By S Gurumurthy
18 Jan 2010 12:54:00 AM IST
A Bhadralok Communist
'Gana' as Jyoti Basu who ruled West Bengal as chief minister for 23
long years from 1977 to 2000, was affectionately known at home, is no
more. Undoubtedly a versatile politician whose public life lasted six
decades, different people will recall Basu in different ways. His
adversaries and friends alike will recall him as a practical communist
who even undertook a visit to the US, the arch enemy of his party and
its ideology, seeking its investment in his state. The official
website of the Left Front government brings out his greatest
achievement. It eulogises him as the one who perpetuated Communist
control over the state apparatus of West Bengal — an indisputable
fact. Understanding how he achieved this feat is critical to know
Jyoti Basu as a politician as also his mission.
The State website www.jyotibasu.net says that Jyoti Basu "is known
primarily" for "establishing a seemingly indestructible Communist
control over some of the levers of the state-level political power in
West Bengal". The official website says that he achieved this by
combining "communist extra parliamentary" political tactic with the
parliamentary tactic "aimed at establishing indestructible Communist
control". But could 'indestructible communist' control be consistent
with parliamentary democratic process? No. It could not be. But a
re-reading of the official website makes it evident that what it talks
of is not democratic, but "Communist", parliamentary and
extra-parliamentary political tactics.
Here is a telling illustration of how 'the Communist extra
parliamentary political tactic' is different from democratic
parliamentary process. In its editorial dated August 6, 2003 written
in the context of the unprecedented violence that marked the panchayat
polls in the state which the CPI(M) had won, The Statesman newspaper
said it was not "the popularity of the Marxists" that was the reason
for the marginalisation of the opposition parties in the elections,
but, it was the Marxists' "expertise in fixing elections by violence,
intimidation, and by simple expedient of preventing opposition
candidates from filing nominations". The edit concluded: "it is the
prescriptive right of the communists to use any method they choose and
if it is a wrong or illegal method, the stigma is instantly washed
away when they touch it." The implication is clear. The Marxists never
considered it a sin to fix elections by fraud and violence, and if
they did it, no stigma would attach to them! The use of this extra
parliamentary tactic along with the parliamentary — read electoral —
process is the secret of Jyoti Basu's success in perpetuating
communist control over the State apparatus in West Bengal. But more
than this achievement, that he did so without being faulted for it
speaks volumes about how an acceptable face can make unacceptable
things acceptable to the people who count.
Jyoti Basu was the face of Bengali Communism most acceptable to the
Bengali Bhadralok. For the British, Bhadralok meant the
'well-mannered' Bengali. But, in the dictionary of Indian politics, it
would simply mean the upper castes in Bengal. While in rest of India,
with the democratic process deepening with each election, the lower
castes' share of power increased, the Marxist controlled West Bengal
had virtually kept out the lower castes and denied their due share in
power. Surprised? Here is the evidence. In the governments led by
Jyoti Basu between 1977 and 1982, "there were even more Brahmins than
in the Congress governments, over 35 per cent; the number of Kayasthas
(31 per cent) and Vaishyas (23 per cent) was almost the same as in
Congress governments". What was the share of the Scheduled Castes in
Jyoti Basu ministry? Believe it — just "1.5 per cent". If the
"inferior ministers — ministers of state and deputy ministers — were
left out", it would be even "lower". Stunningly, in Basu's ministry in
1977 and 1982 "there was not a single Scheduled Caste member of the
Council of Ministers". Yes, not a single one despite West Bengal
having the highest concentration of Scheduled Caste population in the
whole country — almost 24 per cent (Census 1991). These shocking facts
have been brought out in a scholarly work that appears in
http://www.ambedkar.org/books/tu2.htm.
The message is evident. The transfer of power from Congress to
Marxists had actually made it worse for the lower castes. The reason.
Jyoti Basu largely represented the traditional Bengal, contrary to the
popular notion that he and the likes of him were products of Marxian
modernity. His dress and circle of friends readily identified him with
the Bengali Bhadralok and endeared him to the media in Bengal
dominated by the Bhadralok, which in turn made him inevitable for the
party within. Result, Bhadralok actually dominated Bengali politics
more under the Marxists than even under the Congress. The website
www.jyotibasu.net says that Jyoti Basu was "initially distrustful of
parliamentary politics as the politics of the 'bourgeois
talking-shops'". But that is precisely what his politics substantially
ended with. The Bhadralok-led media in Bengal, save exceptions like
The Statesman, were understandably comfortable with the tactics of
Jyoti Basu government since that preserved the political primacy of
the Bhadralok. The national media was content to certify the CPI(M) as
secular, which was sufficient to wash off all sins of its extra
parliamentary tactics.
The extra parliamentary tactic that Jyoti Basu had bequeathed to the
Marxists has sustained them for almost a decade after Basu quit in the
year 2000. But things seem to be changing now. Thanks to the
aggressive politics of Mamata Bannerjee, the Bengali lower caste
political assertion is on the rise. The southern states witnessed such
assertion in 1950s and the northern states, much later, in 1990s. But,
thanks to Marxist — read Bhadralok — control over West Bengal
politics, lower caste assertion has been delayed for almost half a
century and has not taken off even today in the State. With the
Marxists beginning to falter, the national media too has begun
pointing to the Bhadralok character of Marxism in West Bengal which it
would not do a day earlier. Analysing the Nandigram issue in Indian
Express (March 20, 2007) Yogendra Yadav, a well-known political
analyst wrote: "Nandigram did not surprise me…….. In West Bengal, the
proportion of upper castes increased in the state assembly after the
Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the
caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About
two-thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman,
Boddis, Kayasthas)". Yet, thanks to the very media's indulgence, Jyoti
Basu was not perceived as a traditional Bhadralok politician who did
not share power with the lower castes, but, as a Marxian modernist.
But the one area where Jyoti Basu combined the parliamentary and extra
parliamentary tactics to keep the lower sections of society satisfied
was land reform. Thus, even as Jyoti Basu reserved state power for the
Bhadralok, he also ensured that legislative land reforms were
supported by extra legislative abrogation of land by the communists
for distribution. Thus, Basu secured land for the lower castes but
reserved power for the upper castes — a trade-off that retained the
Bhadralok primacy in power politics, and also won rural Bengal for the
CPI(M). But ironically, this is precisely where the Trinamool Congress
is challenging the Marxists. How? The very land, distributing which
the CPI(M) became the ideological darling of the people, has now
become its nemesis as the CPI(M) forcibly took it back from the people
in Singur and Nandigram to give it to the ideological enemies of the
party.
But undoubtedly Jyoti Basu knew the art of building and wielding power
within, and without altering, the existing social architecture. He was
a practical politician, not an idealist nor a statesman. But despite
ruling the state of West Bengal for 23 long years Jyoti Basu himself
died as an unhappy man because when other parties wanted him as the
prime minister of the country in 1996, it was his party which
prevented him. Expressing his frustration, not once but twice, Jyoti
Basu said that his party's decision to veto his elevation to the
highest political office was a "Himalayan Blunder". Yet, till now
there is no explanation from his party as to why it denied him the
high office when the dream of any political party would be to see one
of its leaders as the prime minister. The mystique veto of the CPI(M)
against its own most popular leader makes Jyoti Basu unique. Thus ends
the political saga of Jyoti Basu who made his party acceptable to
Bengal but found himself unacceptable to his own party, to lead India!
(S Gurumurthy is a well-known commentator on political and economic
issues. E-mail: comment@gurumurthy.net)
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