Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the tragic hero of Bengal’s Left politics, dies at 80
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) bade farewell to the apparatchik who repeatedly strayed from convention to emerge as a leader with an independent mind in a regimented party
Kolkata: With the death of 80-year-old Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee at his frugal two-room government apartment in south Kolkata’s Palm Avenue on Thursday morning, West Bengal lost its last communist chief minister.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M) bade farewell to the apparatchik who repeatedly strayed from convention to emerge as a leader with an independent mind in a regimented party.
Condolence messages poured in from all over, cutting across political divides, as millions of citizens mourned the death of Bhattacharjee, who is survived by his wife Mira and only child, Suchetana.
“Saddened by the passing of Shri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, former CM of West Bengal. He was a political stalwart who served the state with commitment. My heartfelt condolences to his family and supporters. Om Shanti,” wrote Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of whom the departed communist was a bitter critic.
“This is an extremely sad moment for us. I have known him for several decades. We met on many occasions. I offer my condolences to members of the CPI(M) party and all his followers,” said chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who is acknowledged as the sole architect of the downfall of the Left Front’s 34-year-long regime in Bengal.
In the September of 2000, when the maverick Jyoti Basu took the bow from his cabinet colleagues and retired as independent India’s longest serving chief minister—Sikkim’s Pawan Chamling later broke that record—Bhattacharjee, her successor, was widely seen as the CPI (M)’s poster boy yearning to change the face of archaic bureaucracy in the corridors of the British-era secretariat, the Writers’ Buildings, and alter the image of party cadres.
Easier said than done, many of Bhattacharjee’s critics said in hushed tones at the transition took place. Eleven years later, when Bhattacharjee lost by 16,770 votes to Manish Gupta—his first home secretary who joined the Trinamool Congress after retirement—the veteran communist was virtually reduced to a tragic hero.
But that is not why ‘Buddha Babu,’ a thoroughbred Bengali gentleman identified by spotless white dhoti-kurta and Kolhapuri chappals and love for Latin American literature and Tagore’s works, will possibly be remembered for.
Often criticised by his fellow comrades for trying to play apostle of the industry, the man who always stood his ground embraced a rough ride no Left leader experienced during Bengal’s Left Front regime. Critics may argue that he failed to live up to the expectations of the masses, but Bhattacharjee did not hesitate to set up acid tests for himself.
Sounding the slogan “Krishi amader bhitti, shilpo amader bhobishyot” (agriculture is our foundation, industry is our future) at back-to-back Left rallies during his 10-year tenure, Bhattacharjee showed his determination to revive industries in a state where strikes and militant trade unionism were seen by investors as the order of the day.
In 2005, he signed a number of Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs), including one with the Salim Group of Indonesia for a multi-crore special economic zone, which was later to become part of the Petroleum Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR). The second project was Ratan Tata’s long-cherished dream—the rupees one lakh car for the common man.
Bhattacharjee even sounded prophetic at times. “Perform, reform or perish,” he said at a public meeting in 2005. To CPI(M) Mandarins, it perhaps came as a shock. Bhattacharjee was misquoted by the media; some of them said what he meant was “perform or perish.”
To counter public perception that the juggernaut did not move in the corridors of power, Bhattacharjee raised another slogan—“Do it now.”
It still took his government about two years to draw up blueprints for the projects. But politics at the grassroots and simmering anger over the acquisition of farmland emerged as Bhattacharjee’s main challengers.
The government chose Nandigram in East Midnapore for the proposed PCPIR. The Assembly standing committee on commerce and industries, headed by then Congress MLA Sudip Bandopadhyay, gave its nod after a spot visit. With the CPI(M) in complete control of the three community blocks, the party thought acquiring land would be easy.
That the CPI(M) had given wrong feedback to Writers Buildings became apparent when a notice issued by the Haldia Development Authority turned thousands of people against the party. Before the government could get a grip on the situation, Nandigram turned into a war zone.
A police force sent to Nandigram on March 14, 2007 was supposed to restore the rule of law, but the local party thought it would be wise to send some armed cadres to counter the agitators. Fourteen deaths later, Bhattacharjee had no option but to accept “moral responsibility” before fuming Left Front partners.
The civil society also got divided. The majority of the intellectuals passed the verdict against the person they pampered all these years.
At Singur, the government managed to acquire the land promised to Ratan Tata, but the boundary wall built around the factory site was targeted with bombs and shovels by angry farmers. Tata Motors employees had to be provided with round-the-clock police cover. Tata Motors moved out of Singur in 2008.
Kolkata added to the chief minister’s agony. The government had nothing to do with the death of Rizwanur Rahaman, a youth, on September 21, 2007. But he had to face the consequences because of three IPS officers, the then police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee being one. Reeling under pressure from the media, intellectuals, and Left Front allies, Bhattacharjee paid a visit to Rizwanur’s mother and removed all the officers from the Lalbazar police headquarters in Kolkata. Never during Bhattacharjee’s successive tenures as home (police) minister had the administration faced such a situation.
On November 10, 2007, the focus shifted to Nandigram again. While the chief minister was waiting for Central Reserve Police Force contingents to arrive, armed CPI (M) cadres stormed into Nandigram, leaving a trail of blood. “They were paid back in their own coin,” Bhattacharjee said, trying to defend his party only to admit a few days later in Delhi that he should not have sounded like the “party’s chief minister.” His compulsion was exposed.
Bhattacharjee’s tenure witnessed another incident that rocked Kolkata in November 2007. Army had to be deployed and curfew imposed in parts of the city after Muslims demanded the ouster of Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen for some alleged sacrilegious remarks in Dwikhondito. Nasreen left for Gujarat. Later, she dropped those pages and alleged that the Bengal government pressured her to leave. The civil society received another jolt.
Knowing the way Bhattacharjee lived his political career, the way he kept his feet firmly on the ground even at the cost of being tagged “impractical” and “arrogant” by his critics, his defeat in the 2011 assembly polls was almost a catastrophe for his image and career.
From being a leader of the Students Federation in 1963 to heading an industry-savvy government, the protégé of legendary Marxist Pramod Dasgupta survived many crises, including a year-long exile from politics following strong differences with Jyoti Basu in August 1993. But Bhattacharjee could not survive Singur or Nandigram, and the fallout of his very own judgments.
The worst criticism came from his old cabinet colleague Abdur Rezzak Molla, who emerged victorious in 2011. “One who can’t even handle a non-venomous water snake should not have touched a cobra,” Molla told the media in a non-discreet reference to Bhattacharjee’s land acquisition methods. “He was not alone. There were people with him. Nobody thought about the poor people. The result of all that is here for everybody to see,” Molla told the media.
Clearly, a veteran like Molla bracketed Bhattacharjee as one who ignored the agenda of a Marxist regime. Nothing more could have hurt the image of a fallen chief minister.
In 1977, Bhattacharjee was picked to head the information and public relations department when the first Left Front government came to power in Bengal. The reason, argue Bhattacharjee’s fellow comrades, was his “intellectual” image, something that no other Left leader in Bengal has carried so firmly. The department was renamed as ‘Information and Cultural Affairs’ probably to suit Bhattacharjee’s agenda—to project Kolkata, if not Bengal, as the cultural capital of India with book fairs, film festivals, and cultural events.
It was perhaps a political satire that the anti-incumbency factor and growing popularity of the Trinamool Congress took a toll not only on his party but also on his two main agendas—industry and culture. Sponsors for the Kolkata Film Festival 2010 dwindled, keeping pace with the drop in popularity of the annual event.
He was the only CPI (M) leader who advocated the need for nuclear energy in the country. Bhattacharjee stood firmly behind former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand on “Nuclear Renaissance” and urged environmentalists to stop being “fundamentalists.”
Bhattacharjee’s comments in front of a galaxy of industry stalwarts in 2008 assumed significance as the general secretary of his own party, Prakash Karat, vehemently opposed the India-US nuclear deal.
For a man who made his spotless white dhoti-kurta symbols of his honesty, Bhattacharjee took more criticisms than many of his colleagues.