IN his life and in his death, the late Comrade Sailen Dasgupta remained with the people in their innermost core of the heart. A virtual sea of people had escorted his last remains to their final destination. An overflowing assemblage turned up in the late afternoon of July 17 at the Netaji Indoor Stadium at his commemoration meeting organised by the Bengal state unit of the CPI (M). Closed circuit television sets and loudspeakers had to be placed in areas surrounding the stadium so as to allow the gathering outside to listen to the addresses made by the leadership of the CPI (M) and the Left Front.

A remarkable aspect of the brief speeches delivered by the leaders of the Left Front, right from the veteran Ashok Ghosh of the Forward Bloc to the young Mihir Byne of the RCPI, was the manner in which they paid their homage to the memory of the late Left Front chairman by recalling the intimate way he had dealt with whatever problems that had arisen to embarrass the unity of the Front. And how, at the same time, Comrade Dasgupta would never deviate from either declared policies of the Front or from the strict communist principles that he lived for.

The entire array of Left Front leaders were also at one in devoting words of welcome and encouragement to Comrade Dasgupta’s successor, CPI (M) leader Biman Basu as the fourth chairman of the Front, in the wake of the late Comrades Promode Dasgupta, Saroj Mukherjee and Sailen Dasgupta. This augurs well for strengthening of the onward march of the Left Front in Bengal.

Biman Basu himself chaired the condolence meeting and while placing the condolence resolution he said the popularity that late Comrade Sailen Dasgupta enjoyed was principally because of the kind of life of struggle and sacrifice he had led as a whole timer of the communist party. People loved him also because of his frankness of views, his adherence to the humbleness of the life style of a communist, and his constant touch with the masses.

Biman Basu harked back to the pre-independence decades of the 1940s when the communist party was frequently banned and forced to go underground and recalled the valiant yet low-profile struggle that leaders like Comrade Sailen Dasgupta had to put up first in order ensure the survival of the communist party itself and then to try and stretch out its realm of political-ideological influence among the masses.

Intimately associated as he was with the people’s struggle for the achievement of a better life, Comrade Sailen Dasgupta was the person the party would look to, said Biman Basu, whenever organisational problems cropped up for he could always be relied upon to quietly, and in his own low-key manner, tackle and resolve the issues.

CPI (M) general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet recalled his long association with Comrade Sailen Dasgupta and said " his life was such that he spent his every living moment for the Communist Party and the people and he always kept the thought alive that his life was dedicated to the cause of socialism."

Surjeet said that in his entire political life, the late CPI (M) leader depicted that merely to win a membership of the Communist Party was not enough. One needed the mettle to prove that one had come to be fully seized of the challenge of the task of changing the existing and exploitative social structure. Membership of the Communist Party, commented Surjeet, "went way beyond the filling-in of some forms and getting through the process of a renewal in a paperwork mentality."

Comrade Sailen Dasgupta's absence would be felt in the present circumstances that are marked by a shamelessly anti-people policy of the union government. A political "scenario has been created wherein one needs to tighten up one’s belt and to buckle down to meet the fresh challenges being thrown down before the people." The best way to offer homage to the memory of a departed communist leader, concluded Surjeet, would be to carry forward the tasks he had devoted his entire struggling life to.

Former Bengal chief minister, CPI (M) leader, and long-time associate of the late Left Front chairman, Jyoti Basu appeared in an uncharacteristically deep and somber mood as he time and again lamented how "Comrade Sailen was taken away when we were least prepared for it." "Why," Basu exclaimed, "even the other day I had spoken to him about important matters, and a day or two later, I was informed how Comrade Sailen had to be rushed to hospital with a cardiac emergency - and the end would come soon after"

Jyoti Basu recalled the role that Comrade Dasgupta had played in building up the Left Front, which had "contributed immensely to the augmentation of the process of continuance of the successive Left Front governments."

"We," said the CPI (M) leader, "are left only to take a kind of solace from the fact that Comrade Sailen was able to witness history being created with the election, by a vast majority, of a Left Front government for the sixth straight time, a government that is for the people and that is ready to fight it out against the anti-people, especially anti-poor, policies of the BJP-led union government."

"But," concluded Basu in an emotional vein, "it shall be my deep regret and my trenchant grief that when another round of struggle is building up around the country for the reclaiming of the rights of the masses for a better living, Comrade Sailen has chosen to take leave of us."

"We all need to stand firmly together to continue the heritage Comrade Sailen Dasgupta had created," Basu commented.

State secretary Anil Biswas, too, appeared to be consumed by grief when he said in a voice choked with emotion that despite the best of efforts death proved too strong an enemy even for the iron constitution of late Comrade Sailen Dasgupta, a constitution that had enabled him to fight off extreme poverty, malnutrition, consumptive disease, and a chronic breathing problem to work relentlessly a way from his small, non-descript room in the party office, whether at Lake Place or at Alimuddin Street, for a cause he reposited his deep-held beliefs in.

Biswas noted how for Comrade Sailen Dasgupta, his family included his party just as he could make the members of his own family come ever closer to party life. He represented, said Anil Biswas, a tradition and a heritage of communist functioning that was structured carefully up on the solid base of Leninist principles of party building where discipline and democratic centralism occupied the prime of positions. To that has to be added his simple lifestyle and his conscious move away from the focus of publicity even when as the secretary of the Bengal unit of the CPI (M) and the chairman of the Bengal Left Front, media must have always been willing to chase him down to face the spotlight, but could not.

Biswas concluded to say, "We must follow in his footsteps for that would be as good as following in the footsteps of a communist leader whose life would remain an example for all of us to try and live up to."

Other Left Front leaders who addressed the gathering included Debabrata Bandyopadhyay of RSP, Manju Kumar Majumdar of CPI, Pratim Chatterjee of Forward Bloc-Marxist, Prabodh Sinha of Democratic Socialist Party, Moni Pal of Socialist Party, and Sunil Chaudhuri of Biplabi Bangla Congress.

A discordant note was stuck elsewhere. Every major political party was represented at the meeting for placing wreaths in remembrance of the departed Left Front chairman, and the list included the Congress and the BJP as well as the PDS, except for the obdurate and immature leaders of the Trinamul Congress who chose deliberately to stay away. This was made very noticeable since Biman Basu read off the names of the political parties as their leaders came up to the dais and placed wreaths before a photograph of Comrade Dasgupta that was looming larger-than-life before them as before the massive assemblage.

A rousing mass rendering of the Internationale, led by the choral performers of the IPTA, saw the proceedings for the day come to close.