Basu: communism backwardly redifined

17th January 2010, 11:37 AM:  Jyoti Basu dies at AMRI Hospital

19th January 2010: 13:00 PM: Jyoti Ghosh dies at SSKM Hospital

Well, let us now compare the two deaths. Well, the former was the communist leader and erstwhile Bengal Chief Minister while the latter was a common man like you and me. But then there is a similarity, due to the road blockade caused due to Jyoti Basu’s death procession where thousands joined needlessly, Jyoti Ghosh’s ambulance got stuck and the poor man did not have much time to live after reaching the hospital. However, there was no case made of negligence or public disturbance. After all for a true communist icon like Basu, there is no harm if a common citizen sacrifices his life.

Jyoti Ghosh, like most of us, spent all his life working hard, paying taxes on time and also casting his so called precious vote. On the other hand, Jyoti Basu spent his life licking on the taxpayers’ money and vote and making decisions and policies, which according to communists were milestones in the political, economic and social history of Bengal. According to them, Basu made Bengal what it was never before. True indeed, a state which was once the most advanced and cultured and known as the ‘Sheffield of the East’ was turned into ‘wasteland of the east’ in the term of Basu. A unique change indeed- full of darkness and despair. Well, but you can’t blame him- the main objective was to set an example and he had done that successfully, no matter how bleak the result and effect was.

Basu was one of the pioneers of preaching the communist ideology among the public and in his policies and doing exactly the opposite personally. Whether it was abolishing English in state schools and sending his grand daughters to UK or shutting down factories and granting the Goenkas the CESC monopoly, he was an expert in juggling with communism and capitalism to beat two birds in the same bush. Even if industries closed down or shied away, Basu had turned whole sale merchants (including his own son) into big time industrialists by unfair ways. So in that sense, he was pro-business too, forget the means and motive.

The English language too is indebted to this great communist leader, whom some Bengalis consider even greater than Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. It was he who had started the bandh and strike culture so vehemently, rather voraciously, that Oxford paid a tribute to this great ‘no work’ attitude by incorporating the word ‘gherao’ in their dictionary. Indeed a great linguistic achievement- after Tagore’s Gitanjali.

So what about law and order? There too, Basu the great had performed his grand magic. Such a magic where thousands of false votes were cast by cadres of CPI (M) (ahem comrades!) and the police looked mum and hypnotized. A magic which even the great Houdini wouldn’t have ever imagined of. This ‘farsighted leader’ was indeed farsighted enough to turn policemen into ‘political goons’. And what was his response to all these, “Emon to hoyei thaakey” (these are normal stuff), in his usual brusque manner.

So what’s the moral of the story: Do not criticize, hail Basu as a great communist who successfully used his hypocritical ideologies to make Bengal a land of the waste.