Gautam Sen Passes Away: Farewell to a Friend

[Sukla Sen]

Yet another friend and comrade gone

Gautam Sen is no more!

The pandemic keeps taking its cruel toll.

We had first met sometime in the beginning of the eighties.

Had left Calcutta quite a few years back.

Was doing a regular job.

But, the quest for "revolution" was yet to be given up.

That's how I met Gautam-Bimal, somewhere in East Calcutta - in an (apparently) empty apartment in a government housing scheme, maybe in Ultadanga.

Gautam was, of course, a fulltime revolutionary. 

And, in a way, remained so till the very end.

Even as that phase would gradually come to an end, our comradeship persisted.

We'd work closely together in two groups: (i) Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (CNDP) and (ii) Samuhik Khoj (Collective Quest) - a discussion group involving quite few informed and engaged people.

Incidentally, when on May 11th 1998 India went "nuclear" with a hell lot of chest thumping, I happened to be vacationing in Calcutta during those days.

Delhi and Calcutta were two cities which saw some immediate pushback, going against the grain.

On 12th or 13th, there were public demos.

In Calcutta, it was the College Street area.

I had no past track record of engaging with the nuclear issues; nevertheless, almost reflexively, found it deeply nauseating.

That made me join the demo; among known friends Gautam was there, so was Kunal Chattopadhyay.

An impromptu meeting on the street was held; I recall Azizul Haque speaking.

Within a few days there was also a regular public meeting - maybe in the Students Hall; (late) Dr. Sujay Basu was a main speaker.

The CNDP would come into being in 2000 - with inaugural national conference in Delhi.

The masthead faces were Achin Vanaik, (late) Praful Bidwai and Admiral L Ramdas.

Gautam couldn't be there in Delhi, but a few of his associates from Calcutta were very much there.

In any case, he was very actively involved.

Was there in strength in the 3rd national conference in Nagpur in 2008.

In 2007, in association with Pradip Chatterjee (Bimal), he had organised a very impactful national convention in Calcutta.

Samar Bagchi had chaired it.

I happened to be the opening speaker.

Mahashweta Devi would drop in and be seated on the dais for a while.

Speakers were many and from different corners of India - including Praful Bidwai and Dr. Surendra Gadekar.

A trip to Haripur would be arranged, steered by (late) Harekrishna Debnath - a leading national figure in the fish workers' movement.

There was, on the way, a public meeting in Contai and, finally, a much bigger one, in Haripur itself.

On return, a press conference was addressed in the Calcutta Press Club.

As we all know, the project - because of massive grassroots resistance, could not be implemented and would get, eventually, dropped following the shift in state government in 2011.

The Samuhik Khoj was brought into being, perhaps, in 2005 - mainly by Dr. Anant Phadke and Abhay Shukla from Pune and Arvind Ghosh from Nagpur.

Gautam and myself, along with quite a few others, were actively involved.

Gautam would, however, be remembered, primarily, as the creator and commander of the Mazdoor Mukti group and its organ bearing the same tag.

Also, the associated publishing house, 'Search' and its plethora of publications.

He was a student of the REC, Durgapur.

Cut his teeth in political activism via the naxalite student group there.

The group, in those days, had earned admiration in certain circles on account of its organ, the Vanguard.

Subsequently, Gautam would come to be known as the right hand person of Mahadeb Mukherjee, a senior CPI(ML) leader who had founded his own faction.

Still later, something remarkable would take place.

Gautam would opt to depart from the beaten track, seriously interogate his political beliefs and arrive at a very different position.

Would characterise the post-revolution Soviet Russia as "state capitalist", post-Independence India as (independent) capitalist state and, taking off from there, identify the stage of the coming revolution as "socialist".

Given his political/ideological upbringing, it was a huge shift, calling for immense intellectual vigour and courage.

In the process, he'd come to closely interact with various organisations, groups and individuals - well outside of the ML spectrum.

Most noteworthy: the (British) SWP.

His writings would be carried, from time to time, by the Bengali organ of the RSP, Ganavarta, as well.

Incidentally, my first brush with him - and the long lingering proximity since then, was also very much a part of that process.

Regardless of our gradually widening divergences on a number of issues.

Our last act of meaningful collaboration, together with our common friend Arvind Ghosh from Nagpur, was a, rather longish, open letter to the President of India - endorsed by many others including a few eminent ones and also from across the seas, drawing his attention to the desperate plight of the huge number of migrant workers as a consequence of the brutal lockdown and asking for certain remedial measures.

It'd be mailed on April 18th, last year - in less than a month of the lockdown being clamped: <https://groups.google.com/g/sacred-illusions/c/01O8mEMZQtc/m/1b0FDv4wAgAJ>.

The idea had emanated from Gautam.

Today, "India" - that had come into being as the culmination of an anti-colonial struggle of epic proportions, is faced with an existential threat as never before - even surpassing the one posed by the infamous Emergency in many critical respects.

In order to tackle that, the common Indians will have to mobilise all the intellectual and moral resources at their command.

Gautam's legacy is highly valuable in that context.

Sukla