research after his death. His eyes were used to give vision
to a till-then blind person.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
</div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6350005 87.073001499999961 23.510291499999997 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-17016826864488387712014-08-02T21:35:00.001+05:302014-08-02T21:35:06.145+05:30Jyoti Basu birth centenary tomorrow<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">STAFF REPORTER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">THE HINDU, KOLKATA, July 7, 2014<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Kolkata: Not only leaders of the Left
parties but academicians and members of the intelligentsia will be present at
the birth centenary celebrations of former West Bengal Chief Minister and
veteran Marxist leader Jyoti Basu, chairperson of the State Left Front Committee
Biman Basu said here on Sunday. The event will be organised at Nazrul Mancha, a
city auditorium, on Tuesday.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Mr. Basu said, “Apart from Left
leaders, the event will be attended by eminent economist Prabhat Patnaik, who
will be the main speaker. Well-known novelist Nabaneeta Dev Sen will also
address the gathering.” Mr. Basu said that the event would also be attended by
veteran politician Kashikanta Maitra, who worked with Jyoti Basu. A booklet on
the life and ideals of Jyoti Basu will be released.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">It will comprise Jyoti Basu’s speech
at the Nehru Memorial Lecture in Delhi. Besides, there will be cultural
programmes such as song, dance, and recitation of poetry.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">A select audio-visual clippings of
Jyoti Basu’s speech will also be played.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Mr. Basu, who had been the longest
serving Chief Minister of any State, passed way on January 17, 2010. He was the
Chief Minister of West Bengal for 23 years from 1977 to 2000.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.6350005 87.073001499999961 23.510291499999997 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-76088997898862113302013-12-31T17:34:00.000+05:302013-12-31T17:34:38.074+05:30Governor's intervention sought on Jyoti Basu Nagar issue<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #660000;">IANS, Last Updated:
Saturday, December 21, 2013, 01:13 <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #660000;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: blue;">Kolkata: </span>Taking exception to
West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee government's attempt to change the name of a
township christened after former chief minister Jyoti Basu, left leaders and
other eminent persons Friday urged sought the intervention of Governor MK Narayanan
to redress their grievance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">"It goes without saying
that the people as a whole, take exception to the attempt of changing the name
of Jyoti Basu Nagar, by the West Bengal government," said a memorandum
given to Narayanan by the Jyoti Basu Birth Centenary Celebration Committee. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Trinamool Congress
regime last month withdrew in the state assembly the New Town, Kolkata
Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2011 passed by the erstwhile Left Front
regime that had included a proposal to name the New Town area as
JyotiBasuNagar. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Narayanan has already
disapproved the dropping of the bill, while the Left has been demanding
introduction of a new legislation restoring the name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Hasim Abdul Halim, working
president of the committee, claimed before journalists that the governor told
the delegation that he has already communicated to the government that he was
not in favor of changing the name. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">"It is requested that
being the constitutional head of the state, you would be kind enough to take up
the issue appropriately and redress the natural grievance of the people that it
generates," said the memorandum. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The delegation pointed out
that the LF government had named New Town after Basu in recognition of his
immense contribution in building the modern township. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">HIDCO, a government agency
which developed the township, took a resolution Aug 12, 2010 to name it after
Basu, and referred the matter to the housing department which approved the
proposal that was later okayed by the state cabinet. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The bill was then passed by
the legislative assembly, but the governor referred it to the Trinamool
government, which came to power in May 2011. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu holds the record for
being the longest serving chief minister. The Marxist patriarch occupied the
chair from 1977 to 2000, when he voluntarily stepped down due to old age.</span><span style="font-family: 'Franklin Gothic Medium', sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0New Delhi, Delhi, India28.635308 77.2249600000000128.1893855 76.579513 29.081230499999997 77.870407000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-47568407930651747612013-12-31T17:21:00.000+05:302013-12-31T17:21:26.355+05:30Rajiv Gandhi twice asked Jyoti Basu to become PM: Book<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">By <b><span style="color: #990000;">Ajanta Chakraborty</span></b>, TNN
Nov 26, 2013, 03.48AM IST<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: blue;">KOLKATA:</span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">
Rajiv Gandhi had wanted Jyoti Basu to become the Prime Minister and had pleaded
with him twice during the politically tumultuous times of 1990 and 1991, former
CBI director and Bengal DGP Arun Prosad Mukherjee has revealed in his
autobiography.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The recently-released book —
"Unknown Facets of Rajiv Gandhi, Jyoti Basu, Indrajit Gupta" — is
based on Mukherjee's diary entries, maintained from the time he joined IPS in
1956, and his interactions with Rajiv, Basu and Gupta in various capacities as
Darjeeling SP, Bengal DGP, state vigilance commissioner, CBI boss, special
secretary in the home ministry, and finally, advisor to the home minister
(Indrajit Gupta).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Mukherjee was special
secretary, home ministry, in October 1990 when Rajiv informally asked him to
arrange a meeting with Basu, says the book. The communist leader said it was
not his call and only the party's central committee and Politburo could take
such a decision. CPM vetoed it and Chandrashekhar — Rajiv's third choice —
became PM with Congress support.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">In 1991, when Chandrashekhar
turned out to be a failure, Rajiv again approached Basu but he declined and
referred the matter to his party leadership. Mukherjee writes that he took
Rajiv's emissary for a meeting with senior CPM leaders at former MP Biplab
Dasgupta's house. "But my worst conjecture proved right ... and thus ended
the second opportunity of putting up the Left Front's best foot forward in the
larger interest of Bengal."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Five years later, thanks to
a hung Parliament, several local satraps, including Mulayam Singh Yadav,
proposed Basu's name again for Prime Minister. And again the CPM central
committee voted against it. In an interview at the end of 1996, Basu termed it
a "historic blunder". "However, it is not generally known that
such blunders had taken place twice in 1990-91... largely because of the
unrealistic, short-sighted and 'blunder-proof' mindset of CPM leaders,"
writes the former DGP.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The CPM leadership has been
taken aback by Mukherjee's revelation. Rajya Sabha MP Shyamal Chakraborty, who
wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier this year for a commemorative
postage stamp on Basu's centenary, told TOI on Monday: "I had no idea
about this, so I can't comment on something I don't know of."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Former Lok Sabha Speaker and
expelled CPM leader Somnath Chatterjee didn't know of it either. "It (not
allowing Basu to become PM) was the weirdest example of democratic centralism.
I respectfully agree with Jyoti-babu's 'historic blunder' comment. I wish the
blunder hadn't been committed and history would have been written differently.
Look what's happened to the party now — it's become politically
irrelevant."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Chatterjee agreed with
Mukherjee's remark in his book that the country's "murky political and
administrative ethos" then would have been transformed with Basu at the
helm.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Speaking to TOI, the
82-year-old Mukherjee said: "All three (Gandhi, Basu and Gupta) were
different personalities. Jyoti Basu was firm, Rajiv was extremely courteous
while Indrajit Gupta was a straight-talker. But they trusted me and allowed me
to speak my mind. They knew about my integrity."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">About the
"blunder" he said, "The CPM leadership refused to see reason and
there was no way one could convince them." His writing is more explicit:
"All the implications and finer points made out by me in favour of Jyoti
Basu accepting Rajiv Gandhi's offer of prime ministership though presumably for
a short period of 8-12 months went over the heads of Left Front leaders —
thanks to their blinkered vision."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: red;">What happened</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">* 1990: Basu tops Rajiv list
of 3 prospective PMs but CPM says no. Chandrashekar, the last name on Rajiv's
list, after Devi Lal, becomes PM.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">* 1991: Chandrashekar flops.
Rajiv again requests Basu. Mukherjee says he will arrange a meet if Rajiv ensures
Basu is PM for at least a year. Rajiv agrees. Basu says party must decide. CPM
again says no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">* 1996: After the fall of
13-day-old Vajpayee govt, United Front asks Basu to be PM. Yet again, CPM says
no.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-11-26/india/44486023_1_jyoti-basu-cpm-central-committee-rajiv-gandhi"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-11-26/india/44486023_1_jyoti-basu-cpm-central-committee-rajiv-gandhi</b></span></a><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0New Delhi, Delhi, India28.635308 77.2249600000000128.1893855 76.579513 29.081230499999997 77.870407000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-30235491863877925782013-12-31T17:08:00.000+05:302013-12-31T17:08:44.722+05:30Protest in Bengal assembly over change in question <div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><b><span style="color: blue;">Kolkata: Nov 27 (IANS) -</span>
</b>Protests marked the West Bengal assembly after Leader of Opposition Surjya
Kanta Mishra's question on naming a township Jyoti Basu Nagar was
"arbitrarily changed". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The trouble started after
the day's proceedings began with the question hour. Mishra complained to
speaker Biman Banerjee the format of the query which he had submitted earlier
had been "arbitrarily changed". The speaker allowed Mishra to read the
question in the format he had submitted, and Minister for Urban Development
Firhad Hakim replied, but the opposition was far from satisfied. Left Front
members held noisy protests. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Mishra accused Hakim of
misleading the house on the status of the New Town Kolkata Development
Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2011, passed during the erstwhile Left Front regime
rechristening New Town Kolkata as Jyoti Basu Nagar. Mishra claimed Hakim had
spoken a lie by saying Governor M.K. Narayanan returned the bill without giving
his assent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On the contrary, Narayanan
told Left Front MLAs Tuesday he was unaware of it. The Left Front members tore
papers, displayed posters against the government move to withdraw a legislation
naming New Town Kolkata as Jyoti Basu Nagar, and walked into the well of the
house, raising slogans. The speaker continued the business of the house, but
nothing could be heard in the pandemonium, as Left Front lawmakers refused to
heed Banerjee's repeated requests to return to their seats. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The Front lawmakers boycotted
the house proceedings after recess, and staged a mock assembly and sit-in
demonstration in the assembly premises. The treasury benches passed a
resolution in the second half of the day condemning the behaviour of Mishra and
other Front members. "The house strongly condemns the uncivil behaviour,
distasteful comments, and the efforts of the Left Front members to prevent the
speaker and the house proceedings from functioning," it said. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Later, Mishra told reporters
it was a rare instance of a question put forth by a member being
"distorted". "The state government is encouraging manipulation
of questions (unfair means in examination) in schools and colleges and now it
has brought it to the assembly," he said. Mishra said the withdrawal of
the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (Amendment) Bill, 2011, and its
replacement by a fresh legislation that had no clause naming the township as
"Jyoti Basu Nagar" was the state government's gift on the birth
centenary of the late communist patriarch - who was state chief minister for 23
years - a national record. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Countering Mishra,
Parliamentary Affairs Minister Partha Chatterjee accused the opposition,
"particularly CPI-M", of creating disorder in the assembly.
Chatterjee contended it was the right of the assembly secretariat to edit
questions if they were too long. "This used to happen during my days as
the leader of the opposition also. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The speaker, sticking to
highest norms of parliamentary behaviour, allowed Mishra to speak, but he
responded by tearing apart the question". "Everything was done in a
planned and motivated manner, led by Mishra. This cannot continue. We want good
debates in the assembly where everybody should participate," he said.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">
<br />
Read more at:</span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="color: #262626; font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></span><a href="http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/pandemonium-in-bengal-assembly-over-change-in-question-1254183.html?utm_source=ref_article"><span style="border: none windowtext 1.0pt; color: #11537c; font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.firstpost.com/fwire/pandemonium-in-bengal-assembly-over-change-in-question-1254183.html?utm_source=ref_article</span></a><span style="font-family: "Franklin Gothic Medium","sans-serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.634999999999998 87.073001499999961 23.510292 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-84790519974494241062013-07-12T20:49:00.001+05:302013-07-12T20:49:24.066+05:30Jyoti Basu (1914–2010)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">By <span style="color: blue;">Utsa Patnaik </span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">JYOTI Basu’s life and political work spanned
an astonishingly long era. His very early childhood was spent
in Calcutta during the First World War, and by the time he was a
college student, first at St Xavier’s and later Presidency College,
both India and the world were in the throes of the Great Depression.
Jyoti Basu belonged to a well-to-do professional family and went
to England, as did many others of his background at the time, to study to
be a barrister. He spent four years, from 1935 to 1939, in a depression-ravaged England with
fascism rising in Europe, and underwent a decisive intellectual
transition, becoming a strong and lifelong adherent of Marxism with the resolve
to enter the arena of political struggle. When he returned and joined the
illegal Communist Party of India in 1940, war had already broken out
in Europe and was to engulf the Asian theatre less than two years
later. This was followed by the great Bengal Famine, the tumultuous years of
Partition, communal riots and Independence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">BENGAL AFTER INDEPENDENCE</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The meteoric rise of the Left in Bengal and
its consolidation, the repeated evidence of trust and confidence the masses of
Bengal have reposed in the Left for over three decades, and Jyoti Basu’s role
in it cannot be understood without some understanding of the situation of
Bengal after Independence, in the 1950s and 1960s. It inherited a legacy
of two centuries of colonial rule, an acute food problem, problems of refugee
influx and resettlement, and above all, an unresolved agrarian question. It was
the cadres of the Left movement which tackled these early problems decisively,
working tirelessly among the masses, and later, with the formation of Left
Front governments, tackled the agrarian question and improvement of mass
welfare.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Today very few people have any knowledge of
the extreme poverty and destitution to which the ordinary people in Bengal had
been reduced by the time Independence came, least of all Bengal’s own <i>bhadralok </i>intellectuals
whose unremitting ‘western gaze’ has meant their being hegemonised by false
theories emanating from Northern universities. In fact many of these
intellectuals are making comfortable positions for themselves in foreign
universities by denigrating our national freedom movement in some form or the
other. The people belonging to that generation in Bengal which is now in its
mid-forties or less in age, have known nothing but Left rule since they began
to be aware of politics at all. Therefore few commentators today have any
understanding of the situation before that rule or the significance of the
progress the people have made, even though there has been some predictable
reversal in the neo-liberal era in the trend of progress. A brief
recapitulation of the results of Bengal’s long subjugation and the legacy
it inherited may not be out of place.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Bengal was the very first region
of India to be colonised from 1765 onwards (this date is when the
Company acquired the sovereign right of collecting taxes and began to rule).
Bengal was initially the richest province of British India and the value of
land tax collected under the 1793 Permanent Settlement was actually more than
the total land tax collected within Britain in that period. Bengal was the
revenue base from where British conquest extended over the whole of India,
with the annexation of Punjab coming almost a century later in 1848.
Bengal experienced a paradoxical type of ‘development’: it was systematically
ripped off by Britain, which took away every year vast volumes of
products, crops and textiles from peasants and artisans, essentially as tax,
without any real payment. This was because a part of the taxes collected from
these very same peasants and artisans were used to ‘buy’ their products by the
Company, so in effect they were handing over these goods free, as that part of
tax. Such systematic denuding of the province every year over a long period
continuously depressed the incomes and purchasing power of the masses, and one
important index of impoverishment was the steadily declining nutritional level
of the population. At the same time, the zamindari system and the new
educational system created a class of urbanised rich rentiers and rising
professionals who were, by upbringing and education, completely subservient to
imperial interests. Calcutta grew ever larger as the port city
through which unpaid exports were sent out of the country, and Lancashire
textiles were imported to the detriment of Bengal’s spinners and weavers.
All of this provided employment to traders, transporters and port coolies so
that the proportion of workers in tertiary or service sector activities went up
while the proportion working in manufacturing fell, and this remained true even
with jute and cotton textile mills coming up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The inter-war depression affected rural
people badly as crop prices declined, and so did employment. Between 1911 and
1947, per capita food grains availability fell by 38 per cent in
undivided Bengal, mainly because there was absolute decline in rice output
as more land and resources went to the export crops the rulers wanted. In no
other province was the situation so bad as to lead to an absolute fall in
foodgrain output itself, although every other province saw a fall in per head
grain output. Long-term impoverishment and lowered nutrition reduced the
resistance of the population in Bengal and made it more vulnerable to
the shock of the great famine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The history of colonised Bengal had
begun with a massive famine, the 1770 famine which killed an estimated
one-third of the population; and it ended with another massive famine, the
famine of 1943–44 which killed over 30 lakh persons and reduced five times that
number to utter destitution. This was a famine created by the British
government which placed the entire burden of financing Allied troops and air
operations in the anti-Japan war, on India. But because Bengal was near
the frontline, in practice the construction of barracks and airstrips, the
maintenance and provisioning of the Allied troops and air force personnel, all
took place in this eastern region, and it was the primary resources of this
region which had to meet the vastly increased demand. Rs 3,800 crore was the
extra expenditure burden put on the people during the war. The result was rapid
food price inflation, a trebling of rice prices over only eighteen months,
reducing the already undernourished rural poor to starvation. A war, whose cost
a rich industrial Britain should have met, was imposed on the people
of Bengal, and the price they were made to pay was over thirty-one lakh
lives. But all this does not alter the <i>bhadralok </i>intellectuals’
reverence for all things western, and we do not find to this day a single
realistic economic analysis of the Bengal famine which places the blame where
it belongs, on the deliberate policy pursued by the imperialists to put the
burden of war finance on defenceless peasants and artisans of India in general
and on Bengal in particular. No people have perhaps suffered as much as the
people of Bengal have done under colonial rule, and none has been
more badly served by its west-oriented liberal intellectuals – a proposition
which remains true to this day. Those who have served the people well have been
the political activists of the Communist movement including pre-eminently Jyoti
Basu, who de-classed themselves from <i>bhadralok </i>servility by their
adherence to and practice of Marxism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">As early as 1940, the Floud Commission (Land
Revenue Commission, Bengal), in its report, had drawn attention to the fact
that actual tenant cultivators could not be called labourers since they provided
the cattle, ploughs, all inputs and their labour, but had to hand over half
their gross produce including by-products as rent to the superior right holder.
Though an Act was on the anvil to increase the share of the <i>bargadar</i>,
nothing was done by the government led by Suhrawardy, who admitted to Jyoti
Basu (as he points out in his memoirs) opposition from landed interests as the
reason. After the war ended, the peasantry was prepared to wait no longer. A
major agrarian agitation erupted, the Tebhaga movement, which demanded increase
of the <i>adhiyar–bargadar</i>’s share to two-thirds of the crop. This was
led by the Krishak Front of the Communist Party and was particularly active in
the districts of Mymensingh, Barisal, Rangpur, Dinajpur,
Jessore, Khulna and 24-Parganas. It succeeded to some extent in
raising the tenant’s share of the produce. The movement of 1945–47 ended with
Partition and the expectation of new measures from the government of
Independent India and Pakistan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">FORMIDABLE TASK OF RECONSTRUCTION</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Quite apart from the actual loss of lives in
the famine, by the time of Independence, Jyoti Basu’s Bengal was flooded
with millions of peasants and artisans reduced to destitution, and millions of
people poured in from the eastern part of Bengal after Partition.
Nevertheless, the joy of political independence was irrepressible and the
ultra-left slogan ‘<i>Yeh azadi jhuti hai</i>’<i> </i>(‘This freedom is a
lie’) found few takers. Reconstruction was a formidable task and without the
work of the communists among the refugee population and the peasantry from whom
they recruited new cadres, the successive Congress governments would have got
nowhere. Although the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act and the West Bengal
Land Reforms Act had been passed by 1953 and 1955 respectively, implementation
was slow and the festering unresolved agrarian problem meant that the vital
agricultural sector remained in the doldrums. Shortages persisted, reaching
crisis point in many years. The Food Movement of 1959 was a landmark agitation
the Communist Party undertook. During the India–China conflict in 1962 large
numbers of communists in India were jailed. Just as the imperialist
war of 1914–18 in Europe had sorted out the communists from the social
democrats, the China conflict was the catalyst which sorted out the left
communists from the others and led to the split of the Communist Party of India
(CPI), with Jyoti Basu being one of the founder-members of the new CPI-Marxist
or CPI(M).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Soon afterwards the Party
in Bengal had to contend with left adventurism and its violent cult
of individual assassinations as the Naxalbari movement erupted. Large numbers
of cadres lost their lives in this period with the ensuing repression. A split
in a communist movement can be dangerous if either right revisionism on the one
hand or left adventurism on the other, dominates and the militant middle,
despite its correct line, cannot carry the majority of the members. While
in Bengal the split and subsequent challenges were successfully handled,
in Andhra Pradesh that had one of the strongest units of the CPI and with the
proud legacy of the Telengana movement, decimation unfortunately resulted since
large numbers of cadres went with either one or the other wrong trend. We see
today again the rise of left adventurism and massacres of the innocent in the
country, and while it faces inevitable defeat, before that occurs it will take
a heavy toll in lives in the years to come.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #990000;">UNPRECEDENTED RECORD</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">While Jyoti Basu had served in the 1967–70
United Front government as well, the opportunity to make a real difference to
the miserable situation of the people of Bengal came with the
electoral victory of the Left Front and government formation by the coalition
led by the CPI(M). The Left Front was repeatedly voted back to power by the
people of Bengal in five successive elections after that, creating a
world record of governance by communists within a federal parliamentary system,
continuously for thirty-three years to date. What explains this unprecedented
record which, it can be confidently stated, will never be broken in any other
country? So anti-egalitarian is the economic and social structure in this
country and so deeply rooted are the consequent structures of exploitation,
that any sincere attempt to break this structure and to ameliorate the
condition of the masses produces an overwhelming response from them. They gave
their loyalty in abundance. The <i>bhadralok </i>in the cities and
the rural elites continued in the main to pursue their conservative agenda, but
the rural masses and the working classes were solidly behind the Left Front
policies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Bengal was the only state which had put a
ceiling on land-holding from the very beginning in the legislation, abolishing
zamindari in the West Bengal Estates Acquisition Act 1953, and nearly eight
lakh acres of land was estimated to be surplus above ceiling. Between 1967 and
1970, with the first United Front government in which Jyoti Basu served, six
lakh acres were distributed. Later amendments lowered the ceiling to 6.2
standard acres subject to a maximum of 17.3 standard acres for a nine-member
family. After the Left Front assumed power, within a matter of three years
between 1977 and 1980, nearly 10 lakh acres more ceiling surplus land was
identified and three-quarters of this actually distributed within a few years.
These implementation measures resulted in a larger area of ceiling-surplus land
being distributed to the landless in West Bengal alone under Left Front rule by
year 2000, than in several other states of India combined to date. The
revival of local democratic institutions and regular holding of panchayat
elections were an integral part of the success in identifying and distributing
ceiling-surplus land.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">But the abolition of zamindari estates did
not mean a complete land reform or end of rentiers, for zamindars were only the
very top of an entire pyramid of intermediaries who performed no labour but
lived on the surplus produced by the actual tillers, the majority of whom had
no legal existence since they were unrecorded sharecroppers. They still had to
hand over half their gross output to the jotedar even when they provided the
livestock assets, working capital and labour. In Bihar, an attempt to
register the actual cultivators had to be called off owing to landlord
resistance. In Bengal, it was the vision and determination of Jyoti Basu
and Harekrishna Konar, supported by Benoy Chaudhuri, which accounted for
Operation Barga being carried through. Democratic participation was the very
essence of this vision. As Harekrishna Konar had put it: "The
indispensable condition for success in implementation is that the agricultural
labourers, poor peasants, bataidars, who are really interested in land reform,
must be roused; their initiative and courage will have to be developed so that
they can stand up before the mighty power of the landlords and they must be
asked to come forward in an organised way to help the government to
implement."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The innovative strategy of taking administration
to the villages, of involving local peasant organisations, panchayats and
potential beneficiaries themselves, while using to the full the hitherto
unutilised provisions of the law, worked. Particularly noteworthy is the use of
the Indian Evidence Act, which permits oral evidence to be collected and
presented to counter the written documents marshalled by the powerful landlords
to deny legal rights in the courts to the sharecroppers on oral leases. All
measures of land reform taken together, including distribution of homestead
land, are estimated to have benefited nearly three-fifths of rural households.
Jyoti Basu was acutely conscious that whatever had been achieved was only
implementation of the democratic tasks of the bourgeoisie, which the latter
itself was no longer capable of implementing, and very far from any completely
egalitarian radical land redistribution which is part of the socialist agenda.
He repeatedly pointed out that Bengal had to function within a legal system
which safeguarded private property and a federal structure which restricted the
measures which could be taken, that it was ‘not the republic of West Bengal’.
Nevertheless with all caveats, what had been achieved was of tremendous
significance in unleashing the confidence of the masses, enabling them to pull
themselves up by their own efforts out of the mire of acute poverty and
degradation.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The 1980s was the golden decade
for India and particularly for Bengal, while the impetus was
maintained well into the 1990s. Revival and vigorous functioning of local
self-government institutions, combined with the fresh impetus to productivity
in rural areas, led to Bengal surging ahead with the highest annual rate of
foodgrain growth in the whole of India at 4.2 percent, compared to 2.5
percent average in other major states, over the period 1980–81 to 1998–99. This
was crucial because, as Adam Smith had pointed out two centuries earlier,
foodgrain prices determine all other primary prices through feedgrain and wage
goods prices, and strongly impact labour-intensive manufacturing as well. Cheap
food benefits the wage-paid working class, while the rural producers do not
face large dips in prices when they raise output growth as long as a
procurement system is in place. The state’s policy was expansionary in the
1980s with development expenditures growing at over eight percent annually, the
highest rate in India.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">There was a substantial positive trend growth
in employment and incomes in both rural and urban Bengal, and the consumption
expenditure data show that a larger decline took place in poverty
in Bengal than in any other state. Of course, given the fact that the
initial level of destitution, for the reasons analysed earlier, was much higher
in Bengal than in most other regions, even this large order of improvement did
not mean that all the problems of Bengal’s poor were solved. Medical services’
expansion to the required extent was thwarted by urban doctors with a
dog-in-the-manger attitude – refusing to serve in rural areas, they nevertheless
agitated against a plan to have a special health worker cadre with a shorter
training period to deliver basic health care. They acted as a selfish
professional group bent on maintaining their monopoly of skills, and they
continue to constitute a highly conservative body at the national level,
determined to exclude deprived social groups from their ranks. Despite these
problems, one must appreciate the remarkable improvement in many important
aspects of welfare that Bengal achieved.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">National Sample Survey (NSS) data show that
while in 1977–78, when the Left Front first assumed government, as much as 40
percent of the rural population in West Bengal could not spend enough to access
even 1,800 calories energy, a very low level, fifteen years later, by 1993–94,
this proportion had dropped to 17 percent, the largest reduction in extreme
poverty anywhere in India over any period. Thus nearly a quarter of the
population, constituting the very poor, had moved up in nutritional status. The
significance of this may be judged by a comparison – in rural
Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamilnadu in 1993–94, as much as 36, 38 and
43 percent of the population respectively was unable to get even 1,800 calories
per day. For a state which had come through a traumatic war-time famine and
rural destitution, the large order of improvement in the situation of the poor
in Bengal was a particularly important achievement. While in
rural Bengal in 1977–78, as much as 67 percent of the population
could not spend enough to obtain even 2,100 calories daily, fifteen years later
this figure had dropped to 42 percent. Similarly there was a substantial
decline in urban poverty as well, to 18 percent below an 1,800 calorie intake
by 1993–94, much lower than in other urbanised states. After 1991 there was
very sharp contraction in public spending by the central government and all
states as neo-liberal policies were imposed on the people.West Bengal too
was obliged to engage in public spending cuts as there was substantially
reduced tax devolution from the central government and loans carried very high
interest.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">After the demolition of the Babri Masjid and
rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) elsewhere, a young Bengali
intellectual was heard by this author to remark rather complacently that
Bengalis were not communally minded, unlike people in other states, and
right-wing communal forces could make little headway. This understanding
however underestimates the strength of communal–chauvinist forces in Bengal,
forgets communal riots during Partition, and does not give due credit to the
unremitting struggle of the Left parties against communalism and in promoting
progressive thinking, which marginalised these forces but which have never been
fully defeated. It should be remembered that it was a Bengali who had provided
leadership of the Hindu Mahasabha and set up the Jan Sangh, which was to
reinvent itself as the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 1970s. It
was Bengal which had spawned chauvinist organisations of the extreme
right such as Anand Marg and Amra Bangali. After the assumption of government
by the Left Front, no quarter was given to communal forces; the parties
representing these forces and their violent behaviour was described by Jyoti
Basu as ‘uncivilised’, an adjective the use of which was very typical of the
man and which incensed the BJP leaders. Jyoti Basu took decisive action to
smash every attempt – and they did occur – by right-wing forces to promote
communal disharmony in Bengal. For over three decades while other areas of
the country saw instigation of violence and communal rioting, including the
capital Delhi which went up in flames in 1984, in Bengal minority communities
have felt safe because Bengal has been made to remain free of communal
violence. And that has been a major achievement of Jyoti Basu and the movement
he led.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu wrote his own epitaph thus –
<span style="color: red;">‘There is nothing more valuable in life than the love of the people. We are
always ready to sacrifice our lives for a greater cause.’</span> A most remarkable
life, spent in struggle and service of the exploited. A life to be emulated,
but impossible to emulate.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><i><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: #351c75;">(This article was published
in Social Scientist, Issue 446–447, Volume 38, Numbers 7–8, July–August
2010. Sub-Headings have been added – Ed)</span></span></i></b></div>
<br />
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0New Delhi, Delhi, India28.635308 77.2249600000000128.1893855 76.579513 29.081230499999997 77.870407000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-57040815492121243172013-07-09T19:25:00.000+05:302013-07-09T19:30:33.087+05:30Jyoti Basu: The pragmatic communist<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">By <span style="color: red;">Somnath Chatterjee</span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span class="news-source"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: blue;">Times of India</span></b></span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 12pt;"><b><span style="color: blue;">, Jul 8, 2013, 03.42AM
IST</span><o:p></o:p></b></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu was to me a rare communist and a
bhadralok who upheld his party ideals on the same breath as the democratic
spirit of the Constitution. He was my only leader, who could best articulate
the voice of the struggling millions within the precincts of parliamentary
democracy and outside. At the personal level, he was an affectionate guide who
took great care in advising me whenever I was in need.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHu41G3WQZP8L6qSTwx5jIKx1cS4iBupmuqZvVk2Num_uniFvNAuNLb4g9bUIKv-b7cwAfWg1ZYMlimid1iuIQ5QAWmHdchvE-j8TyLyl0NKtl8bbNev041CviLfrY8VcoFXDIJerUJB7/s1600/Somnath+Chatterjee,+speaker+Biman+Banerjee,+and++Partha+Chatterjee+paying+homage+to+the+late+Jyoti+Basu+on+his+100th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpHu41G3WQZP8L6qSTwx5jIKx1cS4iBupmuqZvVk2Num_uniFvNAuNLb4g9bUIKv-b7cwAfWg1ZYMlimid1iuIQ5QAWmHdchvE-j8TyLyl0NKtl8bbNev041CviLfrY8VcoFXDIJerUJB7/s400/Somnath+Chatterjee,+speaker+Biman+Banerjee,+and++Partha+Chatterjee+paying+homage+to+the+late+Jyoti+Basu+on+his+100th.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Somnath Chatterjee, speaker Biman Banerjee, Partha Chatterjee and others paying homage to the late Jyoti Basu on his 100th Birth Anniversary at West Bengal Assembly on Monday. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: 19px;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">His life is an illuminating saga of active
participation in people's struggle. He spoke in the people's language, minus
the political jargons, because he could feel what they felt and could express
what they wanted to. Personally, I have been extremely fortunate to work under
his guidance. Basu taught us, as he himself followed, that politics provides
the best opportunities to serve the people as one's mission in life and should
not be treated as a matter of part-time hobby or pastime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">He wanted everyone to remember that people
occupied the most important and central position in a democratic set-up and he
wanted us to judge our activities in terms of people's welfare and progress.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu had the capacity to assess the significance
of developing situations political or otherwise and he could quickly
react to them most aptly. His "one-liners", if I may so describe
them, were not only brief but on most occasions found wholly appropriate.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Another quality he had, which is seldom found
among politicians today, is that he was never dogmatic, though he had clarity
over what he and his party wanted to achieve. But he never acted partisan in
contentious matters. That explains how he could maintain excellent rapport even
with the opposition and act as a binding force of the Left for all these years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Though his objective was to usher in a classless
society, he realized that till it was achieved, the party should fully
participate in parliamentary democracy under the Constitution of India, which
should be strengthened as well. He set an outstanding example of how to run a
coalition government in harmony.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">And for this quality, and his success as chief
minister, Basu was entreated repeatedly in 1996 by the leaders of the United
Front in Delhi to take charge as Prime Minister. What followed is known to all.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I still recall the day when I met an ailing Basu
at his Kolkata residence on July 12, 2008, when I heard rumours doing the
rounds that the CPM politburo wanted me to step down as Speaker of the Lok
Sabha ahead of the confidence vote on the Indo-US nuclear deal in Parliament
after the Left withdrew its support to the UPA. Basu was fully aware of the
party's stand and I had no discussion with him on the matter. I also had no
idea whether he agreed with the party's stand. But he advised me that I should
preside over the proceedings of the House on the confidence motion. My
resignation, he felt as I too believed, would suggest that I was compromising
on my position as the Speaker and was allowing my actions to be dictated by a
political party, which would go against the basic tenets of parliamentary
democracy. He further advised me that I could take a decision after the trust
vote because I had arranged the annual Hiren Mukkherjee Parliamentary Lecture
on August 11 where Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen was to deliver his speech.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">I can't but mention two of his great
achievements, namely land reforms and devolution of power to the grassroots
through panchayati raj and municipal bodies to which elections had not been
held for many years.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi openly acknowledged
the success of the panchayati system in West Bengal under Jyoti Basu's
leadership. Basu also pioneered the movement for a balanced development. He
brought to the fore the federal structure of our country, both in terms of
political and financial powers an issue that was lapped up by other state
governments. As a true democrat, he always spoke against the misuse of Article
356 of the Constitution that provides for dismissal of state government by
imposition of the President's Rule.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">His long unbeaten innings as chief minister has
to its store many milestones in the field of agriculture and industry in
Bengal. As a pragmatic leader, Basu realized that though he and his party and
the Left Front were opposed to globalization and liberalization, he couldn't
ignore the existing laws and opportunities to usher in speedy
industrialization. With that objective, Basu formulated and announced the
industrial policy of the Left Front government in September 1994. Haldia
Petrochemicals and Bakreswar Power Station were two of the major projects which
he successfully dealt with through protracted negotiations, and at a time,
going into a confrontation with the Union government. Many other important
units like Mitsubishi Project in Haldia and the thriving IT sector in Salt Lake
Sector V are the fruits of his forward looking policy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Even as Basu and his party were all for
expanding the public sector, he realized that a state government could not
bring about radical changes in the country's industrial policy. Basu thus opted
for a judicious mix of the public sector, the private sector and the joint
sector. It pained me when some of his critics tried to underplay the
achievements of the Left Front government during Basu's tenure, saying that he
could do little, especially during the latter part of his tenure. I had the
opportunity of talking to him about the problems and also didn't hide my
reservations on the workings of the government, for which he was not to blame.
But I am not going into them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Basu was not keeping well and didn't want to
cling to the seat of power. When he realized that he was not being able to
devote full time and attention to his duties, Basu requested his party more
than once to relieve him as chief minister and also from the important
positions he held in the party. However, that was not accepted then for good
reasons. But when he felt that his health was deteriorating further, he put in
his papers as chief minister after 23 years and left the Writers' Buildings
without showing even a trace of emotion. But as a true communist, he continued
with his political life, attending meetings both at party office and addressing
public gatherings till his last.</span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995721.634999999999998 87.073001499999961 23.510292 89.654788499999952tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-36490189615951687492013-06-17T17:12:00.003+05:302013-06-17T17:12:57.979+05:30CPI (M) Polit Bureau Calls for Observe Birth Centenary of Jyoti Basu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuMG8comhAoMUPA1v_0J2vppt3bf768LCgTm_0Go3U0ZsBvSL4N0_hVxdZjRtcE2zVWi3PYyrJxi93lGlAWyUnHETHODMF5B9WmCQSoj6_TnWDmnwR_GVKbEtkGsj8_5jRF7WrJx8pjJ2/s1600/puri+sea+beach.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfuMG8comhAoMUPA1v_0J2vppt3bf768LCgTm_0Go3U0ZsBvSL4N0_hVxdZjRtcE2zVWi3PYyrJxi93lGlAWyUnHETHODMF5B9WmCQSoj6_TnWDmnwR_GVKbEtkGsj8_5jRF7WrJx8pjJ2/s640/puri+sea+beach.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: blue;">New Delhi, June 15:</span></span></b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: blue;"> </span>July 8, 2013 marks
the beginning of the birth centenary of Comrade Jyoti Basu, an outstanding
leader of the Communist Party and the Left movement in India. Jyoti Basu, in
his nearly seven decades of work as a Communist, left an indelible imprint on
the political map of the country. He
joined the Communist Party in 1940 and began his work in the railway trade
union movement. In 1946, he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly from
the Railway constituency. Since then, in
his long parliamentary career, he became the role model for all Communists and
progressives on how to work in parliamentary institutions and serve the people.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu played a key role in the
development of the Communist Party in <st1:place w:st="on">West Bengal</st1:place>
and at the all-India level. He was the Secretary of the Provincial Committee of
the CPI from 1954 to 1960. He became a member of the Central Committee of the
CPI in 1951. When the CPI(M) was formed, he became one of the founder Polit
Bureau and Central Committee members. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu became Chief Minister of the Left
Front government of <st1:place w:st="on">West Bengal</st1:place> in 1977 – a
position he occupied continuously till 2000.
Before that, he was twice Deputy Chief Minister in the UF governments
between 1967 and 1970. Under his
leadership, the government undertook the implementation of land reforms and the
establishment of the panchayati raj system. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Under Jyoti Basu’s Chief Ministership, <st1:place w:st="on">West Bengal</st1:place> became a bastion of communal harmony and
secular values. He played a leading role
in advocating the restructuring of Centre-State relations and for establishing
a federal system. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu was a leader who creatively
applied Marxism to the concrete Indian conditions and made an immense
contribution in charting out the course for the Party.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">Jyoti Basu, in his lifetime, became a symbol
for the Left, democratic and secular forces in the country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">The Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) calls for a
year-long celebration of the birth centenary of Jyoti Basu beginning from July
8, 2013. The centenary will be observed
by holding meetings, seminars and a special campaign to propagate the life and contributions
of this invaluable leader. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;"><span style="color: red;">From India News Network (INN)</span><o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: "Arial","sans-serif"; font-size: 14.0pt;">***<o:p></o:p></span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0New Delhi, Delhi, India28.635308 77.2249600000000128.189414499999998 76.579513 29.0812015 77.870407000000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-22684702963801595012013-06-13T16:50:00.000+05:302013-06-13T16:50:55.849+05:30CPI (M) asks PM for postage stamp on Jyoti Basu<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUjAjq2U-v_Jcn6j34Ie9pRQ8Rvb0CsgrpUtUwfdYpxMM8ueIesoS-fKddk5fjzjwScfQXAilCJFWGzQx2WurXmLLfL1eflLjPK8j-yIXRsyOBK-ZeMy_xg9rgUVxpF-mxuYiOqUQTEfc/s1600/Shyamal+Chakraborty+letter+to+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyUjAjq2U-v_Jcn6j34Ie9pRQ8Rvb0CsgrpUtUwfdYpxMM8ueIesoS-fKddk5fjzjwScfQXAilCJFWGzQx2WurXmLLfL1eflLjPK8j-yIXRsyOBK-ZeMy_xg9rgUVxpF-mxuYiOqUQTEfc/s400/Shyamal+Chakraborty+letter+to+PM.jpg" width="285" /></a></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Kolkata, June 12, (IANS):</span></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;"> The CPI(M) has appealed to Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh to issue a set of postage stamps to mark the centenary of late
West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">In a letter to Singh released to the media
Wednesday, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Rajya Sabha member and central
committee member Shyamal Chakraborty said Basu's centenary would be celebrated
from July 8 this year to July 8 2014.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">"I propose that your good office may kindly
advice Department of Posts to publish a set of commemorative postage stamps in
his name during his birth centenary," said Chakraborty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">An identical letter was sent to Communication
and Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">In his letter, Chakraborty refered to the role
Basu played in India's political life after Independence.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">"He (Basu) ran a government in a state for
consecutive five terms. (He) had the widest experience of working with 10 out
of 13 prime ministers of India. This may be reckoned as unprecedented record in
the history of democracy."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNoSpacing" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Chakraborty also pointed out that during his
stint as the country's finance minister between 1991 and 1996, Singh had worked
with Basu.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Basu, born July 8, 1914, was at the helm of
affairs in West Bengal for over 23 years from 1977, the longest chief
ministerial tenure in India. He voluntarily stepped down in 2000 due to ill
health.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Georgia","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt;">Basu almost became India's prime minister in
1996 at the head of a centre-Left United Front government. But the CPI-M vetoed
the proposal, and he later dubbed the party's decision a "historical
blunder".<o:p></o:p></span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995722.1034065 87.718447999999952 23.0418855 89.009341999999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-215059832488342002013-06-11T22:02:00.002+05:302013-06-11T22:02:55.781+05:30CPI (M) prepares for Jyoti Basu birth centenary celebrations<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheaG1QenQjcF1oeCwkyS7BYlYO-nM2cd7Xr61IX1spDLWT53BAvXn96tgmuBKjGHxkTPDWOckJ-bLXHRH7jl6T8AaKigXuZy_EMtUK3tm5VSicpmhiWC659COWKZgQ1oUCf4Kfdz9lnKEO/s1600/Jb.brigade.12.03.2006-Achyut+Roy2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheaG1QenQjcF1oeCwkyS7BYlYO-nM2cd7Xr61IX1spDLWT53BAvXn96tgmuBKjGHxkTPDWOckJ-bLXHRH7jl6T8AaKigXuZy_EMtUK3tm5VSicpmhiWC659COWKZgQ1oUCf4Kfdz9lnKEO/s400/Jb.brigade.12.03.2006-Achyut+Roy2.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;"><b>Press Trust of India| June 4, 2013 Last
Updated at 21:40 IST</b></span><span style="font-size: large;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: red;">KOLKATA:</span> </b>The CPI (M) would start preparations
for celebrating the birth centenary of late chief minister and party leader
Jyoti Basu from July 8. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">"From that day, the party will prepare
for a year-long birth centenary celebration of Jyoti Basu with due
honour," the CPI(M) state committee said after a meeting here today. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The state committee said the celebrations
would include spread of Marxist ideology and for extending mass organizations. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The party has already decided to set up a <b><span style="color: #990000;">‘Jyoti
Basu centre for social studies and research’</span></b> at Rajarhat New Town in memory
of the Marxist leader who died on January 17, 2010.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995722.1034065 87.718447999999952 23.0418855 89.009341999999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-65782830681047982402013-03-29T17:21:00.002+05:302013-03-29T17:21:56.094+05:30Castro, Basu among those honoured by Bangladesh<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTTbl_fPCAUdcfGBuQi3ZF6D12wNe0NuZRkWZA_k8NQiaO3P8ec6gPtWB6iU-HwKBqRi8ZFLMiaJgwtZ34ZB_ryjaonVMPGoCl-HQ2Ee8HpUT6gRgleGZEP7tyw7oGSyd7M6qpqeLK3PJ/s1600/fidel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggTTbl_fPCAUdcfGBuQi3ZF6D12wNe0NuZRkWZA_k8NQiaO3P8ec6gPtWB6iU-HwKBqRi8ZFLMiaJgwtZ34ZB_ryjaonVMPGoCl-HQ2Ee8HpUT6gRgleGZEP7tyw7oGSyd7M6qpqeLK3PJ/s1600/fidel.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="color: blue;">DHAKA: 24<sup>th</sup>
March-</span></span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro; former British Prime
Minister Lord Harold Wilson; and <b><span style="color: red;">former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu</span></b>
were among the 69 ‘foreign friends’ honoured by Bangladesh on Sunday for their
contribution to the country’s liberation war in 1971.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is
the sixth phase of the awards, given out to ‘foreign friends’, a process that
began during the current government of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Friends
from Cuba, United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Japan, the United States,
Australia and Sweden have been awarded in two categories — ‘Friends of
Liberation War Honour’ and ‘Liberation War Honour’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Fidel
Castro and Harold Wilson have been awarded ‘Liberation War Honour’.
Representatives of Mr. Castro and two-time British Prime Minister Mr. Wilson
received the honours. Jyoti Basu has been awarded ‘Friends of Liberation War
Honour’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">The
highest honour was awarded to former Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in
July 25 last year. Her daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi accepted the honour on her
behalf. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee was awarded ‘Liberation War Honour’
on March 5 this year.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Prime
Minister Sheikh Hasina presented them with the citations and the awards in a
ceremony at the capital’s Bangabandhu International Conference Centre on
Sunday.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ten
prominent Pakistani nationals were honoured this time. They included: Begum
Naseem Akhtar, Dr. Iqbal Ahmed, Mir Ghaus Bakhsh Bizenjo, all politicians;
Zafar Malik, a lawyer; Faiz Ahmed Faiz, a poet; and Begum Tahira Mazhar Ali,
Human rights activist among others. Human rights activist Asma Jahangir,
daughter of former politician and civil servant Malik Ghulam Jilani and journalist
Hamid Mir, son of Waris Mir, another journalist, received the awards on behalf
of their fathers.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Several
prominent Indian military and civil personalities, including Lt. Gen. Jagjit
Singh Aurora; Lt Gen. Sagat Singh; Vice Admiral Swaraj Prakash; Major General
Antony Harold Edward Michigan received ‘friends of liberation war awards’ this
time.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">So far,
206 individuals and organisations have been given the honour for their
contributions to Bangladesh’s liberation war.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="color: blue; font-size: large;">THE HINDU, Published: March
24, 2013 23:08 IST</span></span></div>
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Dhaka, Bangladesh23.709921 90.40714300000001923.477434000000002 90.084419500000024 23.942408 90.729866500000014tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-22771936921273492762012-12-23T21:00:00.000+05:302012-12-23T21:00:45.888+05:30On victory margins, Jyoti Basu is ahead by far<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgiJml5OyQ4ae3wzXbwGk82hk_W9s3dMNL2FoMZ1kWzxZa97_QKLbjOBhvgy9kZ8Sz0L-NkHGgHR6VkRoifie4_OKpdBNinKQaGMQxkLr1PC6I_nk2mGgltYOUlgZ9wu-bwvB4WkOrSld/s1600/JB+in+writers+bldg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvgiJml5OyQ4ae3wzXbwGk82hk_W9s3dMNL2FoMZ1kWzxZa97_QKLbjOBhvgy9kZ8Sz0L-NkHGgHR6VkRoifie4_OKpdBNinKQaGMQxkLr1PC6I_nk2mGgltYOUlgZ9wu-bwvB4WkOrSld/s400/JB+in+writers+bldg.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">By Vidya Subrahmaniam</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><b><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Third-term Modi is in
the company of three who far outshine him in terms of seat and vote shares</span></i></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">As super hero-sized
victories go, there is clearly no one among India’s galaxy of Chief Ministers,
including the much-hailed and ostensibly Delhi-bound Narendra Modi, who can
beat the record of West Bengal's Jyoti Basu.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jyoti Basu who was
Chief Minister for close to five terms stretching over 23 long years,
consistently registered blockbuster victories for the Left Front which held
over three-fourths of the seats in the four terms between 1977 and 1996 — 225;
228; 242 and 241 in a house of 294. Even when the numbers dipped in 1996, the
LF had a two-thirds majority, winning 202 or 68.70 per cent of the seats. The
LF’s vote share ranged from 47 per cent to 51 per cent.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Naveen Patnaik and
Sheila Dikshit are both three-time Chief Ministers. Mr. Patnaik who was in
alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party between 2000 and 2004, completely
overshadowed his partner. The Biju Janata Dal won 81 per cent of the seats it
contested in 2000. The corresponding figure for the BJP was 60.31 per cent. The
BJD won 72.61 per cent of the seats it contested in 2004. The corresponding
figure for the BJP was 50.79 per cent. In 2009, Mr. Patnaik dumped the BJP
citing sectarian violence in Kandhamal. The move won him a bounty: The BJD won
a three-fourths majority with a seat share of 103 in the 129-member Orissa
Assembly. Mr. Patnaik, whose party polled 39 per cent of the valid votes,
achieved this feat in a three-way contest among the BJP, the BJD and the
Congress.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Ms. Dikshit was sworn
in immediately after the 1998 Delhi Assembly election which fetched the
Congress 52 of 70 seats or almost a three-fourths majority. In 2003, she won a
two-thirds majority with 47 seats, and in 2009, against all expectations, she
won 43 or 61 per cent of the seats.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Thursday, as
results poured in from Gujarat, TV anchors competed to paint Mr. Modi in
hagiographic shades, declaring that he was headed for a two-thirds majority. As
time passed, the seat projection came down from 130 to 120 and stayed there
even though expected tally hovered between 116 and 115 on the Election
Commission of India’s website. In the end, the BJP in Gujarat wound up with 115
of 182 seats (63 per cent) — two short of the 117 it had in 2007.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Significantly, the
record for winning the highest share of seats and votes in Gujarat goes to the
Congress. In 1980, it won 141 seats for a vote share of 51.04 per cent. Madhav
Singh Solanki who became Chief Minister topped this in the next election with a
phenomenal 149 seats for a vote share of 55.55 per cent.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Published:
THE HINDU, December 22, 2012 01:09 IST <o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This article has been
corrected for an editing error.</span></b><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995722.103410999999998 87.718447999999952 23.041881 89.009341999999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-85529578844669385712012-07-14T21:28:00.001+05:302013-03-29T17:23:28.195+05:30Jyoti Basu Birthday - Ex MLA stopped from entering Bidhan Sabha<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="344" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/U2xsGtUmaFw?fs=1" width="459"></iframe>AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389499999995722.103402 87.718447999999952 23.04189 89.009341999999961tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4857137436884972920.post-52371968251890778492012-07-11T19:01:00.001+05:302012-07-11T19:05:39.275+05:30Denied entry, Left pays tribute to Basu at House gates<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0cJcOuNXas-YOqJdwT4nML5oUD_xG8_oUthwHu9OV7_u3e053Z4bMn8T22OANAFK-5weUAAz2QyqKoWMJNxr2Ls7y4AdEFjcm5h47ZNhni_xa-MxSsl-xhSG2HExNi9bTDECxOMChip_S/s1600/Jyoti+Basu+BirthDay+Outside+Bidhansabha++D+Sen.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="205" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0cJcOuNXas-YOqJdwT4nML5oUD_xG8_oUthwHu9OV7_u3e053Z4bMn8T22OANAFK-5weUAAz2QyqKoWMJNxr2Ls7y4AdEFjcm5h47ZNhni_xa-MxSsl-xhSG2HExNi9bTDECxOMChip_S/s320/Jyoti+Basu+BirthDay+Outside+Bidhansabha++D+Sen.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzd-6gg_GLXsfPo5oXHUjMeKQV1kvAIbjpV_h52PygnVQOy8IKDX_LeQkf0Vmpzq8C55lvvmgEAvu0fH79Xi2aAYqSnDGj2pPrgvdaClvK_Gy59WNrQi5pWv-c-w-dfSOBdoVzJsVEgrjT/s1600/Joyti+Bose+Birth+Day+Out+Side+Bidhan+Sobha+16+D+Sen.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzd-6gg_GLXsfPo5oXHUjMeKQV1kvAIbjpV_h52PygnVQOy8IKDX_LeQkf0Vmpzq8C55lvvmgEAvu0fH79Xi2aAYqSnDGj2pPrgvdaClvK_Gy59WNrQi5pWv-c-w-dfSOBdoVzJsVEgrjT/s320/Joyti+Bose+Birth+Day+Out+Side+Bidhan+Sobha+16+D+Sen.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<b style="background-color: white; line-height: 13.5pt; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #215868;">TNN,</span><span style="color: #215868;"> <span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; padding: 0in;">Jul 9, 2012, 04.29AM IST</span></span></span></b><br />
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<b style="background-color: white; line-height: 15pt;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: blue;">KOLKATA:</span><span style="color: #3f3f3f;"> Two days after chief minister</span><span style="color: #3f3f3f;"> </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Mamata-Banerjee"><span style="color: blue;">Mamata Banerjee</span></a><span style="color: #3f3f3f;"> </span><span style="color: #3f3f3f;">prematurely
celebrated former chief minister and CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu's birthday in the
assembly, his comrades had to garland him outside its gates on the actual day
of celebration.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
Left parties had planned to offer flowers to the painting of Basu in the
assembly. Accordingly, around 15 leaders gathered at the assembly gates at
10.30 am on Sunday. After leader of the opposition Surjya Kanta Mishra arrived,
they tried to enter the house. But the securitymen stopped them, saying only
sitting MLAs would be allowed entry.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A
heated exchange followed, with the securitymen pleading that they were
"following instructions" of the Marshall. Among those who were not
allowed in were former ministers Debes Das and Manab Mukherjee and former MLAs
Rabin Deb, Rajdeo Goala and Sudhangshu Sil. Former speaker Hashim Abdul Halim
was allowed in with the sitting MLAs.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When
Mishra failed to convince the Marshall, he called Speaker Biman Bandyopadhyay
and pleaded with him. "I am requesting you to instruct the Marshall to let
us in. As former MLAs, they have been given identity cards and enjoy the
privilege of entering the house just like sitting members. I had taken verbal
permission from you for this morning's programme that we had planned in memory
of Jyoti Basu. Why should we submit a list of people entering the Assembly?
They are all former MLAs," Mishra said on the phone.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But
permission was not granted. The "insult" was obviously not taken
kindly by the former MLAs and ministers who decided to register their protest
against such "unconstitutional" behaviour by the ruling party. A
framed photograph of Basu was brought from the 'Ganashakti' office, placed on a
chair and the Left leaders offered their respects at the gate of the assembly
house.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #3f3f3f;">"This is absolutely shameful. We have been forced to offer
flowers to</span><span style="color: #3f3f3f;"> </span><a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/Jyoti-Basu"><span style="color: blue;">Jyoti Basu</span></a><span style="color: #3f3f3f;"> </span><span style="color: #3f3f3f;">on his
birthday at the gates of the assembly. The speaker simply refused to listen to
reason. The government celebrated Basu's birthday two days in advance and has
now prevented us from offering our respects on the day itself. No one could
imagine that things would come to such a humiliating pass," fumed Mishra.<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Speaker
Biman Bandyopadhyay justified himself, saying Mishra had not submitted a formal
application seeking permission for the programme. "We had asked for a list
of names. Why could he not provide us with that?"<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Former
Speaker Hashim Abdul Halim, however, was not impressed. "How can a speaker
prevent former ministers and MLAs from entering the assembly? They bear
identity cards that allow them this privilege," he said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">West
Bengal Pradesh Congress president Pradip Bhattacharya, too, called the act
"shameful". "They should have been allowed to go in and offer
their respects. The ruling party has not behaved properly," he said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Congress
leader and Behrampore MP Adhir Chowdhury called it a "farce". "I
won't be surprised if tomorrow they say that since Jyoti Basu is a former chief
minister, we should take his painting out of the House!" was his snide
remark.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the
other hand, state panchayat and PHE minister Subrata Mukherjee criticized
Mishra for not taking prior permission. He explained that since the assembly is
closed on Sundays, the state government had organized the programme to pay tribute
to Basu on Friday at the behest of chief minister Mamata Banerjee. "CPM
MLAs refused to participate in it. They just sat there and sipped tea," he
complained.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"By
paying their tribute outside the assembly, the Left leaders have dishonoured
Basu," he said. "When Basu was alive, no CPM leader would go to
Indira Bhavan with flowers to wish him on his birthday. It was only Subhas
Chakraborty and his wife Ramala who celebrated it. The other CPM leaders would
say that communists do not celebrate birth or death anniversaries,"
Mukherjee reminded.He claimed the Left leaders organized this event only to
counter Friday's state-backed programme at the assembly.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Former
Speaker Hasim Abdul Halim is also well aware that prior permission of the
speaker is needed to keep the assembly open on a holiday. Moreover, certain
security measures have been installed decision for which was taken in an
all-party meeting. So entry has been restricted now," Mukherjee said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"It's
just drama. If Mishra had any respect for Basu, he would have visited Indira
Bhavan where the CPM patriarch stayed till his last days. But how could Mishra
have got publicity had he not enacted the drama in front of the assembly
gates," Mukherjee lashed out.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Meanwhile,
CPM state secretary Biman Bose said that chief minister Mamata Banerjee,
immediately after the government was formed, had said that the Assembly would
be for the Opposition - a spirit that reflects democracy. "However, there
is no reflection of that," Bose said, reacting to Sunday's incident.
"Whatever happened today was shameful, and it is not clear which way the
government is going."<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #3f3f3f;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">He said
birth anniversary celebrations could "begin" a few days ahead, but to
observe the actual date of birth has always been the custom. "What are the
students learning from all this? This is disrespectful", Bose said.<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></div>
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AJOY DASGUPTAhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06353118047589741058noreply@blogger.com0Kolkata, West Bengal, India22.572646 88.36389522.3393195 88.048038 22.8059725 88.679752