Communists didn't support Emergency: Jyoti Basu

 Rifat Jawaid in Calcutta

June 24, 2000

West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu has angrily denounced recent reports that the Communists tacitly supported the Emergency. 

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." 

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. 

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. 

For Basu, the Emergency was "the worst thing that could ever happen in India after Independence." 

"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." 

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. 

https://www.rediff.com/news/2000/jun/24basu.htm

 

TMC government clears land allotment for Jyoti Basu centre

TNN | Updated: Jul 16, 2019, 6:36 IST 

KOLKATA: The state is set to allot a five-acre plot in New Town for a research centre in memory of former chief minister  and CPM patriarch Jyoti Basu, raising eyebrows in political  circles as many see the government decision as Mamata Banerjee’s  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.

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.

Located in the central business district, the centre will be built beside the upcoming High Court complex.

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 have an auditorium and hold workshops and seminars as well.

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.

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.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/70235970.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

CPI(M) delegation meets Mamata Banerjee over Jyoti Basu centre impasse

29 JUNE 2019  

OUTLOOK, Last Updated at 12:06 AM | SOURCE: IANS

Students of Golden Sand Art Institute of Sudarshan Pattnaik at Puri make a sand sculpture of former Chief Minister West Bengal Jyoti Basu

Kolkata, June 28: 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.

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.

"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.

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.

"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.

"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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

 Outlook

Now Mamata Banerjee re-christens projects named after Left leader Jyoti Basu

By Madhuparna Das, ET Bureau

Updated: Oct 15, 2017, 11.56 PM IST

KOLKATA: 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

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`She makes me a bad Marxist, makes me believe in godliness'

Saugata Roy | TNN | Sep 5, 2016, 04.29 PM IST

A Marxist, Jyoti Basu stayed way from the funeral mass at Netaji Indoor Stadium, but attended mother's last journey.

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. "We share a love for the poor," 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."

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

Basu and Mother Teresa: a special association

ANANYA DUTTA

THE HINDU, KOLKATA, January 19, 2010

PTI

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.

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.

“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.

Mr. Basu always tried to be supportive of her work and personally oversaw the arrangements for her funeral, Mr. Ghosh said.

“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 Messiah of the Poor, a book on the life of Mother Teresa by B. K. Chaturvedi.

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.

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.

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 The Hindu over the telephone.

“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.