From the India Today archives (2010) | Jyoti Basu: The last gentleman comrade

(NOTE: This article was originally published in the INDIA TODAY edition dated February 1, 2010)

"On 14 September... we marched to the British Parliament when the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, came back from Germany and declared, 'I had an understanding with Hitler'. We said, you can't have an understanding with Hitler. So all of us, young students, went to the British Parliament to protest..."

My journey with Jyoti Basu took off way back in 1997. And it lasted eight long years, across campaigns and countries, to be relived on celluloid—Jyoti Babur Songe (Travelling with Jyoti Babu) in 2005. I had interviewed him extensively for that documentary and what remains etched on my mind is his incredible memory. He was 89 when he narrated the above story from his student days in London.

The idea of making a film on Basu began to take shape first when I travelled with him to Bangladesh in 1996. Typically, he refused. "Why a film on me," he laughed. I remember arguing with him: "Who else has witnessed history from such a vantage point and been in close quarters with the people who have changed modern India?" Finally, he agreed, but on condition that the project would have to wait until he bid goodbye to Writers' Building. "I can't speak freely when I am holding a position," was his rational take.

My primary motivation was to communicate, provoke, inspire, as well as to document history. I remember the joy of posing questions to a man like him. But it was a challenge, too. I decided to go for a dialogue--a dialectical argument--where even if we did not agree, we would share some meanings and principles of inference. The questions ranged from personal (What's your greatest regret?) to global (What is your opinion about the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Iraq war?), national (Did you ever ask Indira Gandhi about her decision to impose the Emergency?), political (How do you explain the split within the Communist Party of India?) to local (What's the future of Bengal?).

Candid, precise, and without any intellectual pretensions, he answered my questions (I still remember how he asked me to leave the questions because he wanted to "do some homework"). He didn't object to sharp questions on his party, but I could feel a bit of anguish in him. As if he felt that there has been a huge change in the value system--in people, in politics and in his party--that he found difficult to relate to. He had joined politics to serve the people, not to gain power. "I had done the bar and had seen the world, but it was the terrible plight of the common people during the 1943 famine--as I and my coworkers volunteered and toured through villages, saw their hardship and went through our share--that made me who I am," he said, his eyes shining, ecstasy on his face. "I wanted to learn from people, understand the way they lived. The way we moved at that time, that was necessary for the grounding of a politician."

Simple words. And he also turned out to be a simple man when we went over to shoot him. I still remember the amazement on the faces of my unit members when we entered Indira Bhavan, where he lived in retirement. Everybody expected an army of security guards and domestic help. Instead, we encountered a man with a very simple lifestyle. Uncluttered rooms with minimum furniture (one room full of books, though) and just a handful of security guards and a cook (who used to put his food in a basic steel tiffin box, not even a hot case). A man of few words, his face would light up with excitement when recollecting his past, but he could go on speaking for hours. But in one regard he was a pukka sahib. He had to have his lunch sharp at one.

It was hard to imagine, but the father of panchayat system in the state was critical about it. "We had tried to create the three-tier panchayat system for the benefit of the common people," he said. "But now I know there is corruption there and I have to control them." He had understood it was the age of a new market economy. Money did matter and that value system had entered the party, too.

Basu denied any rift with his successor, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya: "We like him. He is a serious comrade." He also repeated his belief that not accepting prime ministership was a historic blunder, but he added: "Not for me, but for the party and for Bengal." He regretted also that comrades no longer read books on sociology and history, which he felt was a must. "In the past 10 to 15 years, we have hardly had any classes in our party. Perhaps, because we are in power, members think we don't need those classes anymore." He seemed sad and regretful about the change.

A master politician, the nuances of power play were not unknown to him. "When you leave power, certain elements who join the party for power soon fade away," he said. His biggest regret was that the education system of Bengal had lost its standing and that young students preferred to move out of the state.

But, above all, Jyoti Basu was a complete bhadralok, a perfect gentleman. His kind of honesty is difficult to imagine in today's time.

—Filmmaker Goutam Ghose made a documentary ‘Jyoti Babur Songe’ in 2005

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