Tribute to Buddhadeb Bhattacharya | Suresh Khairnar

The first political victim due to new economic policies!

Cultured - learned and honest leader of West Bengal politics Shri. Buddhadev Bhattacharya was the first communist leader in India, who tried to implement the process of liberalization and globalization in the state of Bengal. And with that came the end of almost thirty-five years of rule of him and his party in the state of Bengal. As such, he was very honest in his personal life. From 1977 he was first a minister in Bengal and then Chief Minister of West Bengal for the last eleven years, working from his two-room house on Palm Avenue, Baliganj! In the house where he died yesterday morning.

He felt that as the agricultural sector was insufficient for unemployment and development in the state of Bengal, industrialization and huge investments were necessary for it! So they started acquiring land for SEZ (Special Economic Zone) along the lines of China! And this became an excuse to undermine the power of his and the Left Front government for thirty-five years!

At Nandigram and Singur, a large amount of land was acquired for industrial factories. And due to the farmers’ agitation, the rule of CPM in West Bengal since 1977 ended in 2011!

Actually, Buddhadev Bhattacharya’s political career began in Bengal in 1966 when the Congress government was in power, there was a famine in Bengal and the food satyagraha movement was started by the CPM. When Buddhadev Bhattacharya was twenty-two years old, he participated in that movement for the first time and then became the Secretary of CPM’s Youth and Students Aghadi. Formed under the guidance of Comrade Pramod Dasgupta, he was first elected as an MLA by the CPM in the 1977 assembly elections and was included in the first Left Front government under the leadership of Jyoti Basu. So the political career of Buddhadev Bhattacharya started. It came to an end after thirty-five years in the 2011 assembly elections.

Most of the politicians do not like to read and write except for political work or they do not like it. But because Buddhadev Bhattacharya was more interested in literature, philosophy and art, he translated the famous Colombian writer Gabriel Gracia Marquez’s novel The Story of a Shipworker and wrote a play called Mrityunjaya on the issue of communalism after the demolition of the Babri Masjid. is!

In 1993, he resigned after realizing that there was corruption in the Left Front government. But after being explained by Jyoti Basu who was the Chief Minister, he rejoined the Cabinet and became the Home Minister and Deputy Chief Minister after Jyoti Basu stepped down in 2000, Buddhadev Bhattacharya was recommended by Jyoti Basu for the post of Chief Minister, so he was the Chief Minister of West Bengal for eleven years.

Because of his interest in literature and art, I have seen him take time out from his busy political work to hang out with his literary artist friend at a coffee house in College Street, and he intervened in the dispute between the management and workers of the coffee house and handed over the management of the coffee house to the workers’ co-operative society. Came and it is still intact!

When Buddhadev Bhattacharya was able to do such an ideal experiment of the socialist philosophy that he had preserved in his life in a place like a coffee house, why could he not do this experiment in the entire state as the Chief Minister? On the contrary, the farmers of Nandigram-Singur have taken over the fertile agricultural lands where they are trying to set up gigantic industrial projects, while the candidates of their party have been elected to the Assembly and Lok Sabha from this area. In order to cut off communication with the world, trenches were dug on all sides of our area and roads were closed and we declared that we no longer have any kind of relationship with the West Bengal government! Today is August 9. On August 9, 1942, in the Quit India Movement, the people of this area rejected the then British government and declared their own government! I remembered the history of protests like Satara or Mahad in Maharashtra!

But because Buddhadev Bhattacharya failed to understand the spirit of this movement or due to the wrong advice given by the chartered officers and some wrong people of his party, Buddhadev Bhattacharya was misled and because the extremist Naxalites are effective in this movement, the local farmers were beaten up and arrested by paramilitary and state police for no reason. And because of this, not only the people of this area, but other people of the state of Bengal did not like the action taken by the government! So people like us were deliberately invited to inspect the situation there. We went to most of the villages in the area from 1st December 2007 to 6th December 2007 and talked to the people about the situation. Coincidentally 6th December was the 15th anniversary of the demolition of Babri Masjid and Maulali of Calcutta by CPM. A meeting was held at the youth center at 5 pm and I was also invited as a speaker in that meeting. So when we people left Nandigram area early in the morning to go to Calcutta, some dead people were found buried in the brick kiln area of ​​Nandigram area, so all the main TV channel’s OB vans came from Calcutta, Nandigram Singur road was jammed so we were also stuck. Some channel people realized that we had come to this area for fact-finding since last few days so we also took bait and with difficulty we came to Calcutta road and headed towards Calcutta but till we reached Maulali Yuva Kendra a little late there were many people’s speeches. Most importantly, six Ministers of the West Bengal Government were also present on the dais in this event and I felt a lot. All the speakers were criticizing the Sangh Parivar while drinking water. Since my name was announced very late, I got to listen to many speeches, but when I came before the mike, I first apologized to the hall and the organizers and further said that today it has been fifteen years since the demolition of Babri Masjid and it will be twenty-five fifty and one hundred years. So we will continue to raise our cry every year taking note of this incident but actually the Muslim community who go to the mosque and offer namaz five times is now sixty percent in the most talked about Nandigram Singur area of ​​Bengal state and it is fighting for its existence. Without taking proper notice of it, instead of hurling them under the heels of the police and paramilitary, who were pelting them like Naxalite terrorists, we have just left there and climbed this platform. I was just talking about the dust on our clothes because I didn’t get it. With tears in their eyes, the residents were telling us that Dada Ami is a CPMer supporter, but that Korbo Amother is Kichu Chakri Noy Shudu ai Jomin Ache to Kichu Dalchal Hoe jaat che If Jomin Chole Jabe To Ami Ki Korbo? Ami sabai aimni mara jabo tai ami aali sajda kore jaat chai. So I said that how appropriate is the war that our government has started with such a large Muslim dominated society? Here we have called this meeting to express our grief over the demolition of Babri Masjid and instead of taking note of the number of Muslims in the biggest movement in this state, what is the use of bragging because we have demolished Babri Masjid? If the majority of people in this area do not want the industrialization you are doing, why are you forcing it? Look, you still have more than half the time to participate in the next election, if the time is not yet gone, then forcefully stop the push and if the people really don’t agree with this project, then abandon it. But Buddhadev Bhattacharya did not convince some people and lost almost all the seats in the assembly elections held in 2011. In 2006, 235 seats of CPM were elected out of 294 assembly seats, they have come to zero in five years! Even today there is not a single member of Left Front and Congress in West Bengal Legislative Assembly!

In his personal life, Buddhadev Bhattacharya was very resourceful, but because he tried to run the state in a wrong way, how shameful is it that the party that has been in power for thirty-five years does not have a single representative in the Legislative Assembly today? Therefore, if you want to pay real tribute to Buddhadev Bhattacharya, you have to first think about all these things inwardly.

Dr. Suresh Khairnar, August 9, 2024, Nagpur