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OBITUARY
Gentleman Communist
By Sumit Mitra
Indrajit Gupta,
who died of cancer in Kolkata last week at 82, was one of the last of
a generation of privileged Indians who sacrificed the advantages of birth
to serve the nation. Like Gupta, many of these men and women were converted
to communism in their student years in pre-War England. Some of them prospered
after Independence. Like Mohan Kumaramangalam, as Indira Gandhi's backseat
driver; Bhupesh Gupta, as a powerful parliamentary advocate of leftist
causes in the 1960s and '70s; and Jyoti Basu, whose 23-year-long tenure
as West Bengal chief minister helped the CPI(M) establish an impressive
social base. They were all contemporaries, or almost, in Oxbridge or at
the Inns of Court. In the late 1930s, these youngsters were convinced
that the Union Jack would soon make room for the red flag in Delhi. Though
it did not work that way, the made-in-England revolutionaries did pretty
well for themselves over the following years in the shadow of the tricolour.
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INDRAJIT GUPTA
(1919-2001)
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Indrajit Gupta too was successful in a way. In
1960 he was elected to the Lok Sabha in a byelection from West Bengal
and continued to be a member till his death, with the exception of the
1977-1980 period; the CPI was routed in the 1977 general election for
its support to the Emergency regime. In 1996, Gupta became the first communist
to occupy the powerful office of the Union home minister. That was a dramatic
reversal of roles, as the Ministry of Home Affairs had, since Independence,
banned the Communist Party thrice, with many of its members, including
Gupta, being sent to prison or pushed underground for long stretches.
Indrajit 'Sunny' Gupta was also one of the country's
blue-blooded elite-his grandfather, father and brother were members of
the Indian Civil Services. He was schooled in Shimla-where his father
served as the first Indian secretary to the Council of States-and went
to college at St Stephen's in Delhi and King's College in Cambridge. The
Guptas are members of the enlightened Brahmo Samaj and related to B.C.
Roy, the most charismatic chief minister of West Bengal. Therefore, on
his return to India with a tripos, and on becoming a trade union leader
in the jute mills of Bengal, he had to go through a lot of "declassing".
However, Gupta's real contribution is more to
the values of political India than to the leftist universe. In his 37
years as a Lok Sabha member, he stood for principles that can be encapsulated
in the three simple phrases that President K.R. Narayanan used in his
condolence message: "Gandhian simplicity, democratic outlook and
deep commitment to values". When he was the home minister and the
BJP the main opposition party, his favourite phrase on meeting the more
vocal opposition members after a stormy day was: "If I were in the
Opposition I'd have done what you did."
Not much of a Marxist theoretician in the mould
of the CPI(M)'s E.M.S. Namboodiripad or the CPI's Bhupesh Gupta, Indrajit
Gupta was every inch a disciplined soldier. After returning to India,
he wrote to the party, offering his services "in any suitable capacity".
In 1948, when the party entered a sectarian phase as it questioned, under
the leadership of B.T. Ranadive, the newly earned Independence, Gupta
might have squirmed like most other educated comrades but he did not challenge
the party command. On the contrary, he dutifully performed his underground
tasks under the alias Surya, given to him by the party's "technical
cell". In 1964, when the party split on the China issue, Gupta was
among the 35 members of the National Council who swore by the parent organisation
led by S.A. Dange. In fact, he drafted the main resolution of the Dange
loyalists. He loathed Dange's pro-Congress policy, particularly after
the Emergency, but never challenged it outside the party forum. Always
sceptical about the Congress, he formally opposed the idea of his party
joining the United Front cabinet in 1996 with its support, but caved in
as the majority demanded it.
In his personal life too, he was a stickler
for decency. He married, at 62, Suraiya, the woman he had loved for many
years. He waited till her earlier marriage with photographer Ahmed Ali
(father of socialite Nafisa Ali) was lawfully dissolved. After joining
politics he accepted the official code of conduct of the Communist Party
(which President Narayanan calls Gandhian) from which he never deviated.
He lived in a two-room quarter at the Western Court, wore a lungi at home
and bush shirt at work, and walked to Parliament till he became a minister.
He never accepted invitations outside his circle of friends and relatives,
and even in intimate parties, was content with a spot of vodka and a meal
of pork chop, his favourite dish. During his ministerial days, he never
allowed the official car to enter the airport tarmac for him after a flight.
Instead he'd take the airline coach.
It is doubtful if Gupta would have had a 12th
term in the Lok Sabha, with the margin of his victory shrinking after
the Trinamool wave hit West Bengal. He had a long enough span though to
prove the point that decency and grace in public life still mattered,
and that it is possible to be a gentleman and a communist at the same
time.
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