At a time when communism is on its way out of the world, the politics of West Bengal raises many eyebrows. Though I am based mostly in Europe, I had the chance to visit this Indian State quite a few times, recently. I am currently visiting West Bengal because my latest project requires me and my team to counsel and coach some high-ranking business managers of Calcutta. So, I am staying in Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal, and a metropolitan city of India. I am scheduled to leave the city in a fortnight. I have been to Calcutta before, mostly for work. I have seen enough of the city to write about it.
A City of Love
Calcutta is a very populated city. The people are very warm and friendly and are particularly amiable towards foreigners. I have traveled in many places and have met many people but I have never come across the likes of Calcutta. The city effuses warmth and hospitality, its milieu and mores go straight to your heart, its culture encompasses you with love and homeliness. You can interact with anyone, anywhere in the city without inhibitions and without fearing to cause offense. The roads, the pavements, the shops and the people seem to reach out to you and pull you into their vortex of love and compassion. No wonder, Mother Teresa established herself here, no wonder Pope John Paul found Calcutta irresistible.
A Glorious Past
When the British ruled India, which was then undivided, Calcutta was the capital of the nation. Later the capital of India was shifted to New Delhi for political reasons. During the British Raj, Calcutta was often referred to as 'the second city of the British Empire' as it came only next to London in terms of fame, economy and importance. When the British left India in the years 1947-1950, Calcutta still reigned as the supreme city of India in terms of politics and economics. The corporate sector of Calcutta was strong, as many English entrepreneurs had set up companies in Calcutta through the 17th and the 18th centuries when the English ruled India. There was a saying that was very popular during the pre and the post Independence years, which went, 'What Bengal thinks today, the rest of India thinks tomorrow.'
But Only to the End of the 1960s
However, Calcutta could retain her preeminent position only until the end of the 1960s. The 'swinging sixties' swung for the last time in Calcutta before the blackness of communism engulfed the city. A man by the name of Jyoti Basu, a barrister educated in England, fired by the passion of communism, for nothing except to fulfill his own selfish aims, stormed into Calcutta in the 1940s after completing his education in England, to turn the city into a den of poverty under the flag of communism. His goal was to overthrow the Congress government and subsequently Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the chief minister of West Bengal in the 1970s, and wrest power from him and the government so that he himself could become the chief minister of West Bengal. His modus operandi was to incite the people of West Bengal into believing that he, Jyoti Basu, was the true savior of the poor, was capable of lowering income disparities between the rich and the poor by espousing communism, and uplifting the poor from poverty and misery by pursuing radical leftist policies.
Possessed By a Devil
Jyoti Basu left no stone unturned to reach his end. He organized groups of vandals and goons, who would crash into big corporate houses and wealthy establishments only to smash up furniture, kill or harm managerial staff and wreak havoc in general. Under the banner of trade unionism, Jyoti Basu provoked hundreds of ordinary and middle-class Bengalis to picket, strike, stop going to work so as to punish the owners and the managers of companies. Unions would often gherao managers and make preposterous demands relating to wages and perquisites. Jyoti Basu gave the teeming millions of Bengal the idea that they had a right to wages even if they did not do any work, that it was the duty of the State to protect its laborers, and that the State would go to any length to preserve the rights of laborers even if the latter did not put in a single day of labor.
Bengalis: A Fiery Race
I have been acquainted with enough Bengalis and have several Bengali friends in the US to know that Bengalis possess a fiery attitude. Bengalis are very emotional by nature and are prone to having mercurial tempers. They can be goaded into any revolution, provided they have an inspiring leader. It was due to this reason that the British moved their capital from Calcutta to New Delhi. Bengalis were creating enough trouble for the British under the aegis of fiery-spirited leaders such as Subhas Chandra Bose, Chittaranjan Das, Bipin Chandra Pal, Rabindranath Tagore, Benoy Basu, Badal Gupta, Dinesh Gupta, Khudiram Bose, Bagha Jatin, Surya Sen, Surendranath Banerjea, Sri Aurobindo, and other famous freedom fighters and compelled the British to change the capital of India from Calcutta to New Delhi. Bengal was divided in 1905 by Lord Curzon due to the same reasons. It was hoped that a divided Bengal would not be such a hotbed of politics as an undivided Bengal. Even after India gained independence, Bengalis held on to their passion and zeal for idealism and revolution. So Jyoti Basu found it pretty easy to spark the highly inflammable spirit of Bengalis, ignite the souls of thousands of Bengalis whose hearts were waiting like several wicks, to be on fire.
Satan Ruling
Basu and his men went on a rampage in Bengal in the seventies. They took their riots to the West Bengal Assembly, the seat of the legislature, the executive and governance, of the State where the democratically elected politicians of West Bengal, including the chief minister, assemble to execute legislations and to govern. They would disrupt Assembly proceedings by alternately filibustering and resorting to violence against the Siddhartha Shankar Ray government of West Bengal. They would waylay cars, buses and trams on the road and set them on fire. Arson, arm-twisting, and terrorism were executed on a large scale until people voted for Basu's party out of fear and brought them to power in 1977. Basu was, of course, crowned the chief minister of the new Left Front government, a position he had coveted for a long time. But his party's atrocities did not stop even after he came to power. Basu's party was called the CPM, initials that stood for communist party Marxist. Basu apparently was interested in acquiring absolute power for himself and for his party like most communist leaders of the world. Though his ideology was met with widespread dissent and though there were still many in Bengal who openly criticized communism, Basu was determined to keep the ball rolling. His gangs burnt villages across Bengal, murdered villagers, and raped village women if they dared to protest against communism. Such actions ensured the CPM party of gaining victory and of winning the majority of the Assembly seats in every election. The poor everywhere in the State were forced into submission and threatened with dire consequences if they did not comply with the wishes of the CPM high command and the hoodlums during elections. Hence, there was no question of free and fair elections in the State of West Bengal as the CPM would rig polling booths and cast votes for their own candidates. If any villager objected, he and his family would be intimidated with murder, loss of property, rape, and other unspeakable, heinous crimes. While the Left Front government could subdue thousands of Bengali villagers in this manner for thirty years, they did not find it so easy to subdue the city populace.
Satan Sways
The population of Calcutta came under the sway of Jyoti Basu's speeches in the 1970s. Intellectuals, thinkers, philosophers, (Calcutta has always had a large number of such people) and the middle-class at first truly believed that communism would be good for the State as well as for the poor of Bengal, that Basu was a true patriot who was fighting for the cause of the downtrodden. Hence, they voted for him and his government without hesitation. But gradually, when Basu's true colors began to be exposed and when it came to be known that he was just another power-hungry politician who was playing the card of communism for the sake of retaining power, these members of the electorate became turncoats. That is why the Left Front government, despite operating out of Calcutta, could never quite make Calcutta their bastion. As the party's misdemeanors came to light over the years, more of those who had voted wholeheartedly for Basu and his party, did the volte face and joined the camp of hardcore anti-communists.
A City's Defeat
But the damage had already been done. Thousands of factories had already closed down, enterprises had shut shop and the industrial sector of Bengal was already sick and in total shambles. As Bengal became notorious for its strikes and lockouts, its anti-business and anti-capitalist policies, businesses and companies flocked out of the city in hordes. By the end of the 1980s, Calcutta had almost turned into the hamlets from which it had once sprung under the patronage of Job Charnock - Kalikata, Gobindapur and Sutanuti - completely bereft of commerce and industry. The richest, most advanced and most happening city of India had turned into a bustee, a beggars' haven, in a span of two decades. 'What India thought today, Calcutta would be able to think years later!' All this, while those in power in West Bengal took vacations abroad, went to Switzerland for health checkups, shopped in the world's best retail outlets, and educated their children in the best foreign universities, at the cost of taxpayers' money. Basu very cunningly used communism to become a diehard capitalist in his own life. While masquerading as a 'messiah of the mendicant', Basu went to Switzerland for enhancing the glow of his skin, for preventing aging; helped his son, Chandan, to carry out quite a number of underhand deals so that Chandan could fill up his own coffers; and got his granddaughters educated in one of the best and most expensive private schools of Calcutta and then sent them abroad for higher education.
A Devil's Victory
Basu and his cohorts were successful in making industry turn its back on Calcutta and Bengal. No right-thinking industrialist would ever come here again to set up shop, what with the number of strikes, bandhs and lockouts augmenting each day. But the top brass of the CPM party soon began to feel the consequences of their own actions. Apart from the fact that the electorate of Calcutta was gradually turning to the opposite camp, Calcutta had begun to be regarded as one of the poorest and most underdeveloped cities of India, despite the fact that it was still a metropolitan city. This was not good for the image of the Left Front government and the communists. Hyderabad, Bangalore, Pune and Ahmedabad had now become metropolitan cities. They were beating Calcutta on all fronts, which included business and industry, education, employment, infrastructure, etc. Even they looked down upon Calcutta. Thousands of graduates started departing from the city to greener pastures, as Calcutta could not offer them the jobs that they were qualified to hold. The mass exodus was harmful for the city as it marked a drain of the city's youth and brains towards other swiftly developing cities of India.
Too Late
The CPM party realized its own mistakes. But, like all power-hungry communist groups, they wanted to remain in power. Jyoti Basu was by now an old man of 86. So, the CPM party removed him from office and put Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the current chief minister of West Bengal, in his place. The new incumbent in his fifties was hailed as a 'young chief minister' and as 'young blood' who would definitely infuse vigor into the party with his new ideas. In an attempt to woo industry back to Bengal, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee went for a world tour as soon as he came to power. He visited the fashion houses of Europe and he told the media that he hoped that some of them would set up units in Calcutta. None of them did. But Bhattacharjee and his family came back to Calcutta with lots of Gucci handbags, Versace outfits and other fancy apparel, accessories and embellishments for their own personal use. While Bhattacharjee has displayed his sincere keenness in turning Calcutta into a center of trade and commerce again, he is up against a wall, which has been erected by none other than his own party men and the trade union of the Left Front government, CITU. The CITU opposes every positive step that Bhattacharjee takes towards industrialization and frightens whatever industries Bhattacharjee has been able to attract, away from Bengal. Even the IT sector, which is sometimes called Bhattacharjee's baby, because he is the one who has been largely responsible for establishing it in Sector V in Salt Lake, has not been spared by CITU. CITU has spread its tentacles there too by forming a trade union consisting of software professionals!
More Devilry
Although the CPM has been losing elections in Calcutta, it still is in power because it wins in the many villages of Bengal. And how does the CPM win? By threatening to torture, to kill, to rape and to harm the helpless villagers and by rigging polling booths. The villages of Bengal, not Calcutta, are the stronghold of the CPM party and the Left Front government. Party workers of the CPM have created a fort around the hamlets of Bengal. They do not let members of the opposition penetrate that fort. Indeed, their presence is so forceful in the villages that even members of the media get killed when they try to get the lowdown from the villagers of Bengal. The West Bengal Police, an arm of the West Bengal government, are hand in glove with the government in this matter. Without the help of armed police personnel, the CPM would obviously find it hard to barricade members of the opposition and the media. Bribery and corruption reigns in the police department with the police getting a regular share of the bribes that the CPM politicians extort from various rich and poor people.
Horror of Horrors
What is even more horrifying is that the bigwigs of the Left Front government and the CPM party and politburo have always had secret liaisons with the government officials and politicians of China. Basu himself was a fervent supporter of Mao Zedong. That the communist big shots of West Bengal have repeatedly accepted and still accept bribes from the Chinese government is a fact that is well known. In lieu of these payoffs, the Left Front government leaders reveal military and diplomatic secrets of India to China and stymie the progress of positive nuclear and other reforms in India so that India can never become a superpower and so that India can never pose a threat or an obstruction to China's interests in becoming a superpower. China wants to dominate India and keep India under its thumb. Chinese officials bribe these CPM chiefs of West Bengal in order to spy upon and infiltrate the Indian government. These sly methods help China to attain its national goal, which is to gain substantial political hegemony in the world. Behind the mask of Mao, Chinese politicians conspire with these Leftists of Bengal and India to thwart India's progress to becoming a world power. When the CPM was the official ally of the Congress coalition government after the Congress came to power in the Union Elections of 2004, they would use every blackmailing tactic to prevent the Congress-Manmohan Singh government from taking positive decisions for the progress of India. They continued in this fashion until one day Manmohan Singh decided to put a stop to the incessant blackmail. He threatened that he would resign from the position of Prime Minister, if he was not allowed to carry out the nuclear deal with America, without the support of the CPM, which was headed by Prakash Karat, a shrewd and unprincipled politician. Manmohan Singh was and is a brave Prime Minister. Prakash Karat, the CPM party and the Left Front government were opposing the nuclear deal vehemently as they were instructed by the Chinese politicians to do so, because if India was a party to the Indo US nuclear deal, China would have much to lose in terms of power. However, the deal went through after initial hiccups, thanks to Manmohan Singh. He was firm and unwavering and was not daunted by the Left Front's withdrawal of support. Manmohan Singh's courage of conviction helped in the expulsion of the communist traitors from the Congress government forever. Karat, Jyoti Basu, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and their cronies probably did not get their dirty bribe monies from the Chinese, as they could not impede the passage of Indo US nuclear deal. But politics makes strange bedfellows. I fear the day when the Leftists and the Congress will again join hands for the sake of remaining in power. That day will spell doom for India.
Who Can Overcome Satan?
The story of the plight of Bengal can only conclude with Mamata Banerjee. This brave lady, currently 55 years old, is the Railway Minister of India, the Railway portfolio being one of the most important and difficult-to-handle portfolios of the Indian government. The daughter of a poor Brahmin priest, Mamata Banerjee has struggled through life to come to her present position. Mamata Banerjee came into the limelight when she had contested a Lok Sabha seat against CPM heavyweight Somnath Chatterjee in 1984 and had defeated him by a wide margin. She was only 29 then. Naturally, the Congress party was all praises for her. Mamata Banerjee is a dedicated politician. If there is any genuine champion of the poor, it is Mamata Banerjee, the leader of the Trinamul Congress. With her philosophy revolving around 'Ma, Mati and Manush' (Mother, the Soil of Bengal, and the People of Bengal), she has won the hearts of the rich and the poor alike. In the Lok Sabha elections of 2009, she and her party, the Trinamul Congress, won a landslide victory against the CPM party and the Left Front government of West Bengal. The 2009 Lok Sabha elections proclaimed a clear-cut mandate of the people for her party. Though she can officially come to power in West Bengal only through the Assembly elections of 2011, everyone is upbeat about Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamul Congress and the future of Bengal as a result of the 2009 elections.
Only an Angel
Mamata Banerjee is a dynamic political leader. But most importantly, she is honest to her purpose and idealism. She is not a hypocrite. She is a true lover of Bengal. She loves the teeming masses of Bengal, feels for them, cries for them. While the so-called communist politicians travel by limousines, live life king-size in fabulous, palatial houses, she lives in a place that can be likened to a hut without any luxuries. While the CPM and Left Front leaders distance themselves from the poor and yet call themselves saviors of the proletariat, Mamata Banerjee walks relentlessly around the hamlets of Bengal so that she can know the villagers personally, understand their problems and so that she can alleviate their miseries and make life better for them. Mamata Banerjee wants progress for West Bengal on all fronts. While she wants to create better living conditions for the poor, she also wants Bengal to regain its position as the commercial and industrial hub of India. She always says that without industrialization there can be no real progress. She wants to make Calcutta one of the chief competitors of Mumbai in terms of business, finance and industry; Darjeeling, the Switzerland of Asia; and West Bengal, one of the most advanced States of India. She has held several meetings with industrialists and has exhorted them to reopen factories and mills that they were forced to close down, under Jyoti Basu's regime. I myself have attended some of these conventions. Industrialists and economists welcome her as a breath of fresh air that can be relied upon. All the businesspeople of West Bengal are keeping their fingers crossed so that she can come to power in 2011 and revive and give the much-needed fillip to the ailing business sector of West Bengal. On the recent demise of Jyoti Basu at the age of 96, industrialists remarked that he represented the demise of industry and commerce in Bengal.
The Magic Remains
As I walk out of my fancy suite in the ITC Sonar Bangla on the Eastern Metropolitan Bypass of Calcutta, and take the car out to downtown Calcutta, I am overwhelmed by the city's sounds, sights and smells. Crowded and bustling and falling apart in some places, Calcutta holds a special place in my heart. I have come here so many times but Calcutta still continues to enthrall and enchant me. And the more I am getting familiar with the city's history, politics, financial conditions, ambience, culture, people and the voice of its media, the more I am beginning to hate the CPM party, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, his Left Front government, the late Jyoti Basu, Biman Bose, Brinda and Prakash Karat, for destroying this beautiful city, this lovely 'city of joy'. Incidentally, City of Joy is a novel on Calcutta that was written by Dominique Lapierre in 1985.
Despite the Villains
I also want to fill you in with certain facts about Biman Bose and Brinda and Prakash Karat. Biman Bose, the Chairman of the Left Front party of West Bengal and a member of the CPM politburo, is a vile man who cannot speak a single word without swearing in the worst possible language. Brinda and Prakash Karat are an elite and snobbish couple who pose as communists. Prakash Karat, the present General Secretary of the CPM, is a greedy politician with a criminal bent of mind. He was constantly threatening to withdraw support to the UPA coalition government over the Indo US nuclear deal as he was on the payroll of the Chinese government and was ordered by Chinese politicians to hamper the nuclear deal. Manmohan Singh, the then and present Prime Minister of India, was fed up of Karat's threats and his support and decided to proceed with the deal sans the Left's backing. The Left Front was ousted from power at the national level since the day they withdrew their support to the UPA government and Singh decided to do without them. Brinda Karat, Prakash Karat's wife, is another greedy politician, the Lady Macbeth of the CPM party and politburo, who naturally has a criminal bent of mind.
Sunset on Calvary or the Resurrection?
It is now dusk. I am standing next to the Bhagirathi-Hooghly River, a distributary of the Ganges, in Millennium Park in Calcutta. As lovers walk hand in hand and families on a picnic yell and shout on merry-go-rounds and slides and swings, I stand straight and rest my hands on the parapet that separates the Park from the waters of the River. I just took some snaps of the breathtaking sunset on the River with my digital camera. I hope to preserve these pictures in my laptop forever. I will also take prints of them so that I can frame them and put them up in my living room, back home. I see steamers and boats sailing across the River. They are taking many people on a cruise. I too would like to go for a cruise down the River on one of them, but not today. I had a good counseling session with the business managers today. All of them were from the only blue-chip company that still has its headquarters in Calcutta. The cool zephyr is gently rubbing against my face. I am feeling relaxed but worried. Worried about what will happen in 2011. I want the sun to shine on Calcutta always though I am a citizen of France and a complete outsider to the city. And who or what else do you think I mean when I talk of the sun but Mamata Banerjee? She is the sun of Calcutta, the only hope. Her radiance is worth the light of a thousand torches. She is the only person who will be able to return Calcutta to her former pride of place in India.
I will of course return to Calcutta in 2011 for a short trip, if not for anything else. I will come once again to Millennium Park where I now stand. And though I will come to take photographs of the sun sinking into the Bhagirathi-Hooghly River, I hope the city will then be bathed in the light of Mamata Banerjee, the sun and savior of Calcutta and West Bengal.
Damien Ghosh is a prolific writer of articles that focus on technology, places, psychology and people. Damien has worked in different industries such as the information technology industry, the travel and tourism industry and the retail industry. He has worked in several projects for blue-chip companies, that are part of the IT, travel and tourism and retail industries. His work and his passion for traveling has made him journey across the world. He has led large work-teams to accomplish business goals successfully. He is also an expert on psychology and has many degrees and diplomas in clinical and business psychology. He has successfully coached, counseled and mentored several people in the various organizations he has worked as a professional HR manager and psychologist. He has also counseled many people by holding counseling sessions in different parts of the world. His counseling sessions have been very helpful for motivating people and for enabling them to identify and set their goals. His rich experience undoubtedly helps him to write extensively. Damien writes for magazines, the web and for newspapers. He has also done several research papers on motivation, goal-setting, and human psychology and has contributed chapters to textbooks that deal with human resource management, human resource development, business and industrial psychology and clinical psychology. His articles, chapters and papers have received lots of accolades from critics, professionals, psychologists, HR managers, industrialists, help-seekers and readers in general. Damien Ghosh's website is https://www.meetingdiary.com and his email is damienghosh@live.com.
