NGOs and Imperialism
yves engeler
Any individual working for an aid organization is required to pass this exam and a B+ or higher must be achieved to attain “left wing” status. Please write 500 words answering each of three of the following questions.1) Do people really feel better when their elected government is destroyed by democracy promotion rather than subversion?2) Should it be called “aid” or “aiding and abetting” when you give a country weapons of mass destruction?3) Why is it called a non-governmental organization (NGO) when it gets most of its funding from governments?4) Why do progressive people, who think privatized medical and social welfare services are a right wing plot in their own wealthy countries, donate money to organizations that replace government-run services in poor countries?5) Are some major Western non-governmental organizations really just an arm of imperialism?Bonus marks will be awarded if you answer all five.Facing the reality that most development NGOs are heavily reliant on Western government “aid,” which is usually directed towards countries of geopolitical importance to the captains of capitalism, may be unpleasant for some “progressives,” but it is true nonetheless.A major principle of Canadian foreign aid, for example, has been that where the USA wields the big stick, Canada carries a police baton and offers a carrot. The major recipient of Canadian aid in 1999/2000 was the former Yugoslavia; Iraq and Afghanistan were top two recipients in 2003/2004; today Afghanistan and Haiti are Nos. 1 and 2. The intervention-equals-aid principle also exists for other western countries.Post-coup Haiti has been a bonanza for Canadian (mostly Quebec-based) NGOs.They have received tens of millions of dollars from the Canadian government.Montreal-based Alternatives, usually on the left of the NGO world, is but one example. With no operations in Haiti before 2004, the post-coup influx of Canadian “aid” dollars was too good an opportunity to pass up. The Haiti file was given to an Alternatives employee who was having difficulty raising money for his Africa dossier. Canadian imperialism showed a definite preference for media work in Haiti over Ghana and Alternatives was rewarded when it obliged. (Alternatives also made its way to Afghanistan.)According to the Canadian International Development Agency’s (CIDA) website, Alternatives has received $2.1 million for Haiti work over the past couple of years. Coincidentally, Alternatives has parroted the neoconservative narrative about Haiti. Their guest speaker on Haiti at the recent Quebec Social Forum was Chavanne Jean-Baptiste, an advisor for right-wing business candidate, Charles Henry-Baker’s failed presidential campaign. (It has been alleged that Baptiste’s organization provided support to the ex-military who lead the armed assault against the elected government in February 2004.) Alternatives other main Haitian invitee was Rene Colbert, editor of Alter Presse, who told this author in a private conversation there was no coup in February 2004 since Jean Bertrand Aristide was never elected.Many of the other Canadian NGOs that benefited from the coup called for Aristide’s overthrow. The Concertation Pour Haiti (CPH), an informal group of half a dozen NGOs, branded Aristide a “tyrant,” his government a “dictatorship,” and a “regime of terror” and in mid-February 2004 called for Aristide’s removal. This demand was made at the same time CIA-trained thugs swept across the country to oust Aristide.Quebec (and Haitian) NGO’s hysterical opposition to Aristide was certainly influenced by the politics of their government donors. An understanding that intervention would lead to increased aid also likely influenced it. The 1994 US invasion, which restored Aristide to office, created a boom for development NGOs in Haiti (making it the world leader in NGOs per square kilometre, according to some). Yet, securing financing became more difficult as international funding was curtailed along with foreign troops (and US police trainers) in the late 1990s and with the “intransigent” Aristide’s 2000 election. Not until Aristide was gone, and a post-coup government installed by the USA, France and Canada, did the aid spigot once gain turn back on for Canadian and Haitian NGOs.Haiti was not unique. In another part of the world, many NGOs supported “humanitarian intervention.” In her book, Fools’ Crusade, Diana Johnstone decries NGO support for Western imperialism in the former Yugoslavia. She points out: “When, as in Bosnia-Herzegovina or Kosovo, military intervention leads to an international protectorate, Western NGOs are granted a prominent role in local administration and receive a large share of public and private donations.” (Fools Crusade, Page 13)Of course imperialism is not only about military intervention. In Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention and Hegemony, William I. Robinson argues that “democracy promotion” is an important aspect of modern imperialism. It’s a change in US foreign policy from “earlier strategies to contain social and political mobilization through a focus on control of the state and governmental apparatus” to a process in which “the United States and local elites thoroughly penetrate civil society, and from therein, assure control over popular mobilization and mass movements…”The coloured revolutions in Eastern Europe are high-profile recent examples of “democracy promotion” at the service of western aims. In Haiti, as well, a variety of NGOs were funded to promote the US and Canadian version of democracy. Politics Without Sovereignty explains: “From 1998, USAID and DFID [the UK’s Department For International Development], among others, began to systematically subcontract to international NGOs including CARE, Action Aid, Save the Children, Oxfam, and Concern International to ‘build civil society capacity.’”According to a recent Vancouver Sun article, nearly a fifth of the Canadian International Development Agency’s budget, some $600 million, is now spent on initiatives directed towards “promoting democracy.” Last October CIDA established an Office of Democratic Governance. Of course, the US is the largest democracy promotion donor with the National Endowment for Democracy at the forefront. Its Democracy Projects Database coordinates 6,000 projects worldwide.The economic and social sides of imperialism also benefit NGOs. The neo-liberalism pushed by the IMF, World Bank, USAID, CIDA etc. breeds NGOs.As structurally adjusted states withdraw social services, NGOs flood in.Take Ghana, for instance. Since the late 1980s, a series of structural adjustment programs have diminished the state’s role in the economy. The donors that push neoliberalism argue that while reforms may bring with them social ills, their aid and NGOs will help to resolve these side effects.Back in the late 1980s the former president of CIDA, Margaret Catley-Carlson, explained to the Ghanaians: “We know that if you take on this [IMF] program of reform it will cost you. Your food prices are going to shoot up, and in the urban areas that is going to be very destabilizing. So we will put in some food aid [likely administered by NGOs] and help you out over this very difficult period.”The process of withdrawing the state has resulted in ever-growing dependence. With a hint of pride, Jeanine Cudmore, an employee of the CIDA-funded Social Enterprise Development Foundation, recently told the Montreal Gazette that in northern Ghana “the government relies on NGOs.”When the U.S. returned Aristide to office in 1994, it was on condition that he implement an economic agenda focused on further downsizing the state.International creditors argued that the flip side of this government downsizing would be increased aid, particularly to private sector NGOs. This “aid” money was to be channelled towards projects such as schools and hospitals run by private (usually non-profit) NGOs.A CIDA report released in 2005 stated that by 2004, “non-governmental actors [for-profit and not-for-profit] provided almost 80 percent of [Haiti’s] basic services.” While an NGO-run school may be better than no school at all, a cluster of privately run schools is not an ideal development model.Canada’s development agency has admitted as much. According to CIDA, “Supporting non-governmental actors contributed to the creation of parallel systems of service delivery. … In Haiti’s case, these actors [NGOs] were used as a way to circumvent the frustration of working with the government … this contributed to the establishment of parallel systems of service delivery, eroding legitimacy, capacity and will of the state to deliver key services.”NGOs are significant beneficiaries of modern imperialism: They soften the edges of neoliberalism, while democracy promotion and military interventions alike bring a windfall of contracts.Perhaps the question to be asked is: Are development NGOs compatible with real democracy?In Canada and many other countries, most people, including all of those who are on the left, oppose private health clinics, seeing them as a threat to our universal, government-run systems of medical care. People everywhere see public schools as an important part of democracy. Citizens in all First World countries demand social services provided by their governments.Yet the “development” model favoured in the Third World for the past two decades involves destroying government services and handing them over to NGOs that willingly participate in this undermining of democracyIf you see anything progressive about that, you’ll get a failing grade in the test above.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
Militarizing Latin America
Militarizing Latin America
by Noam Chomsky
The United States was founded as an "infant empire," in George Washington's words. The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture, much like the vast expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. From the earliest days, control over the Western Hemisphere was a critical goal. Ambitions expanded during World War II, as the US displaced Britain and lesser imperial powers. High-level planners concluded that the US should "hold unquestioned power" in a world system including not only the Western Hemisphere, but also the former British Empire and the Far East, and later, as much of Eurasia as possible. A primary goal of NATO was to block moves towards European independence, along Gaullist lines. That became still more clear when the USSR collapsed, and with it the Russian threat that was the formal justification of NATO. NATO was not disbanded, but rather expanded, in violation of promises to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not even fully extend to East Germany, let alone beyond, and that "NATO would be transforming itself into a more political organization." By now it is virtually an international intervention force under US command, its self-defined jurisdiction reaching to control energy sources, pipelines, and sea lanes. And Europe is a well-disciplined junior partner.
Throughout the expansion of US Empire, Latin America retained its primacy in global planning. As Washington was considering the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1971, Nixon's National Security Council observed that if the US couldn't control Latin America, how could it expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world?" That policy has become more severe with recent South American moves towards integration, a prerequisite for independence, and establishment of more varied international ties, while also beginning to address severe internal disorders, most importantly, the traditional rule of a rich Europeanized minority over a sea of misery and suffering.
In July 2009, the US and Colombia concluded a secret deal to permit the US to use seven military bases in Colombia. The official purpose is to counter narcotrafficking and terrorism, "but senior Colombian military and civilian officials familiar with negotiations told The Associated Press that the idea is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations." There are reports that the agreement provides Colombia with privileged access to US military supplies. Colombia had already become the leading recipient of US military aid. Colombia has had by far the worst human rights record in the hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s wound down. The correlation between US aid and human rights violations has long been noted by scholarship.
AP also cited an April 2009 document of the US Air Mobility Command, which proposed that the Palanquero base in Colombia could become a "cooperative security location" (CSL) from which "mobility operations could be executed." The report noted that from Palanquero, "Nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 (military trans- port) without refueling." This could form part of "a global en route strategy," which "helps achieve the regional engagement strategy and assists with the mobility routing to Africa." For the present, "the strategy to place a CSL at Palanquero should be sufficient for air mobility reach on the South American continent," the document concludes, but it goes on to explore options for extending the routing to Africa with additional bases.
Establishing US military bases in Colombia is only one part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for military intervention. There has been a sharp increase in US military aid and training of Latin American officers, focusing on light infantry tactics to combat "radical populism" -- a concept that sends shivers up the spine in the Latin American context. Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, eliminating human rights and democracy conditionalities under congressional supervision, which has always been weak, but was at least a deterrent to some of the worst abuses. The US Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, was reactivated in 2008, shortly after Colombia's invasion of Ecuador, with responsibility for the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the surrounding waters. The official announcement defines its "various operations" to "include counter-illicit trafficking, theater security cooperation, military-to-military interaction and bilateral and multinational training."
Militarization of South America is a component of much broader global programs, as the "global en route strategy" indicates. In Iraq, there is virtually no information about the fate of the huge US military bases, so they are presumably being maintained for force projection. The immense city-within-a-city US embassy in Baghdad not only remains but its cost is to rise to $1.8 billion USD this year, from an estimated $1.5 billion USD last year. The Obama administration is also constructing mega embassies that are completely without precedent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In short, moves towards "a world of peace" do not fall within the "change you can believe in," to borrow Obama's campaign slogan.
Noam Chomsky is an internationally renowned linguist, scholar, writer, and activist and author of more than 80 books. He is the most quoted person in world history. This article was first published in the 12 March 2010 issue of Orinoco International; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.
by Noam Chomsky
The United States was founded as an "infant empire," in George Washington's words. The conquest of the national territory was a grand imperial venture, much like the vast expansion of the Grand Duchy of Moscow. From the earliest days, control over the Western Hemisphere was a critical goal. Ambitions expanded during World War II, as the US displaced Britain and lesser imperial powers. High-level planners concluded that the US should "hold unquestioned power" in a world system including not only the Western Hemisphere, but also the former British Empire and the Far East, and later, as much of Eurasia as possible. A primary goal of NATO was to block moves towards European independence, along Gaullist lines. That became still more clear when the USSR collapsed, and with it the Russian threat that was the formal justification of NATO. NATO was not disbanded, but rather expanded, in violation of promises to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not even fully extend to East Germany, let alone beyond, and that "NATO would be transforming itself into a more political organization." By now it is virtually an international intervention force under US command, its self-defined jurisdiction reaching to control energy sources, pipelines, and sea lanes. And Europe is a well-disciplined junior partner.
Throughout the expansion of US Empire, Latin America retained its primacy in global planning. As Washington was considering the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile in 1971, Nixon's National Security Council observed that if the US couldn't control Latin America, how could it expect "to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world?" That policy has become more severe with recent South American moves towards integration, a prerequisite for independence, and establishment of more varied international ties, while also beginning to address severe internal disorders, most importantly, the traditional rule of a rich Europeanized minority over a sea of misery and suffering.
In July 2009, the US and Colombia concluded a secret deal to permit the US to use seven military bases in Colombia. The official purpose is to counter narcotrafficking and terrorism, "but senior Colombian military and civilian officials familiar with negotiations told The Associated Press that the idea is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations." There are reports that the agreement provides Colombia with privileged access to US military supplies. Colombia had already become the leading recipient of US military aid. Colombia has had by far the worst human rights record in the hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980s wound down. The correlation between US aid and human rights violations has long been noted by scholarship.
AP also cited an April 2009 document of the US Air Mobility Command, which proposed that the Palanquero base in Colombia could become a "cooperative security location" (CSL) from which "mobility operations could be executed." The report noted that from Palanquero, "Nearly half the continent can be covered by a C-17 (military trans- port) without refueling." This could form part of "a global en route strategy," which "helps achieve the regional engagement strategy and assists with the mobility routing to Africa." For the present, "the strategy to place a CSL at Palanquero should be sufficient for air mobility reach on the South American continent," the document concludes, but it goes on to explore options for extending the routing to Africa with additional bases.
Establishing US military bases in Colombia is only one part of a much broader effort to restore Washington's capacity for military intervention. There has been a sharp increase in US military aid and training of Latin American officers, focusing on light infantry tactics to combat "radical populism" -- a concept that sends shivers up the spine in the Latin American context. Military training is being shifted from the State Department to the Pentagon, eliminating human rights and democracy conditionalities under congressional supervision, which has always been weak, but was at least a deterrent to some of the worst abuses. The US Fourth Fleet, disbanded in 1950, was reactivated in 2008, shortly after Colombia's invasion of Ecuador, with responsibility for the Caribbean, Central and South America, and the surrounding waters. The official announcement defines its "various operations" to "include counter-illicit trafficking, theater security cooperation, military-to-military interaction and bilateral and multinational training."
Militarization of South America is a component of much broader global programs, as the "global en route strategy" indicates. In Iraq, there is virtually no information about the fate of the huge US military bases, so they are presumably being maintained for force projection. The immense city-within-a-city US embassy in Baghdad not only remains but its cost is to rise to $1.8 billion USD this year, from an estimated $1.5 billion USD last year. The Obama administration is also constructing mega embassies that are completely without precedent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
In short, moves towards "a world of peace" do not fall within the "change you can believe in," to borrow Obama's campaign slogan.
Noam Chomsky is an internationally renowned linguist, scholar, writer, and activist and author of more than 80 books. He is the most quoted person in world history. This article was first published in the 12 March 2010 issue of Orinoco International; it is reproduced here for non-profit educational purposes.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
The Economist
Jyoti Basu
Jan 21st 2010 From The Economist print edition
Jyoti Basu, almost India’s first Communist prime minister, died on January 17th, aged 95
INDIAN politics since independence has not been short of milk-and-water socialism, such as that on offer in the Congress party. But it has lacked charismatic figures on the left. The exception—in a diminutive, elegant, determined shape—was Jyoti Basu. For 20 years, with a few breaks, Mr Basu was the leader of West Bengal’s opposition; for 23 years he was the state’s chief minister. He was also a communist, and a charming one.
His memoirs, written at the end of his life, proclaimed a fervent and orthodox Marxism-Leninism. His career was often different. Though he longed for the masses of India to “emerge victorious” in a society without caste, class or exploitation, Mr Basu was above all a pragmatist. If private firms could bring jobs to West Bengal, he sought them out. He was unabashedly friendly to capitalist cadres such as The Economist, presenting the editor in 2000 with a small silver carriage adorned with bright pink, very un-Marxist, feathers.
Kolkata (once Calcutta) was his showpiece, the only big Indian city in which, from 1977 to 2000, red flags flew, and hammers and sickles graced the walls. It remains dirty, sprawling and chaotic, though bustling with IT jobs and with many more glass towers. After his death, opinion diverged over whether Mr Basu had brought in more investment or scared it off, ruined West Bengal or made it a beacon for the country. Businessmen who had tangled with the state’s militant unions had little good to say of him. Opponents queried his unprecedented re-elections, attributing them to a cult of thuggishness in his party. But landless farmers, beneficiaries of his million-acre land-distribution programme, worshipped him; villagers empowered through his improved version of local councils, the panchayati raj, voted for him eagerly; and commuters in Kolkata could thank him for cheap trams.
His straddling act was tricky at times. When West Bengal in 2006, under his successor, won the hotly contested contract to build the Tata Nano, he was delighted at the thought of the investment, jobs and growth. But he found himself at odds with his chief supporters—poor farmers, empowered by himself, whose land would be seized for the new car plant—and could not persuade them to accept compensation. Tata eventually left for Gujarat.
This thoughtful, flexible politician hardly resembled the young hothead who first stood for election, in 1946. Mr Basu was then deep in organising the railway workers, planning strikes and organising safe-houses for communist comrades. He preferred direct action to the ballot (“such a bourgeois set-up”) and the laboured etiquette of Question Hour, but soon saw the point of representative democracy. From the 1950s onwards he refined his manifesto of land reform, decentralisation, a minimum wage, free trade unions, fixed food prices. It was a time of hunger and unrest, with thousands of farmers and labourers besieging the assembly in Calcutta with cries of “Give us starch!” The ruling Congress party kept the crowds at a distance, or got the police to disperse them with tear gas and rifle fire. But Mr Basu went out to Esplanade East, talked to the people and brought their grievances inside.
Lenin in marigolds
His upbringing had been comfortably middle-class: a Calcutta doctor’s son, St Xavier’s, Presidency College, studies for the bar in London. His family blamed that stint, during the anti-fascist ferment of the 1930s, for turning him communist, and certainly he went back to India a determined Red. Several times he was arrested, once while simply taking a cup of tea in the Kamalalaya Stores. From 1948-51, when the party was banned, he went underground for a while, shifting from house to house, all the time keeping up his “pro-people” agitation. In 1964, when the Communist Party split over India’s war with China (his side, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), having favoured talks, rather than fighting), he saw the divide as one of “real” communism against the revisionists. He was accused of being anti-national, and had his offices raided—offices where pictures of Lenin and Stalin were decked with marigolds, like gods.
Despite all this, however, his pragmatism increased. As chief minister of West Bengal, he realised that economic liberalisation and the rise of China were making old orthodoxies redundant. “We want capital,” he said once. “Socialism is not possible now.” Such remarks astonished his colleagues in the party. Nor did they relish his harping on what he called their “historic blunder”: the moment in 1996 when, at the head of a “third front” alliance of left-wing, regional and caste-based parties, he almost became India’s prime minister, only to be stymied by his own politburo’s ideological squeamishness.
That might have allowed Mr Basu and the left a vital role in national politics. He still had much to do. He wanted to see the people’s political consciousness awakened, and India’s colossal inequalities of wealth and caste fading inexorably away. But in fact he had left West Bengal an economic backwater, largely shunned by foreign investors and a byword for obstreperous unionism. Marxist-Leninist revolution remained his dream; but, as he knew better than anyone, capitalism and private enterprise remained a surer bet.
Copyright © 2010 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Jan 21st 2010 From The Economist print edition
Jyoti Basu, almost India’s first Communist prime minister, died on January 17th, aged 95
INDIAN politics since independence has not been short of milk-and-water socialism, such as that on offer in the Congress party. But it has lacked charismatic figures on the left. The exception—in a diminutive, elegant, determined shape—was Jyoti Basu. For 20 years, with a few breaks, Mr Basu was the leader of West Bengal’s opposition; for 23 years he was the state’s chief minister. He was also a communist, and a charming one.
His memoirs, written at the end of his life, proclaimed a fervent and orthodox Marxism-Leninism. His career was often different. Though he longed for the masses of India to “emerge victorious” in a society without caste, class or exploitation, Mr Basu was above all a pragmatist. If private firms could bring jobs to West Bengal, he sought them out. He was unabashedly friendly to capitalist cadres such as The Economist, presenting the editor in 2000 with a small silver carriage adorned with bright pink, very un-Marxist, feathers.
Kolkata (once Calcutta) was his showpiece, the only big Indian city in which, from 1977 to 2000, red flags flew, and hammers and sickles graced the walls. It remains dirty, sprawling and chaotic, though bustling with IT jobs and with many more glass towers. After his death, opinion diverged over whether Mr Basu had brought in more investment or scared it off, ruined West Bengal or made it a beacon for the country. Businessmen who had tangled with the state’s militant unions had little good to say of him. Opponents queried his unprecedented re-elections, attributing them to a cult of thuggishness in his party. But landless farmers, beneficiaries of his million-acre land-distribution programme, worshipped him; villagers empowered through his improved version of local councils, the panchayati raj, voted for him eagerly; and commuters in Kolkata could thank him for cheap trams.
His straddling act was tricky at times. When West Bengal in 2006, under his successor, won the hotly contested contract to build the Tata Nano, he was delighted at the thought of the investment, jobs and growth. But he found himself at odds with his chief supporters—poor farmers, empowered by himself, whose land would be seized for the new car plant—and could not persuade them to accept compensation. Tata eventually left for Gujarat.
This thoughtful, flexible politician hardly resembled the young hothead who first stood for election, in 1946. Mr Basu was then deep in organising the railway workers, planning strikes and organising safe-houses for communist comrades. He preferred direct action to the ballot (“such a bourgeois set-up”) and the laboured etiquette of Question Hour, but soon saw the point of representative democracy. From the 1950s onwards he refined his manifesto of land reform, decentralisation, a minimum wage, free trade unions, fixed food prices. It was a time of hunger and unrest, with thousands of farmers and labourers besieging the assembly in Calcutta with cries of “Give us starch!” The ruling Congress party kept the crowds at a distance, or got the police to disperse them with tear gas and rifle fire. But Mr Basu went out to Esplanade East, talked to the people and brought their grievances inside.
Lenin in marigolds
His upbringing had been comfortably middle-class: a Calcutta doctor’s son, St Xavier’s, Presidency College, studies for the bar in London. His family blamed that stint, during the anti-fascist ferment of the 1930s, for turning him communist, and certainly he went back to India a determined Red. Several times he was arrested, once while simply taking a cup of tea in the Kamalalaya Stores. From 1948-51, when the party was banned, he went underground for a while, shifting from house to house, all the time keeping up his “pro-people” agitation. In 1964, when the Communist Party split over India’s war with China (his side, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), having favoured talks, rather than fighting), he saw the divide as one of “real” communism against the revisionists. He was accused of being anti-national, and had his offices raided—offices where pictures of Lenin and Stalin were decked with marigolds, like gods.
Despite all this, however, his pragmatism increased. As chief minister of West Bengal, he realised that economic liberalisation and the rise of China were making old orthodoxies redundant. “We want capital,” he said once. “Socialism is not possible now.” Such remarks astonished his colleagues in the party. Nor did they relish his harping on what he called their “historic blunder”: the moment in 1996 when, at the head of a “third front” alliance of left-wing, regional and caste-based parties, he almost became India’s prime minister, only to be stymied by his own politburo’s ideological squeamishness.
That might have allowed Mr Basu and the left a vital role in national politics. He still had much to do. He wanted to see the people’s political consciousness awakened, and India’s colossal inequalities of wealth and caste fading inexorably away. But in fact he had left West Bengal an economic backwater, largely shunned by foreign investors and a byword for obstreperous unionism. Marxist-Leninist revolution remained his dream; but, as he knew better than anyone, capitalism and private enterprise remained a surer bet.
Copyright © 2010 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Peoples World,USA
Jyoti Basu, great son of India, dies at 95
by: R.K. Sharma
January 17 2010
Veteran Communist leader Jyoti Basu died Jan. 17 at age 95. This grand man of Indian politics and socialist movement had tremendous popularity and respect among the Indian people, as was evident by huge public outpourings of concern in recent days as his health steadily deteriorated.
According to The New York Times, "Anxious crowds gathered outside his Calcutta hospital, local newspapers carried front-page updates on his condition and a litany of leading Indian politicians, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, made calls to him."
He died of multiple organ failure, according to media reports.
Basu was the longest ruling Communist chief minister (a position similar to a U.S. governor) for 23 years, from 1977 to 2000. His state of West Bengal today is populated by 90 million people. He led the four left and communist parties of India to victory for 32 years through popular elections.
Basu was known as a highly-skilled parliamentarian and builder of coalitions, especially coalitions that would uphold a basic tenet of Indian society, like secularism. So impressive was his secularism that religion-based parties, like the extreme rightwing Hindu BJP, failed to procure a single seat in the West Bengal's legislature.
Basu's signature policies as chief minister were massive land reform and democracy for the rural poor. Immediately after the Communist-led coalition won in West Bengal, eviction of sharecroppers was stopped. Shares of crop were guaranteed by a seemingly easy move now, but difficult then, recording the sharecroppers name.
Large amounts of land were distributed to struggling farmers, reshaping West Bengal and Indian politics for decades.
Democracy was introduced at the grassroots by holding panchayat elections, a form of local self-government, giving poor farmers and villagers a voice in areas where large landowners usually ruled.
Basu was so respected that in 1996, when a majority of non-Congress, non-BJP parties won the majority of the national elections (Lok Sabha), Basu was offered the prime minister post. However, Basu's party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), nixed his accepting the prime minister spot. The reason, the party said, was the CPI (M) did not hold the majority of Lok Sabha seats. Basu called the decision a "historic blunder." Yet, he remained a stalwart leader of the CPI (M).
The CPI (M) leadership sent out messages of "its profound grief at the passing away" of Basu, calling him a "senior most leader of the Party and one of the tallest leaders of the Communist movement in India."
The CPI (M) continued the tribute saying "Basu belonged to the leadership of the CPI (M) which steered the Party through the difficult days of semi-fascist terror in West Bengal in the early seventies. One has to recall how as chief minister he dealt with the situation after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 when violence against Sikhs broke out in various parts of the country, but nothing was allowed to happen in West Bengal." In the early seventies, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared emergency rule, suspending numerous democratic rights and imprisoning many political opponents.
Prakash Karat, CPI (M) general secretary, said, "Basu was a great leader of the CPI(M), the Left movement and India. With his passing away an era has passed. Although he died at the age of 95, he leaves us bereft, because there will be none like JB again. An ardent communist, he was one of the few political leaders of independent India who actually deepened democracy, strengthened secularism and got the working people to the center stage of Indian politics."
Others from across Indian politics offered their condolences and paid glowing tributes to Basu. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Basu as "a great son of India."
President of India Pratibha Patil, a woman leader Basu had worked with and helped get elected, paid tribute to the stalwart. The president said Basu earned the unique distinction of being the longest serving chief minister of any state from the late seventies to 2000, and displayed his abilities as a leader of the people, an able administrator and an eminent statesman.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee called him "a towering personality" and credited him as the "architect" of the first UPA government. "I have lost a great well wisher," he said.
Vice President of India Hamid Ansari said, "Basu has made a significant contribution to the public life and especially to the development of West Bengal."
The deep love and respect for Basu among the working masses of India led to a condolence resolution from an unlikely source. The right-wing BJP, against which Basu fought all his life, passed a resolution of condolences, calling Basu, "One of the tallest contemporary leaders of Indian politics."
Poetic statements from Sonia Gandhi, chair person of the ruling party, Indian National Congress, and Home Minister P. Chidambram added to the country's salute.
Referring to his pneumonia lasting 17 days, Gandhi said, " Jyoti Basu did not go gentle into the good night. He fought bravely till his last breath, just as he did throughout his life," and added that "he had a rich, fulfilled and glorious life."
"Basu strode like a colossus on the Indian political scene for several decades. He was a great patriot, a great democrat, a great Parliamentarian and a great source of inspiration," Chidambram said.
Educated in a Catholic school, St. Xaviers, during the British colonial rule, Basu came from a well-off family, who had some connections to freedom fighters involved in the struggle for India's independence. He was sent to the UK to further his education. And it was here Basu met Communists and Marxists like R. Palme Dutt.
He returned to India in 1940 and joined the CPI.
Although a lawyer, Basu became a full-time CPI organizer, and went to work among India's dock and railway workers. He fought and won the release of political prisoners during Britain's colonial rule. And in 1948, he was repeatedly arrested after the Communist Party was banned shortly after Independence.
One example of Basu's personal courage came during a 13-month-long United Front West Bengal government, which was voted to power in 1969. Basu became the deputy to the chief minister and also put in charge of the state's law enforcement agencies. A large group of armed policemen stormed the government offices to protest the death of a colleague, and Basu faced the armed group alone, and defused the situation.
While referred to as a "nonconventional" Communist or "non-orthodox" Marxist, Basu epitomized being a "true Communist and Marxist," many noted. The CPI (M) said Basu was a Marxist who neither wavered in his convictions nor was dogmatic in his approach, becoming a source of inspiration for the Left movement in the country.
It was well known that the CPI (M)'s decision to see the Congress Party as a secular partner in the fight against Indian communalism was largely led by Basu's nonsectarian outlook.
As thousands of red flags are flying half mast through the length and breadth of Indian communist parties' offices, there are tributes received by parties and from political figures of all hues from all over the world.
The Communist Party of India, from which many CPI (M) leaders split in 1964, never dithered in providing its own support to him. CPI General Secretary A. B. Bardhan expressed his heart felt sadness on Basu's demise. Calling him the tallest of leaders, Bardhan recalled the motivation of the veteran's life, "Basu fought for the poor and the downtrodden. He was an icon of working class movement and a model for good governance. He was an able administrator and good human being. His rule of more than quarter century has changed the face of rural Bengal and paved the path for agriculture and industrial development. "
No other Indian top leaders ever donated their body to a medical college, but Basu set an example, by donating his body and its parts to further the cause of medicine and scientific research.
Photo: Jyoti Basu speaks to a CPI (M) mass rally of 150,000 in Hyderabad, India, in 2002. Teresa Albano/PW
January 17 2010
Veteran Communist leader Jyoti Basu died Jan. 17 at age 95. This grand man of Indian politics and socialist movement had tremendous popularity and respect among the Indian people, as was evident by huge public outpourings of concern in recent days as his health steadily deteriorated.
According to The New York Times, "Anxious crowds gathered outside his Calcutta hospital, local newspapers carried front-page updates on his condition and a litany of leading Indian politicians, including Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, made calls to him."
He died of multiple organ failure, according to media reports.
Basu was the longest ruling Communist chief minister (a position similar to a U.S. governor) for 23 years, from 1977 to 2000. His state of West Bengal today is populated by 90 million people. He led the four left and communist parties of India to victory for 32 years through popular elections.
Basu was known as a highly-skilled parliamentarian and builder of coalitions, especially coalitions that would uphold a basic tenet of Indian society, like secularism. So impressive was his secularism that religion-based parties, like the extreme rightwing Hindu BJP, failed to procure a single seat in the West Bengal's legislature.
Basu's signature policies as chief minister were massive land reform and democracy for the rural poor. Immediately after the Communist-led coalition won in West Bengal, eviction of sharecroppers was stopped. Shares of crop were guaranteed by a seemingly easy move now, but difficult then, recording the sharecroppers name.
Large amounts of land were distributed to struggling farmers, reshaping West Bengal and Indian politics for decades.
Democracy was introduced at the grassroots by holding panchayat elections, a form of local self-government, giving poor farmers and villagers a voice in areas where large landowners usually ruled.
Basu was so respected that in 1996, when a majority of non-Congress, non-BJP parties won the majority of the national elections (Lok Sabha), Basu was offered the prime minister post. However, Basu's party, the Communist Party of India (Marxist), nixed his accepting the prime minister spot. The reason, the party said, was the CPI (M) did not hold the majority of Lok Sabha seats. Basu called the decision a "historic blunder." Yet, he remained a stalwart leader of the CPI (M).
The CPI (M) leadership sent out messages of "its profound grief at the passing away" of Basu, calling him a "senior most leader of the Party and one of the tallest leaders of the Communist movement in India."
The CPI (M) continued the tribute saying "Basu belonged to the leadership of the CPI (M) which steered the Party through the difficult days of semi-fascist terror in West Bengal in the early seventies. One has to recall how as chief minister he dealt with the situation after the assassination of Indira Gandhi in 1984 when violence against Sikhs broke out in various parts of the country, but nothing was allowed to happen in West Bengal." In the early seventies, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared emergency rule, suspending numerous democratic rights and imprisoning many political opponents.
Prakash Karat, CPI (M) general secretary, said, "Basu was a great leader of the CPI(M), the Left movement and India. With his passing away an era has passed. Although he died at the age of 95, he leaves us bereft, because there will be none like JB again. An ardent communist, he was one of the few political leaders of independent India who actually deepened democracy, strengthened secularism and got the working people to the center stage of Indian politics."
Others from across Indian politics offered their condolences and paid glowing tributes to Basu. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described Basu as "a great son of India."
President of India Pratibha Patil, a woman leader Basu had worked with and helped get elected, paid tribute to the stalwart. The president said Basu earned the unique distinction of being the longest serving chief minister of any state from the late seventies to 2000, and displayed his abilities as a leader of the people, an able administrator and an eminent statesman.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee called him "a towering personality" and credited him as the "architect" of the first UPA government. "I have lost a great well wisher," he said.
Vice President of India Hamid Ansari said, "Basu has made a significant contribution to the public life and especially to the development of West Bengal."
The deep love and respect for Basu among the working masses of India led to a condolence resolution from an unlikely source. The right-wing BJP, against which Basu fought all his life, passed a resolution of condolences, calling Basu, "One of the tallest contemporary leaders of Indian politics."
Poetic statements from Sonia Gandhi, chair person of the ruling party, Indian National Congress, and Home Minister P. Chidambram added to the country's salute.
Referring to his pneumonia lasting 17 days, Gandhi said, " Jyoti Basu did not go gentle into the good night. He fought bravely till his last breath, just as he did throughout his life," and added that "he had a rich, fulfilled and glorious life."
"Basu strode like a colossus on the Indian political scene for several decades. He was a great patriot, a great democrat, a great Parliamentarian and a great source of inspiration," Chidambram said.
Educated in a Catholic school, St. Xaviers, during the British colonial rule, Basu came from a well-off family, who had some connections to freedom fighters involved in the struggle for India's independence. He was sent to the UK to further his education. And it was here Basu met Communists and Marxists like R. Palme Dutt.
He returned to India in 1940 and joined the CPI.
Although a lawyer, Basu became a full-time CPI organizer, and went to work among India's dock and railway workers. He fought and won the release of political prisoners during Britain's colonial rule. And in 1948, he was repeatedly arrested after the Communist Party was banned shortly after Independence.
One example of Basu's personal courage came during a 13-month-long United Front West Bengal government, which was voted to power in 1969. Basu became the deputy to the chief minister and also put in charge of the state's law enforcement agencies. A large group of armed policemen stormed the government offices to protest the death of a colleague, and Basu faced the armed group alone, and defused the situation.
While referred to as a "nonconventional" Communist or "non-orthodox" Marxist, Basu epitomized being a "true Communist and Marxist," many noted. The CPI (M) said Basu was a Marxist who neither wavered in his convictions nor was dogmatic in his approach, becoming a source of inspiration for the Left movement in the country.
It was well known that the CPI (M)'s decision to see the Congress Party as a secular partner in the fight against Indian communalism was largely led by Basu's nonsectarian outlook.
As thousands of red flags are flying half mast through the length and breadth of Indian communist parties' offices, there are tributes received by parties and from political figures of all hues from all over the world.
The Communist Party of India, from which many CPI (M) leaders split in 1964, never dithered in providing its own support to him. CPI General Secretary A. B. Bardhan expressed his heart felt sadness on Basu's demise. Calling him the tallest of leaders, Bardhan recalled the motivation of the veteran's life, "Basu fought for the poor and the downtrodden. He was an icon of working class movement and a model for good governance. He was an able administrator and good human being. His rule of more than quarter century has changed the face of rural Bengal and paved the path for agriculture and industrial development. "
No other Indian top leaders ever donated their body to a medical college, but Basu set an example, by donating his body and its parts to further the cause of medicine and scientific research.
Photo: Jyoti Basu speaks to a CPI (M) mass rally of 150,000 in Hyderabad, India, in 2002. Teresa Albano/PW
Sunday, January 24, 2010
The Times, from London
Jyoti Basu:
Former chief minister of West Bengal
(Jayanta Shaw/Reuters) January 22, 2010
Jyoti Basu was a stumbling specialist of the half-finished sentence, a sometimes terrible public speaker who in his heyday attracted audiences of a million and more. He was awkward socially and fiercely private, a man given to slipping quietly away from the poverty of West Bengal for a month to imbibe London culture and occasionally a small brandy at the India Club.
He was never one of the poor millions who adored him. He was not really even a proper communist. But he was a revolutionary, and it is a measure of his impact on the lives of millions of landless West Bengal peasants that thousands thronged outside the Calcutta hospital where he lay dying to pay homage. He had seized land from the rich and turned many of the masses into subsistence farmers, and for this he was the unrivalled hero of leftist politics.
Not that his revolution ended poverty in West Bengal and its capital, Calcutta. Indeed, it arguably entrenched it. Business talent and big money fled, and Calcutta became an international icon for a particularly virulent kind of poverty that persists today amid familiar left-wing infighting.
Basu, invariably dressed in crisp white cotton, was rarely photographed wearing a smile. He came across as stern and distant, and the line between public and private life was strictly observed. His first wife died within 16 months of their marriage, and the second produced a son.
Basu’s politics and powerbase remained rooted in West Bengal, but he did have one chance at leaping out of this provincially feverish world in the mid-1990s to become India’s Prime Minister as head of a coalition government. The coalition might, had it succeeded, have stalled the rise of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, a party despised by most Muslims and blamed for much communal tension. But his party blocked him, effectively arguing that he would have to compromise Marxist ideals to accommodate so many shades of political opinion. He was furious and disappointed, and later described it as a blunder. He returned quietly to state politics while using his heightened prestige to become kingmaker of the rulers of Delhi. He influence was decisive in forming an alliance in 2004 between left-wingers and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Basu’s tenure was his intolerance and abhorrence of communalism. Calcutta and West Bengal rarely followed the rest of the country into outbreaks of religious rioting. Had Basu been a different person he could have set Bengal ablaze for short-term political gain, as other politicians routinely did elsewhere. Not that he was a benevolent ruler; the state apparatus of West Bengal had its ruthless and dictatorial side and its nightmarish bureaucracy.
His instinctive communal tolerance stemmed from a liberal upbringing in what is now Bangladesh as the son of a prosperous doctor, who sent him to the best schools and later at Presidency College, Calcutta, from which he graduated with honours in English. In 1935 he sailed to London to study law at Middle Temple.
His father was horrified when his son declared that he intended to pursue politics when he returned home, and, to boot, that he was now a communist. He had been inspired, in part, by the communist philosopher and writer Rajani Palme Dutt, and had dabbled in the Communist Party of Great Britain. After returning to Calcutta in 1940 he enrolled as a barrister at the Calcutta High Court but never practised.
Instead he joined the trade union movement and organised railway workers in Bengal and Assam. He became secretary of Friends of the Soviet Union and the Anti-Fascist Writers’ Association, and was in charge of maintaining contact with underground party workers. He was now, by any measure, a fully paid-up left-wing agitator.
His loathing of communalism was first manifest in 1946-47, when he played a crucial calming role as strikes and Hindu-
Muslim bloodletting threatened to engulf the state. He also ensured there was no anti-Sikh rioting in West Bengal after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister, in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards.
In 1964 the communist movement in India split between ideological camps that variously supported India or China over the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Basu sided with the pro-China camp and became a founder and leader of the new Communist Party (Marxist) in West Bengal. Of the nine founding members of the politburo, Basu was the last survivor.
The party gained ground quickly but was trounced in state elections in 1972, which the Congress Party probably rigged, but won decisively in 1977 — the start of Basu’s 23 unbroken years of power, the longest stint as chief minister in Indian political history. He immediately confronted feudalism, spread land and wealth among the peasantry, and was from that moment the invincible man of the poor.
The stifling state mechanisms that he established reinforced his power, ensuring that big business stayed away and which can still make entrepreneurs think twice about setting up in West Bengal. He made one blunder that he later admitted to: early in his chief ministership he banned the teaching of English in primary schools, sowing the seeds for greater isolation from the rest of India and hindering his later attempts to attract US investors.
Basu remained politically active until he retired in 2000 because of ill health, but as India’s leading elder statesman he never stopped receiving high-powered visitors at his home. His politics remained as they had always been, Marxist in name but Fabian in nature and, after the introduction of economic liberalism in India in the 1980s, latterly capitalist in fact.
Basu’s wife died in 2003. He is survived by his son.
Jyoti Basu, former chief minister of West Bengal, was born on July 8, 1914. He died on January 17, 2010, aged 95
(Jayanta Shaw/Reuters) January 22, 2010
Jyoti Basu was a stumbling specialist of the half-finished sentence, a sometimes terrible public speaker who in his heyday attracted audiences of a million and more. He was awkward socially and fiercely private, a man given to slipping quietly away from the poverty of West Bengal for a month to imbibe London culture and occasionally a small brandy at the India Club.
He was never one of the poor millions who adored him. He was not really even a proper communist. But he was a revolutionary, and it is a measure of his impact on the lives of millions of landless West Bengal peasants that thousands thronged outside the Calcutta hospital where he lay dying to pay homage. He had seized land from the rich and turned many of the masses into subsistence farmers, and for this he was the unrivalled hero of leftist politics.
Not that his revolution ended poverty in West Bengal and its capital, Calcutta. Indeed, it arguably entrenched it. Business talent and big money fled, and Calcutta became an international icon for a particularly virulent kind of poverty that persists today amid familiar left-wing infighting.
Basu, invariably dressed in crisp white cotton, was rarely photographed wearing a smile. He came across as stern and distant, and the line between public and private life was strictly observed. His first wife died within 16 months of their marriage, and the second produced a son.
Basu’s politics and powerbase remained rooted in West Bengal, but he did have one chance at leaping out of this provincially feverish world in the mid-1990s to become India’s Prime Minister as head of a coalition government. The coalition might, had it succeeded, have stalled the rise of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party, a party despised by most Muslims and blamed for much communal tension. But his party blocked him, effectively arguing that he would have to compromise Marxist ideals to accommodate so many shades of political opinion. He was furious and disappointed, and later described it as a blunder. He returned quietly to state politics while using his heightened prestige to become kingmaker of the rulers of Delhi. He influence was decisive in forming an alliance in 2004 between left-wingers and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of Basu’s tenure was his intolerance and abhorrence of communalism. Calcutta and West Bengal rarely followed the rest of the country into outbreaks of religious rioting. Had Basu been a different person he could have set Bengal ablaze for short-term political gain, as other politicians routinely did elsewhere. Not that he was a benevolent ruler; the state apparatus of West Bengal had its ruthless and dictatorial side and its nightmarish bureaucracy.
His instinctive communal tolerance stemmed from a liberal upbringing in what is now Bangladesh as the son of a prosperous doctor, who sent him to the best schools and later at Presidency College, Calcutta, from which he graduated with honours in English. In 1935 he sailed to London to study law at Middle Temple.
His father was horrified when his son declared that he intended to pursue politics when he returned home, and, to boot, that he was now a communist. He had been inspired, in part, by the communist philosopher and writer Rajani Palme Dutt, and had dabbled in the Communist Party of Great Britain. After returning to Calcutta in 1940 he enrolled as a barrister at the Calcutta High Court but never practised.
Instead he joined the trade union movement and organised railway workers in Bengal and Assam. He became secretary of Friends of the Soviet Union and the Anti-Fascist Writers’ Association, and was in charge of maintaining contact with underground party workers. He was now, by any measure, a fully paid-up left-wing agitator.
His loathing of communalism was first manifest in 1946-47, when he played a crucial calming role as strikes and Hindu-
Muslim bloodletting threatened to engulf the state. He also ensured there was no anti-Sikh rioting in West Bengal after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the Prime Minister, in 1984 by her Sikh bodyguards.
In 1964 the communist movement in India split between ideological camps that variously supported India or China over the Sino-Indian war of 1962. Basu sided with the pro-China camp and became a founder and leader of the new Communist Party (Marxist) in West Bengal. Of the nine founding members of the politburo, Basu was the last survivor.
The party gained ground quickly but was trounced in state elections in 1972, which the Congress Party probably rigged, but won decisively in 1977 — the start of Basu’s 23 unbroken years of power, the longest stint as chief minister in Indian political history. He immediately confronted feudalism, spread land and wealth among the peasantry, and was from that moment the invincible man of the poor.
The stifling state mechanisms that he established reinforced his power, ensuring that big business stayed away and which can still make entrepreneurs think twice about setting up in West Bengal. He made one blunder that he later admitted to: early in his chief ministership he banned the teaching of English in primary schools, sowing the seeds for greater isolation from the rest of India and hindering his later attempts to attract US investors.
Basu remained politically active until he retired in 2000 because of ill health, but as India’s leading elder statesman he never stopped receiving high-powered visitors at his home. His politics remained as they had always been, Marxist in name but Fabian in nature and, after the introduction of economic liberalism in India in the 1980s, latterly capitalist in fact.
Basu’s wife died in 2003. He is survived by his son.
Jyoti Basu, former chief minister of West Bengal, was born on July 8, 1914. He died on January 17, 2010, aged 95
The Washington Post
Of Note
Obituaries
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Jyoti Basu Indian Communist leader
Communist leader Jyoti Basu, 96, who in 1996 came close to becoming India's prime minister, died Jan. 17 in a Calcutta hospital of multiple organ failure, said Biman Bose, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to which Mr. Basu belonged. He had been ailing for a few months and was hospitalized Jan. 1.
Mr. Basu became chief minister of West Bengal state in 1977 and served for 23 years, making him the longest-serving chief minister in India's political history.
In 1996, a group of parties asked Mr. Basu to lead a coalition government in New Delhi. The Communist Party declined because it did not want to be part of a government in which it would not have a majority. Mr. Basu later described that decision as a "historic blunder."
In his later years, Mr. Basu, a charismatic leader, assumed the role of an elder statesman whose advice and opinion were sought and respected across the political spectrum.
Obituaries
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Jyoti Basu Indian Communist leader
Communist leader Jyoti Basu, 96, who in 1996 came close to becoming India's prime minister, died Jan. 17 in a Calcutta hospital of multiple organ failure, said Biman Bose, a leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), to which Mr. Basu belonged. He had been ailing for a few months and was hospitalized Jan. 1.
Mr. Basu became chief minister of West Bengal state in 1977 and served for 23 years, making him the longest-serving chief minister in India's political history.
In 1996, a group of parties asked Mr. Basu to lead a coalition government in New Delhi. The Communist Party declined because it did not want to be part of a government in which it would not have a majority. Mr. Basu later described that decision as a "historic blunder."
In his later years, Mr. Basu, a charismatic leader, assumed the role of an elder statesman whose advice and opinion were sought and respected across the political spectrum.
The small big man
The small big man
Karan Thapar, January 23, 2010
Jyoti Basu was not a tall man but you hardly noticed that when he walked into a room. There was, instead, a spring in his step that caught your eye. Even though he did not smile a lot, his manner was reassuring. He may not have been informal or familiar, but he wasn’t intimidating either. And if you won his respect you could feel the warmth of his response.
Our first meeting was in 1991. We had set up our camera and lights in the ante-room adjacent to his office in Writers’ Building. From the carpet to the sofa and flowers the room was suffused with red. Not crimson but burgundy. Like a deep rich wine. Basu walked in on the dot of time and the first thing he noticed was the colour.
“Is red your favourite?” he asked. I felt he was politely pointing out there was too much of it. “No,” I replied, eager to defend myself. “That’s how we found this room.”
“Ah”, he said softly. “They,” and he waved towards his staff, “obviously think it’s the appropriate colour for a communist!”
Five years later, when I next interviewed him, at his Indira Bhawan residence in Salt Lake, the room was very different. Panelled in wood it boasted of a cuckoo clock with a loud disturbing set of half-hourly chimes. This time Jyoti Basu arrived early, well before we had finished setting up.
“There’s no red in this room,” he chuckled. I was astonished he’d remembered. But I was soon to discover he had a memory like an old warehouse. As I threw carefully researched statistics at him to prove Bengal had seen little advance under his rule, he retorted with a fine collection of his own in staunch defence. He seemed to have the past at his fingertips. He clearly enjoyed the exchange.
However, the interview that I will never forget was the third and last. It happened in late August 1999 and was one of three for the BBC in the run-up to the elections. This time we talked about what ‘communism’ in Bengal actually amounted to. I told Jyoti Basu that it was social democracy. He strongly disagreed. Instead, he compared it to Lenin’s New Economic Policy.
“Mr Basu,” I interrupted, “That was a retreat from communism!” I thought he’d let the ball drop but he caught it at the first bounce when he responded, “It’s one step back so we can take two forward.”
Afterwards, he asked me to stay for coffee. “Where did you learn about communism and Lenin?” He seemed genuinely curious. “At school in England,” I said. “I learnt my communism there too,” and he laughed merrily. “The British have a lot to answer for!”
Jyoti Basu went on to speak about his grand-daughter. I could sense he was close to her. “She wants to be a journalist — or something — and I would like her to speak to you.” Even though he did not specifically say so, it felt like a compliment. He did not seem the sort of person who made such requests casually.
We never met again but years later, when I asked for another interview, he responded to my letter by ringing back. “I’m not well enough to be interviewed. But come and see me when you next come to Kolkata.” I wish I had. I meant to but each time I thought of it, I felt I would be intruding. Now, it’s too late.
Karan Thapar, January 23, 2010
Jyoti Basu was not a tall man but you hardly noticed that when he walked into a room. There was, instead, a spring in his step that caught your eye. Even though he did not smile a lot, his manner was reassuring. He may not have been informal or familiar, but he wasn’t intimidating either. And if you won his respect you could feel the warmth of his response.
Our first meeting was in 1991. We had set up our camera and lights in the ante-room adjacent to his office in Writers’ Building. From the carpet to the sofa and flowers the room was suffused with red. Not crimson but burgundy. Like a deep rich wine. Basu walked in on the dot of time and the first thing he noticed was the colour.
“Is red your favourite?” he asked. I felt he was politely pointing out there was too much of it. “No,” I replied, eager to defend myself. “That’s how we found this room.”
“Ah”, he said softly. “They,” and he waved towards his staff, “obviously think it’s the appropriate colour for a communist!”
Five years later, when I next interviewed him, at his Indira Bhawan residence in Salt Lake, the room was very different. Panelled in wood it boasted of a cuckoo clock with a loud disturbing set of half-hourly chimes. This time Jyoti Basu arrived early, well before we had finished setting up.
“There’s no red in this room,” he chuckled. I was astonished he’d remembered. But I was soon to discover he had a memory like an old warehouse. As I threw carefully researched statistics at him to prove Bengal had seen little advance under his rule, he retorted with a fine collection of his own in staunch defence. He seemed to have the past at his fingertips. He clearly enjoyed the exchange.
However, the interview that I will never forget was the third and last. It happened in late August 1999 and was one of three for the BBC in the run-up to the elections. This time we talked about what ‘communism’ in Bengal actually amounted to. I told Jyoti Basu that it was social democracy. He strongly disagreed. Instead, he compared it to Lenin’s New Economic Policy.
“Mr Basu,” I interrupted, “That was a retreat from communism!” I thought he’d let the ball drop but he caught it at the first bounce when he responded, “It’s one step back so we can take two forward.”
Afterwards, he asked me to stay for coffee. “Where did you learn about communism and Lenin?” He seemed genuinely curious. “At school in England,” I said. “I learnt my communism there too,” and he laughed merrily. “The British have a lot to answer for!”
Jyoti Basu went on to speak about his grand-daughter. I could sense he was close to her. “She wants to be a journalist — or something — and I would like her to speak to you.” Even though he did not specifically say so, it felt like a compliment. He did not seem the sort of person who made such requests casually.
We never met again but years later, when I asked for another interview, he responded to my letter by ringing back. “I’m not well enough to be interviewed. But come and see me when you next come to Kolkata.” I wish I had. I meant to but each time I thought of it, I felt I would be intruding. Now, it’s too late.
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