Jyoti
Basu played a consistent, constructive role in national politics right
through his political career.
|
IRONICALLY, much of the debate in the
media and in political circles on Jyoti Basu’s role in national politics
pertains to a role that he did not assume. The issue – of Jyoti Basu being
offered the Prime Minister’s post in 1996 to head the United Front government,
and his party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), deciding against his
accepting the offer – had come up time and again during his lifetime. Now,
after his death, it has once again made an eloquent return. However, Jyoti
Basu’s contribution to national politics is not merely about his inability to
become Prime Minister in 1996. A careful assessment of his political career and
also interactions with national and regional politicians across the
ideological-political spectrum make it clear that he played a role in national
politics right through his life.
In fact, his first political activity, as
a student in England , began with the national freedom movement. He had
occasion to interact with top leaders of the freedom movement, including
Jawaharlal Nehru and Subhas Chandra Bose. Talking about his participation in
the freedom movement and his later roles as the Chief Minister of West Bengal
and a Polit Bureau member of the CPI(M), Jyoti Basu told this correspondent in
2005 that the principal thrust of the political activities of Communist leaders
of his generation was to bring together the values of the national movement and
independent India in order to fulfil the hopes and aspirations of a people that
suffered under the yoke of colonialism. “When I joined politics, the national
movement had reached a critical stage. The question in front of us was not only
how to free our country but also how to build it after Independence , liberating the poor from the travails of
backwardness,” he said.
In the initial years, after returning to India and joining the undivided Communist Party of India
(CPI), his activities were concentrated in Kolkata and the rest of Bengal . But, by 1964, when the CPI split, leading to the formation of the
CPI(M), he had started making his presence felt in a significant way in
national politics. This role developed more concretely in the mid-1970s, when
the Congress government led by Indira Gandhi declared the Emergency. The
struggle against the Emergency was carried out by opposition parties unitedly,
and Jyoti Basu was deeply involved in coordinating and carrying forward this
united political action.
With the historic electoral victory of
1977 and the formation of the Left Front government under his leadership in West Bengal , Jyoti Basu’s political role at the national level
went through a nuanced qualitative change. “The idea,” he told this
correspondent, “was to evolve a model of governance that would be upheld as a
role model.” Given the social, economic and political dimensions of the 1970s
and 1980s, the focus was on the agricultural sector and the implementation of
wide-ranging and concrete land reforms. Strengthening and spreading local
administration through the panchayati raj system and enhancing literacy levels
were the other areas of focus.
Explaining this further, he said, “We had
advanced the struggle for land reforms when we were in the opposition. We were
asking the government, where were the land reforms they themselves had
promised? All that the government of the Congress party did was to adopt a
resolution in the Assembly, but nothing happened. The zamindars and the
landlords continued as before. During the agitation phase, we had studied the
deficiencies in the approach of the Congress and when we came to power, the
first thing we did was to redistribute 13 lakh acres of land to peasants,
agricultural labourers, sharecroppers, and so on.”
The national impact of this initiative was
acknowledged by Congress leader and former Union Minister for Panchayati Raj
Mani Shankar Aiyar in an article as follows: “He [Jyoti Basu] has wrought a
revolution in the countryside. His land reforms have given a real opportunity
to the tiller. The deep roots given to panchayati raj have, indeed, ensured
that, even in contemporary times, ‘what Bengal thinks today, India thinks tomorrow’. [Former Prime Minister] Rajiv
Gandhi was most generous in his praise of the contribution made by the West Bengal experience in panchayati raj to the evolution of
his own ideas on the subject. The CPI(M) has been less than generous to him in
return, but that does not detract from the importance which Rajivji attached to
India as a whole imbibing the more important lessons of
the West Bengal revolution in the countryside.”
Along with developing this role in the
agrarian sector and at the level of local administration, the successive Left
Front governments led by Jyoti Basu were also models in maintaining communal
harmony and social peace. Unlike the situation in Delhi , violence against the Sikh community following the
assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 was contained immediately in West Bengal . Communal disturbance did not spread to West Bengal in 1992 after the demolition of the Babri Masjid
in Ayodhya.
However, Jyoti Basu’s political role
between 1977 and 1992 was not confined to governmental initiatives. As several
leaders have recalled, he was involved in coordinating all secular opposition
forces across the country against the negative trends in national politics
right from the early 1980s. As Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav has
observed, in the 1980s the struggle was against the authoritarian trends and
corrupt practices of the Congress and since the early 1990s it was against the
Hindutva agenda of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its associates in the
Sangh Parivar. The first phase of these initiatives and interventions witnessed
the ouster of the Rajiv Gandhi-led Congress government from power in 1989 and
the formation of the National Front (N.F.) government under Vishwanath Pratap
Singh.
It was in the second phase of the national
political initiatives in 1996, when both the incumbent Congress and the
principal opposition, the BJP, failed to muster the numbers to form the
government at the Centre, that Jyoti Basu was offered the Prime Minister’s
position by the non-Congress, non-BJP United Front. Mulayam Singh has said that
he proposed the name of Jyoti Basu for the post with the full conviction that
the country would develop into a progressive state under his leadership.
Mulayam Singh took into consideration the political and administrative track
record of Jyoti Basu when he made the proposal. He is convinced that rural India would have become a much better place and Maoist
extremism would have found it difficult to grow to its current dimensions if
Jyoti Basu had become Prime Minister in 1996.
The proposal was turned down by the CPI(M)
central committee essentially on the basis of the provisions in the party’s
constitution which stipulated that the party will never join any government or
coalition where it is not in a position to influence decisively the process of
policymaking. The assessment of the then central committee was that Jyoti Basu
as Prime Minister would not be in a position to influence decisively the
process of policymaking. Jyoti Basu himself reportedly evaluated the decision
six months later as “a historic, political blunder”. His contention at that
time, according to many leaders and former leaders of the CPI (M), was that the
Left Front governments in Kerala and West Bengal had evolved unique,
people-oriented, alternative developmental models in several areas of
governance and this could have been introduced at the national level if the
Prime Minister’s position was accepted and the party had become a part of the
Union government. However, Jyoti Basu himself did not take the debate forward
on this issue in the following years. His position was that the party had taken
a decision and as a committed worker of the party he accepted it.
The developments of 1996 did not prevent
him from playing an active role in national politics, and he was instrumental,
along with CPI(M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet, in forging a broad
alliance of secular parties against the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance
(NDA). These efforts found success in the defeat of the NDA in the 2004
elections. Talking to this correspondent after the formation of the first
United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, Jyoti Basu said: “We know whom
they [the Congress party] represent. But at the same time, they are not as bad
as the communal forces. They are not a communal party, but have been submitting
to communalism time and again. In the background of all this, we are agitating
against their wrong policies even while associating with them in the fight
against communalism. We hope that our agitation will make them learn some crucial
lessons.”
Jyoti Basu’s successive governments were
widely criticised for failing to develop industries or information technology
in West Bengal although they played constructive roles in many
areas of governance. During the campaign for the 2006 Assembly elections in the
State, the veteran leader said that there was need for greater
industrialisation in West
Bengal but it should be
remembered that the agriculture sector was the strength of the State’s economy
and society.
He also admitted that he, his party and
the Left movement as a whole had not successfully fathomed out the caste system
in the country and the social discrimination it perpetuated and evolved
appropriate political responses. A couple of days before Janata Dal leader H.D.
Deve Gowda assumed office as Prime Minister on June 1, 1996 , Jyoti Basu said: “In a sense, it is good that I
did not become Prime Minister. For it would have been very difficult to
administer this caste-ridden bureaucracy, especially since I cannot yet
differentiate between a Kurmi and a Kayasth.”
Later, in 2005, he stated in an interview
that “we have a feeling that caste issues were not taken into account [by us]
properly.” He also added that caste and religion were very important in India and that the Left needed to consider all this and
evolve a proper strategy.
He was 91 when he said
this, but as a faithful Marxist he was ready for critical self-examination even
at that stage. This could well be one of the primary factors that helped him
make such a huge contribution and earn the respect and admiration of millions
of Indians.
Courtesy: Frontline
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