The morning of February 15 (2015) was
exceptionally grim. The sun looked pale, its rays mangled, as if somebody had
scratched its face with a scalpel blade of tempered steel. Ramakrishna Naskar
lane, an obscure by-lane in Beleghata area of Kolkata, was suddenly bustling
with unusual activity. A number of people, quite a few in fact, irrespective of
the nature of the red flags they carry, had gathered before a modest dwelling;
assembled to bid adieu (with clenched fists and the ‘Internationale’ on their
lips) to an old man, an octogenarian, wrapped in a crimson cloth with a crossed
hammer and sickle in white. Prof. NB, our very own Nishith-da, Comrade Nishith
Bhattacharya was no more. Leaving his mortal remains for the pyre to consume
and his comrades to weep over, he had left for the final voyage—journey ‘to the
undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’.
My association with Nishith-da dates back to the
early years of the past decade when India, like many other ‘developing
countries’ of the world, was passing through the initial days of the second
information revolution. I, then an activist of a tiny student-youth
organisation, met him on the book-fair ground at Maidan and asked scores of
questions about Naxalbari and related topics. Most surprisingly, he, without a
slightest mark of impatience on his face, answered each question with brutal
accuracy and won my heart. From then onwards I was his admirer, also his
disciple, who could even dispose of his own thumb—if asked. There are so many
fond memories such as this, and as I scribble this piece, old thoughts crowd my
mind and the panorama of our decade-long association appear before my eyes. But
honestly speaking, it will be absolutely criminal if we limit a man of
Nishith-da’s stature to any personal reminiscence. Rather, it is better to tell
the story of his life and time in considerable length and as dispassionately as
possible, for history should be impartial nay objective.
Nishith-da was born in
1933 at Narail subdivision of Jessore district in imperial Bengal. In 1948,
owing to the partition of the nation, he and his family, which had already
experienced the miseries of life since his father’s untimely demise, came to
Calcutta and put up at Taltala. Upon their arrival at Taltala, the family
admitted young Nishith to the nearby school—Taltala H.E. Institution—wherefrom
he passed Matriculation in 1950, and enrolled in Science at Bangabasi College.
After passing I.Sc. in 1952, Nishith-da joined St. Xavier’s College with major
in Physics and graduated with first class in 1955. Soon after, he earned an
M.Tech degree in Radio Physics from the ‘Institute of Radio Physics’, Rajabazar
under the University of Calcutta. He then taught in a couple of schools in
Burdwan and Howrah for a few years, and much later, in the early 1960s, joined
Bangabasi College, his alma mater, as a lecturer of Physics.
During his days as a student at the Rajabazar
campus, Nishith-da was introduced to Communist politics. His mentor was Sachin
Sen, an eminent Communist leader of North Calcutta. By 1961 he had become a
Card-holder.
But his relationship with the official leadership
soared when the latter backed the Indian Govt.’s expansionist policies against
the People’s Republic China. As the Party split on ideological grounds in 1964,
he joined the CPI (M) and became an activist of its Lecturers’ Cell. In those
days, he was closely associated with Kanai Chatterjee or more popularly K.C.,
the secretary of the Party’s Tiljala Local Committee, i.e., his locality, and
Prof. Suniti Kr. Ghose, a well-known Marxist intellectual and a fellow teacher
of English Literature at Vidyasagar College.
While in CPI (M), Nishith-da did an intensive
study of Marxism-Leninism and also a few volumes of Mao and Lin Piao. A fair
comprehension of the Marxist creed compelled him to become critical of the
Party’s parliamentary cretinism, and hunt for a line that would ultimately
bring down the pillars of exploitation, viz. feudalism, imperialism and
comprador and bureaucratic capitalism. In 1967 he withdrew himself from the
ranks of the CPI (M) and established contacts with dissident CPI (M) members
who were planning to organise the Indian communist movement through
extra-parliamentary channels.
At this juncture, in May 1967, the peasant
revolutionaries of Darjeeling, indoctrinated by Com. Charu Mazumdar (CM)—one of
the tallest leaders of the Tebhaga Movement in North Bengal, kindled the fire
of agrarian revolution at Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansideya—three small
hamlets situated on the India-Nepal frontiers. The spark of Naxalbari spread
like a prairie fire in every direction. It gave enormous impetus to the
revolutionary cause that had come to a standstill after the calling off of the
Telengana movement in 1951. Naxalbari vindicated the path of area-wise seizure
of power through partisan warfare, as proposed by Chairman Mao Tse-tung, and
provided the communist revolutionaries with a new and effective weapon in their
armoury. Now, with fresh zeal, they devoted themselves in organising peasant
movements in their respective areas. They vacated their revisionist and
neo-revisionist organisations and joined Com. CM, and formed a co-ordination
committee, the first stepping stone to re-orient the Communist Party along
revolutionary lines.
The Naxalbari upsurge changed Nishith-da’s life’s
course. By the end of ’67 he had become a committed worker of ‘Deshabrati’, the
vernacular mouthpiece of the revolutionary communists of West Bengal. In the
Co-ordination (AICCCR) Nishith-da proved his mettle as an organiser. It was
under his initiative that a local branch of the AICCCR was founded at Tiljala.
As the convenor of that unit, he was also one of the members of the Calcutta
District Organising Committee. After April 22, 1969, when the Co-ordination
ceased to exist and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was born,
Saroj Dutta, who had by then become Nishith-da’s political guide, conferred
upon him the responsibility of organising all units under Central Calcutta—its
physical jurisdiction spanning from Vidyasagar Street in north to Taltala in
south. Nishith-da did his job well, earning acclaim from the top leadership of
the Party.
On June 3, 1970, a ruthless special branch
inspector, Amitava Sinha Roy, was annihilated at Akhil Mistry Lane by an action
squad of urban guerrillas. This was the first major incident of annihilation in
Calcutta. The administration, naturally, did not sit idle. On June 11, it made
its first move towards an organised retaliation: Nishith-da was arrested from a
hideout at Buddhu Ostagar Lane, and after much torturous interrogation in
police custody, was incarcerated in Presidency Jail.
In those days, prison cells were synonymous to
torture chambers, especially for those who defended Com. CM’s line of annihilation
of class enemies and jail resistance. Apart from this, being the first big
catch, Nishith-da had to face tremendous police persecution. On February 4,
1971, when Khokan Bhattacharya of Revolutionary Communist Council of India
(RCCI), along with his chosen associates, escaped the Presidency Jail premises
by scaling the prison walls, Nishith-da and Azizul-da were brutally assaulted
by the jail warder and his goons. Nishith-da was thrown into a heap of ashes,
bleeding and bruised. They could have died on the spot, had not their comrades
recovered them. This unfortunate incident foiled their first jail break
attempt, for it also exposed the long tunnel they had dug clandestinely to
facilitate a smooth evasion of all detained comrades.
By the end of 1970, a considerable array of
dubious elements under the auspices of certain capitalist roaders in the
Central Committee had ganged-up against the official line and was trying to
vilify Com. CM, personally. On the one hand, they devised to sabotage the Party
organisation by raising a hue and cry over CM’s “authoritative functioning”;
and on the other, tried to build up the People’s Army from a bureaucratic and
mechanical point of view. They also pressurised the Central Committee to
ridicule the heroic war of liberation of East Pakistani Marxist-Leninists and
argued in favour of the genocidal activities of the Yahiya Government. At that
point in time, it was under Nishith-da and Azizul-da’s competent leadership
that the members of the Jail Party Committee (JPC) stood firm by Com. CM.
Crisis further deepened with the martyrdom of
Com. CM and Vice Chairman Lin Piao (Saroj Dutta had been killed a year ago by
the state machinery). At that time Nishith-da and Azizul-da had to share the
task of organising the pro-CM, pro-Lin Piao radicals in Presidency JPC. Com.
Saroj Dutta’s document on jail-policy was their guideline.
Outside, the Party organisation was in absolute
doldrums. The Central Committee was defunct, its members in complete denial
mode. Amidst such crises, Mahadev Mukherjee of West Bengal Provincial Committee
and Sharma, a Central Committee Member (CCM) from Punjab, reorganised the
Central Committee. This, however, could not put a stop to the nuisance of
factionalism. The opening of the Tenth Congress of CPC further deteriorated the
state of the Pro-CM radicals, splitting them into pro-Lin Piao and anti-Lin
Piao groups. Mahadev Mukherjee assumed the post of the Secretary General of the
pro-Lin, pro-CM stream, and organised the Second Party Congress of CPI (M-L) at
Kamalpur, a rural bastion of revolutionary peasant guerrillas situated on the
Hooghly-Burdwan district frontiers. The Presidency JPC under Nishith-da’s
leadership extended its support to the Congress.
Though the reconstituted Central Committee led a
few peasant struggles here and there and organised some sporadic rifle
snatchings in Nadia, Hooghly and Burdwan, it could not develop the tempo of the
movement. Further, it issued a number of metaphysical slogans that had least
commonness to reality. As a result, when the state went hammer and tongs at the
Party, almost every CCM evaded his responsibility and laid blame solely on
Mahadev Mukherjee. Trouble increased manifold when these CCMs succumbed before
state repression and became approvers. Mahadev Mukherjee, too, now utterly
depressed, gave in. Even at that grave moment of catastrophe, Nishith-da led
from the front, toiling vigorously to rejuvenate the general cadres in prison.
He ran a principled fight against opportunists of all hues and established the
correctness of Com. CM’s politics, also providing apt reasons behind upholding
Lin Piao’s proletarian revolutionary line, which he scientifically
substantiated to be an integral part of Mao Tse-tung Thought.
By the middle of the 1970s, even the last
flickers of armed struggle had burnt out. There was no movement anywhere. A
dead silence was prevailing—as if to hope for a revolutionary revival was
something utterly utopian. But contrary to this leprous state of revolutionary
activism, the realm of mainstream politics was experiencing an unusual heat. In
1975, Mrs. Gandhi, going by Moscow’s report of increasing U.S. impact on Indian
polity, declared internal Emergency, in so doing curbing every avenue of
exercising one’s democratic rights.
Under such adverse situation, all major political
parties, cutting across their ideological beliefs, adopted a defensive tactic,
leaving no quarter for resistance. But for Nishith-da, things were exactly the
opposite. His undaunted will was too hard to be broken. If he and Azizul-da
were not there, nobody could have imagined that a handful of people, physically
crippled due to state atrocity, would retort so vigorously and demolish the
bulwark of the fascist administration. The Jailbreak of February 24 (1976) is a
historic event in the annals of communist revolutionism. It not only took the
jail line of Com. Saroj Dutta to a higher level, but also substantiated
Chairman Mao’s famous saying—‘all reactionaries are paper tigers’. And it was
because of Nishith-da and Azizul-da that the revolutionaries so successfully
attained this unattainable feat.
Although the jailbreak exposed the crisis of the
ruling coterie, absence of a potent Party organisation frustrated the effort.
In a month or two, almost half of the jail-breakers were once again taken into
custody. Nishith-da was picked up in July from Khanakul, owing to a link
failure. What followed was unprecedented coercion. Apart from the compulsory
dose of beating, his and Azizul-da’s feet were burnt; the jailer issued orders
that all jail-breakers should be locked in bar fetters 24×7. But despite such
fierce torture, the administration could not compel them to stoop to its feet
for mercy.
In 1977, as Mrs. Gandhi asked the President to
lift the Emergency, and called for holding elections, she could seldom
anticipate what suffering the future had in stock for her. As results came out,
the Congress was completely whitewashed, its vote share going abysmally low.
Morarji Desai was sworn as the new Prime Minister. In West Bengal, CPI (M)-led left
front (LF) had come to power. Keeping in mind what it had promised before the
elections, the LF released a considerable number of revolutionaries.
By that time, a large section of CPI (M-L) cadres
had given up armed struggle and started participating in elections. But the
other section, with Nishith-da at its core, vowed to fulfil Com. CM’s
unrealised dream of liberated India with the red flag flying high! As soon as
they came out, without returning to their homes or taking up jobs to fit
themselves to the mainstream, most of the revolutionary communists of
Presidency JPC went to different parts of Bengal and Bihar to reorganise the
Party anew.
After they had done their work, they requested
Mahadev Mukherjee to assume the charge of the organisation. But he could not
prove himself worthy of it. All his militant patters came to a halt the moment
the Party embarked on the path of class enemy annihilation. He became so scared
that he immediately stepped down from the post of the Party Secretary and
threatened to issue a press statement of disapproval in bourgeois newspapers
including Ananda Bazar. As expected, the revolutionary communists were left
with little option but to throw him out of the organisation. And in doing so,
the Party had to experience another split, albeit for the better.
This incident resulted in the formation of the
Second Central Committee of CPI (M-L) in 1978. Nishith-da was the new General
Secretary.
Without entering into unnecessary discords with
other CPI (M-L) groups over petty tactical issues, Nishith-da sought to resolve
certain ideological questions, the major ones being the idea of new era, nature
of the Three World Theory, political implication of Com. CM’s line of class
enemy annihilation, etc. It was under his direction that the Second Central
Committee, unlike other CPI (M-L) factions, branded post-Mao China as a social
imperialist country. Time has proved the correctness of this evaluation.
From 1978 to 1982—in these four years, under
Nishith-da’s competent command, CPI (M-L) realised great victories. West
Bengal, Bihar and a few pockets in Uttar Pradesh lived through a higher phase
of revolutionary activism and pro-people advance. Instead of taking refuge in
forest areas or mountains, Second CC cadres worked in plane lands and won over
the poorest section of the peasantry. The People’s Army and the revolutionary
committees emerged as sources of true people’s governance against the
impositions of the state apparatus. The revolutionary committees ran parallel
administrative systems in the villages. Redistribution of farmlands,
confiscation and distribution of food grains and other possessions of wealthy
landlords and setting up of prices of crops through people’s committees were
notable accomplishments of the Second CC leadership. Moreover, proper implementation
of the line of annihilation gave the toiling masses the taste of freedom. The
Central Committee creatively developed the revolutionary essence of Com. CM’s
political line and launched a principled battle against right and left opportunism.
But as the famous adage goes—‘all good things
must come to an end’, CPI (M-L) Second CC too could not cling on to its
exponential graph of uninterrupted success. Presence of petty bourgeois egotism
in the highest body barred some of the CCMs from appreciating the qualities of
their counterparts, thereby turning into saboteurs. Under the pretext of
holding two-line struggles, they hurled blatant abuses at each other, fomented
factional in-fighting. And amid such chaos, our Nishith-da, a person with a golden
heart, felt more and more dejected, estranged from all those comrades upon whom
he had once pinned his hopes for changing the society.
At the extended Central Committee meeting held on
May 25, 1982 in Siwan district of Bihar, when the Party came to the verge of a
50-50 split, Nishith-da, to prevent the organisation from further
dismemberment, resigned from his post. While returning to his shelter in
Bhagalpur, on May 28, 1982, he and six of his comrades were suddenly caught by
the police who had been tipped off by some unknown men. With this arrest, the
second major phase of revolutionary communist movement in India came to a
close.
Many of his ex-comrades criticise Nishith-da for
holding a liberal attitude towards the saboteurs. I do not know whether this
criticism is correct or not, for the tales hidden behind the curtains are still
to be deciphered. But what is certain is that—Nishith-da lived and died for a
cause which is yet unfulfilled. So, if we and the generation after emulate his
life and learn to seek inspiration from it, it is the toiling people of the
country that we would be serving, serving to foster a society based on
egalitarian ownership and harmonious distribution.
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