People's Democracy

Emulation of the revolutionary mindset and personal magnetism of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty is the key to preparing the new generation for carrying forward the struggle for an exploitation-free society, the struggle which he pioneered in Tripura. And this would be the best tribute to this outstanding pioneer of communist movement, stated the CPI(M) Polit Bureau member and chief minister of Tripura, Manik Sarkar on December 28 at the memorial meeting organised on behalf of the CPI(M) state committee at the Town Hall.

Befetting the pioneering contribution of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty to the struggle of the people of Tripura for about half a century, the memorial meeting was jampacked with people coming from all several areas of the capital and the state to pay their tributes. The seating capacity of the venue was far outstripped. The audience overflowed into the compound and even to the adjoining road, resulting in traffic jam. The organisers have appropriately provided chairs on the road which too proved inadequate. Audiovisual screens were also set up outside the hall for the convenience of such a huge audience. People joined the meeting in groups and even in several processions, setting an all time record of any congregation at memorial meeting in Agartala.

The meeting was presided over by CPI(M) state secretary Baidyanath Majumder and was also addressed by Party central committee member Aghore Debbarma and Sunil Dasgupta of CPI, Sudarshan Bhattacharjee of RSP and Brajagopal Roy of the Forward Bloc. The CPI(M) central committee member, Samar Mukherjee who was slated to address the meeting could not turn up as the scheduled flight to Agartala from Kolkata was cancelled.

Manik Sarkar in his speech said that as a life-long struggler for the interests of backward and weaker sections of the society Comrade Nripen Chakraborty had made his theoretical knowledge and practical applications complimentary to each other through ceaseless struggles. Referring to his personal qualities, Manik Sarkar said that each of his activities were well thought out and a great deal of preparation went in whether in lecturing, writing or advising and encouraging the Party activists. His tremendous courage as well as calmness came from his deep confidence in himself, in humanity and in the ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Sarkar asked the new generation Party activists in the state to defend with all their might the bridge of ethnic harmony built over the past decades by Comrades Nripen Chakraborty and Dasaratha Deb. This unity and harmony is the firm fortress of the state’s Left and democratic forces against multifarious conspiracies of the vested interests going on unabated even to this day. He also said that in order to consolidate the recent gains achieved by the Party and the resultant Left-democratic leverage in national politics, the Party activists should be immaculate in their personal lives and they should emulate Comrade Nripen Chakraborty’s communist qualities so as to fulfil his dreams for a classless society and thereby pay him the most befitting tribute.

In his presidential speech Baidyanath Majumder recapitulated the episodes in the struggle-seasoned life of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty and opined that the key to the personal magnetism in his leadership was the power and propensity to identify himself with the weakest sections of the society, both tribals and non-tribals. Baidyanath Majumder also referred to Comrade Nripen Chakraborty’s quality of combining collective endeavour with his personal resourcefulness, decisiveness and political prudence. Transparent and efficient administration was his forte, and it was he, who as the chief minister set the trend of such administration in the state government during his tenure of ten years, pointed out Majumder. He reminded the audience that we have miles to go by to build a huge force of selfless activists bent on fulfilling the dreams of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty.