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DAY DREAMS The
Teflon Man On November 6, Comrade Jyoti Basu walked away into the sunset of Bengal. It was, as the clichetic headlines put it, the proverbial end of an era. For over 23 years, he was the public persona of the state, its first citizen. That was a very long time. Jawaharlal Nehru reigned for 17 years, Indira Gandhi was at the centrestage for 18 years, Hitler bludgeoned his way for 12 years and Margaret Thatcher prevailed for just 11 years. Basu's uninterrupted tenure is truly awesome. Only unelected Communists like Stalin, Mao and Fidel Castro have bettered his record in the 20th century. The comparisons serve a purpose. Whether it was Nehru, Gandhi or Stalin, each of these long-serving leaders left their indelible mark on their society. Historians can evoke an instant recall by referring to the Maoist phase, the Stalinist terror, even Nehruvianism. Long tenures, even those not as long as Basu's, leave a mark on history. Hitler and Thatcher are good examples, even though their legacies are sharply divergent. Will Basu join that club? True, he was never a completely free agent. No chief minister in a federal system is. But even from the limited perspective of West Bengal, is there anything that posterity will refer to as Basu-ism? Even the question should draw incredulous reactions. Basu wasn't an ideologue. He was a member of a party with a distinct ideology and clear value systems. He imbibed some of these and drew a veil over others. Apart from describing his failure to make it as prime minister in 1996 as the CPI(M)'s "historic blunder", there was nothing by way of ideological intervention to mark Basu's 23 years. Unless, of course, his description of the A.B. Vajpayee Government as "uncivilised and barbaric" constitutes a seminal soundbyte. This in a sense is one of the abiding puzzles of Basu. Here was a man who dominated one of India's metropolitan centres for so long. And yet here was a man whose reputation was built on banality. In 23 years, Basu never said anything of consequence that we can remember him for. In rhetorical terms, he was a plodder. He was one of Bengal's most undistinguished long-term fixture who got by with guttural sounds and staccato sentences and saying absolutely nothing. It is a commentary on the intellectual state of West Bengal that Basu achieved his own deification for zero contribution. The puzzle may have been resolved if Basu was the strong, silent type — the performer. On this count too his record is unimpressive. When Basu first shot to notoriety — as Deputy chief minister of Ajoy Mukherjee's United Front Government in 1967, West Bengal was in competition with Maharashtra. Calcutta was on par with Bombay and Bengali arrogance was based on more than Tagore and good table manners. By the time Basu left, West Bengal was proud it was still ahead of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. In the competitive league, it had been well and truly overtaken by Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Haryana and Delhi. It was no longer in the fast track. Calcutta was just a good place to get out of. Basu was India's real teflon man. He travelled each year to London for a holiday. A perfectly legitimate exercise since Blighty was in any case the Bengali's second home. Yet, he packaged it as a working visit. Lesser beings wouldn't have got away with this annual deceit. Basu got away for 23 years. This was his achievement. Basu was a good man, a civilised man with impeccable tastes in clothes. He was probably also fond of the good things in life. Nothing wrong. But why did he have to deny it to others? Why did he have to transform an enlightened people into provincial bumpkins? Why did he drive out initiative, dynamism and decorum from the state? Why did he patronise mediocrity and cretinism? Why did he encourage the petty tyranny of the CPI(M) local committees? Why did he do it? Why? This is not the despair of a columnist. It's the despair of a Bengali who abandoned Bengal to get on with life. It's the despair of a community that Basu forcibly converted into a diaspora. History may be kind to him. I don't think I ever can. Even though he unwittingly changed my life for the better. (Swapan Dasgupta is Deputy Editor, INDIA
TODAY. He has edited Nirad Chaudhuri, The First Hundred Years.
Write
to Swapan Dasgupta) |
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