Former West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee passed away on August 8, 2024, in Kolkata after a prolonged illness. | Photo Credit: PTI
Veteran Communist leader and former Chief Minister of West Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee likes to quote a phrase from Charles Dickens. ‘A tale of two cities’. “It’s the best of times, the worst of times…” This was a phrase he repeated in almost every public event he attended as Chief Minister during his two terms, 2001 to 2011.
This is not only because he understands the importance of the hopes and aspirations of the people of his country – especially the young generation. As the world settled into the first decade of the new millennium, he became Chief Minister in 2000 at the age of 66. He was quick to initiate change as he dreamed of changing the status quo, and liberating the people of West Bengal from the stagnation that existed.
After the Left Front was ousted from power after three decades in 2011 by Mamata Banerjee, Bhattacharjee remained in public life until 2016. His failing health led him to live in his Palm Avenue home in Kolkata for the past eight years. He died on Thursday (August 8) at the age of 80.
Bhattacharjee was the last Communist leader from West Bengal, a genuine Bhadralok, who loved reading poetry, Kafka and Marquez. Honest and transparent, he dreamed of transforming West Bengal from an industry-starved state into a resurgent State. In many public meetings, he kept talking about one topic – jobs for the youth. “There are thousands of students coming out of college and what are we going to offer them? They want to work. Do they have to go out of State? they will ask.
But it is far from easy. As Chief Minister he had to grapple with the difficult task of acquiring land for industrial purposes and met with violent resistance in Singur (Hooghly district) and Nandigram (Purba Medinipur). Despite the dream of material failure, he did not move from his stand – that the development of the industry is very important in the country and it is necessary for the hour. While admitting some lapses in the way the land acquisition process was initiated, he was convinced that the land reform that was the foundation of the Left government in the early decades would not last much longer. ” ‘Krishi amader Bhitti, Shipla amader Bhabishyat'( Agriculture remains our core, but industry is our future), ” Bhattachrjee said.
During the tumultuous period of the Seventh Left Front government (2006-11) when the ‘rainbow alliance’ of the Opposition led by the Trinamool Congress would make governance difficult and ultra-Left extremism increased in Jangalmahal region (south-west), and the Darjeeling hills were on fire through agitation for A separate country, Bhattacharjee will rely on political solutions instead of using brute force. “We will fight him politically,” he said.
In his memoirs Phire Dekha II (Looking back), he touched on the question. “Sometimes I wonder where I made a mistake. Was it the land acquisition itself or the land acquisition process that was wrong? Was I too soft on the Opposition? We will learn from the experience,” he wrote.
Born in 1944 in north Kolkata, Bhattacharjee graduated in Bengali (Hons) from the city’s famous Presidency University (now Presidency University). From an early age, he was the state secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation of India, the youth wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). He was Minister of Information and Public Outreach in the first Left Front government in 1977. Except for a gap of five years (1982 to 1987) when he lost the Assembly polls, Bhattacharjee remained one of the most important Ministers in the Left Front cabinet. , and in 2000 he became the Chief Minister of the State when Jyoti Basu handed over the baton to him.
Always dressed in crisp white dhoti and kurta, he is a poet at heart. To a large extent he was the inheritor of the great literary tradition left by his uncle Sukanta Bhattacharjee, one of the greatest poets of the Communist movement in Bengal. Bhattacharjee himself wrote several plays and translations of Marquez, and produced a play and adaptation of Kafka’s ‘Metamorphosis’.
Bhattacharjee was the Minister of Information and Culture who introduced the city’s International Film Festival in the early 1990s, where some of the masterpieces of world cinema would be screened, and great filmmakers from around the world would be brought to Kolkata.
A Communist icon, his legacy is not only in his political, administrative and literary skills but also in his way of life. Even after occupying the lofty post of Chief Minister, Bhattacharjee lived in a two-room government flat in a residential colony in south Kolkata, which he shared with his wife Meera and daughter Suchetana till the end of his life. The personal and political integrity of the CPI(M) leader is something that even the sharpest critics cannot take for granted. Bhattacharjee has even resigned from Jyoti Basu’s Cabinet stating that he will not work with a minister who has been accused of corruption.
After the legendary Jyoti Basu retired from active political life, Bhattacharjee became the main architect of the Left Front’s victories in the Assembly polls in 2001 and 2006. Beyond the image of a simple, cultured Bengali, Bhattacharjee had a good political insight. He has warned the Trinamool Congress government against playing with public sensitive issues and mixing religion with politics. He had warned him about the revival of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the State. “If you give an honorarium to the Imam, then tomorrow you will have to give it to the imam,” he predicted.
While the former Chief Minister stayed away from public life due to his failing health, party leaders and candidates contesting the elections would visit him at his Palm Avenue residence. During the 2024 Lok Sabha campaign, the CPI(M) released an AI video of a veteran Communist leader seeking support from a Left candidate.
At a time when West Bengal is in political flux, the slogan coined by him at the Brigade Parade Ground in 2016, ‘BJP hatao desh bachaoo, Trinamool hatao Bangla bachao’ (Destroy BJP, Save the State, Defeat Trinamool, Save Bengal) still resonates. the basis of not only the Communist movement, but the entire Left Movement.
