Profile: 'Gutsy Crusader' Jyoti Basu

Jyoti Basu, hailed as the pioneer of the Leftist movement in India, was born to middle-class Bengali family in Calcutta on Jul 8, 1914.



After graduating from Presidency College with an honours degree, Basu migrated to the United Kingdom to study law, where he was introduced to the Communist Party of Great Britain.

"As a student in England, he had embraced Marxism and it was the Communist movement - its twists and turns, its triumphs and failures and, above all, its indisputable relevance to India's massive problems - that would be his future," N Ram, the Editor of Front Line wrote in his piece 'Of Jyoti Basu'.

Thus introduced to Communism, Basu returned to India in 1940 and joined the Communist Party of India, where he started off with trade union activities.

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His political career officially took off when he was elected to the Bengal Legislative Assembly in 1946.

"To me, Jyoti Basu's first five years as a fearless leader in the Bengal Assembly, are the finest years of his political career," opined Nikhil Chakraborty, Senior Political Columnist, who called Basu a 'Gutsy Crusader'.

In 1964 came a crucial turning point. When Communist Party of India split, Basu became one of the first key nine members of the Politburo of the newly-formed Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Basu went on to become the Chief Minister of Bengal from 1977 to 2000 and as of 2009  holds the record of being India's longest-serving Chief Minister.

Despite the ideological and political differences between Congress and the CPI (M), Mani Shakar Aiyar who once wrote about Basu as an 'extraordinary' Chief Minister said, "I shall continue to remind myself that only a knight can wear an armour and that; therefore, it can be said of Jyoti Babu, as Gandhiji said of Panditji, that he is a knight sans peur, sans reproche."

When time came for Basu to be the Prime Minister in 1996, CPI(M) Politburo committed a 'historic blunder' by deciding not to participate in the government.

In 2000, Basu retired from Chief Ministership of West Bengal and in 2008 he requested CPI(M) to allow his retirement.

Since 2009, Basu has been battling with illness. He was first hospitalised in Jul 2009 when he complained of breathing problems.  Again in Jan 2010, the illness came back to haunt him.

On Friday, Jan 1, 2010  the leader was admitted to AMRI Salt Lake hospital with pneumonia.

Basu battled for his life for a couple of weeks before suffering a multiple organ failure. On Jan 17, 2010, at 11: 47 am Jyoti Basu was pronounced dead.

The entire political fraternity mourned Basu's death as the country lost one of the fathers of Indian communism.

OneIndia News