DESTROYER OF WEST BENGAL *** Jai Maharaj posts
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
By Kanchan Gupta
The Pioneer
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Had it been Jyoti Banerjee lying unattended in a filthy general ward
of SSKM Hospital in Kolkata and not Jyoti Basu in the state-of-the-
art ICCU of AMRI Hospital, among the swankiest and most expensive
super-speciality healthcare facilities in West Bengal, Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh would not have bothered to arrange for a video-
conference for top doctors at AIIMS to compare notes with those
attending on the former Chief Minister of West Bengal.
Jyoti Banerjee, like most of us, spent his working life paying taxes
to the Government. Jyoti Basu spent the better part of his life
living off tax-payers' money -- the conscience of the veteran Marxist
was never pricked by the fact that he appropriated for himself a
lifestyle shunned by his comrades and denied to the people of a State
whose fate he presided over for a quarter century. Kalachand Roy laid
what we know today as Odisha to waste in the 16th century; Jyoti Basu
was the 20th century's Kala Pahad who led West Bengal from despair to
darkness, literally and metaphorically.
Uncharitable as it may sound, but there really is no reason to nurse
fond memories of Jyoti Basu. In fact, there are no fond memories to
recall of those days when hopelessness permeated the present and the
future appeared bleak. Entire generations of educated middle-class
Bengalis were forced to seek refuge in other States or migrate to
America as Jyoti Basu worked overtime to first destroy West Bengal's
economy, chase out Bengali talent and then hand over a disinherited
State to Burrabazar traders and wholesale merchants who overnight
became 'industrialists' with a passion for asset-stripping and
investing their 'profits' elsewhere. A State that was earlier
referred to as 'Sheffield of the East' was rendered by Jyoti Basu
into a vast stretch of wasteland; the Oxford English Dictionary would
have been poorer by a word had he not made 'gherao' into an
officially-sanctioned instrument of coercion; 'load-shedding' would
have never entered into our popular lexicon had he not made it a part
of daily life in West Bengal though he ensured Hindustan Park, where
he stayed, was spared power cuts. It would have been churlish to
grudge him the good life had he not exerted to deny it to others,
except of course his son Chandan Basu who was last in the news for
cheating on taxes that should have been paid on his imported fancy
car.
Let it be said, and said bluntly, that Jyoti Basu's record in office,
first as Deputy Chief Minister in two successive United Front
Governments beginning 1967 (for all practical purposes he was the de
facto Chief Minister with a hapless Ajoy Mukherjee reduced to
indulging in Gandhigiri to make his presence felt) and later as Chief
Minister for nearly 25 years at the head of the Left Front Government
which has been in power for 32 years now, the "longest elected
Communist Government" as party commissars untiringly point out to the
na�ve and the novitiate, is a terrible tale of calculated destruction
of West Bengal in the name of ideology. It's easy to criticise the
CPI(M) for politicising the police force and converting it into a
goons brigade, but it was Jyoti Basu who initiated the process. It
was he who instructed them, as Deputy Chief Minister during the
disastrous UF regime, to play the role of foot soldiers of the
CPI(M), first by not acting against party cadre on the rampage, and
then by playing an unabashedly partisan role in industrial and
agrarian disputes.
The fulsome praise that is heaped on Jyoti Basu today -- he is
variously described by party loyalists and those enamoured of
bhadralok Marxists as a 'humane administrator' and 'farsighted
leader' -- is entirely misleading if not undeserving. Within the
first seven months of the United Front coming to power, 43,947
workers were laid off and thousands more rendered jobless as
factories were shut down following gheraos and strikes instigated and
endorsed by him. The flight of capital in those initial days of
emergent Marxist power amounted to Rs 2,500 million. In 1967, there
were 438 'industrial disputes' involving 165,000 workers and
resulting in the loss of five million man hours. By 1969, there were
710 'industrial disputes' involving 645,000 workers and a loss of 8.5
million man hours. That was a taste of things to come in the
following decades. By the time Jyoti Basu demitted office, West
Bengal had nothing to boast of except closed mills and shuttered
factories; every institution and agency of the State had been
subverted under his tutelage; and, the civil administration had been
converted into an extension counter of the CPI(M) with babus happy to
be used as doormats.
After every outrage, every criminal misdeed committed by Marxist
goons or the police while he was Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu would
crudely respond with a brusque "Emon to hoyei thaakey" (or, as Donald
Rumsfeld would famously say, "Stuff happens!"). He did not brook any
criticism of the Marich Jhapi massacre by his police in 1979 when
refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan were shot dead in cold blood.
Till date, nobody knows for sure how many died in that slaughter for
Jyoti Basu never allowed an independent inquiry. Neither did the man
whose heart bled so profusely for the lost souls of Nandigram
hesitate to justify the butchery of April 30, 1982 when 16 monks and
a nun of the Ananda Marg order were set ablaze in south Kolkata by a
mob of Marxist thugs. The man who led that murderous lot was known
for his proximity to Jyoti Basu, a fact that the CPI(M) would now
hasten to deny. Nor did Jyoti Basu wince when the police shot dead 13
Congress activists a short distance from Writers' Building on July
21, 1993; he later justified the police action, saying it was
necessary to enforce the writ of the state. Yet, he wouldn't allow
the police to act every time Muslims ran riot, most infamously after
Mohammedan Sporting Club lost a football match.
Did Jyoti Basu, who never smiled in public lest he was accused of
displaying human emotions, ever spare a thought for those who
suffered terribly during his rule? Was he sensitive to the plight of
those who were robbed of their lives, limbs and dignity by the lumpen
proletariat which kept him in power? Did his heart cry out when women
health workers were gang-raped and then two of them murdered by his
party cadre on May 17, 1990 at Bantala on the eastern margins of
Kolkata? Or when office-bearers of the Kolkata Police Association,
set up under his patronage, raped Nehar Banu, a poor pavement
dweller, at Phulbagan police station in 1992? "Emon to hoyei
thaakey," the revered Marxist would say, and then go on to slyly
insinuate that the victims deserved what they got.
As a Bengali, I grieve for the wasted decades but for which West
Bengal, with its huge pool of talent, could have led India from the
front. I feel nothing for Jyoti Basu.
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Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
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harmony
until he really is gone? is enterpreneur arindam planning a basughat?
<use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)> wrote in
message news:20100117K332TADF65QsHra8Wr24JeT@ZfEL4...
Arindam Banerjee
> he probably not done destroying. how much is it going to cost the taxpayers
> until he really is gone? is enterpreneur arindam planning a basughat?
Hello bundree, kya baat, kaisi hoe? No I am not planning a basughat.
If you bundurrs and bundrees screech loudly that the West should give
me some Nobel Prizes (anyone can get for peace and economics, but I
want Literature and Physics) then yes your gandighat may be spared.
Cheers, bundree. Up your tail, swing in joy, go eat a banana.
Arindam Banerjee
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
In article <4b54e8ca$0$12423$bbae...@news.suddenlink.net>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted:
>
> he probably not done destroying. how much is it going to cost the taxpayers
> until he really is gone? is enterpreneur arindam planning a basughat?
> Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:
harmony
what he does not say is basu was openly and honestly a commie violent crook.
commies are violent by definition -as are the other two m.
<use...@mantra.com and/or www.mantra.com/jai (Dr. Jai Maharaj)> wrote in
message news:20100118XnAP7uhF800u29wXZSJXno6@XwHWB...
Arindam Banerjee
On Jan 22, 4:43 am, "harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> arindam is proud of basu
Where did I give the faintest indication of this, o bundree?
Jyotibabu is beyond my judgment. I am interested in dramatics,
physics and literature, apart from my professional work in antenna
engineering, telecom and IT. So Bengali politics has never been my
forte, though from time to time I have praised Mamata-didi for her
courage and principled outlook. In short, I do not know whether or not
to be proud of the late Shri Basu. I am of course aware that there
are widely diverging opinions about him - usually, those Bengali
refugees (and there are so many of them) from East Bengal (BaNgaals)
adore him, and those Bengalis of West Bengal origin (Ghotis) think of
him as the greatest possible curse that has happened to the real West
Bengalis, bar none.
As you may know, dear bundree, I blame primarily that megalomaniac,
mean and most incredibly indecent and treacherous guj-jew scoundrel,
that mahabundurr from porbandar, you own beloved great-unca gandi, for
all the problems in India and especially Bengal and Punjab. His
perfectly inept leadership is directly responsible for all the past,
present and future troubles in the Eastern provinces, certainly. Only
when Rajghat and other Congressi ghats are broken up and turned into
profitable real estate (and I get a fat finder's fee, which I will
invest in the East for research and development) can there be a
changing of outlook from us gandi-haters. Till this happens, all you
gandians are traitors and scum - no, that would be humanising you lot,
delete that. You all are just bundurrs.
> who, he belives, lived openly and honestly.
I am sure he treated his great-neices better than your great-unca
gandi did. Nor did he sell the interests of all Indian just to look
good in US glossies. Nor was he a hypocritical closet-
Christian,sucking up to the missionaries, while pretending to be a
Hindu. True he grabbed on to power just like gandi and that could be a
similarity. Still, on the whole, Jyotibabu was what he said he was.
He does not inspire such instinctive disgust within me as the very
thought of your great-unca gandi does.
> what he does not say is basu was openly and honestly a commie violent crook.
> commies are violent by definition -as are the other two m.
Dear, dear bundree, have they been pelleting you with an air gun? Now
that is the kindest way to treat bundurrs and bundrees, when they get
too obnoxious.
It so happens, that *only* people from the state of Jyoti Basu have
had the wits and the guts to appreciate my wonderful, original and
most revolutionary work in physics. So my admiration for them, and as
their leader, Jyoti Basu should get at least some praise.
Now, the rest of the world is slowly understanding, thanks to the
support of briliant and good people like Sir Jean-Paul Turcaud and Mr
Malcolm Fabian. Young people are already on my side! heh-heh
and/or www.mantra.com/jai
jar of formaldehyde. For him that would be an acceleration.
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti
In article <4b58922d$0$12419$bbae...@news.suddenlink.net>,
"harmony" <a...@hotmail.com> posted: