Comrade Biplab Dasgupta Remembered

B Prasant

COMRADE Biplab Dasgupta who had passed away recently was remembered at a meeting organised on July 27 at the Promode Dasgupta Bhavan in Kolkata by the Bengal unit of the CPI (M).  State secretary Anil Biswas and Polit Bureau member of the CPI (M) Biman Basu addressed the meeting.  Central committee member of the CPI (M) Benoy Konar presided.

In his address, Anil Biswas pointed to the deep confidence that Comrade Biplab Dasgupta placed in communist ideology; Comrade Dasgupta was also, said Biswas, a disciplined soldier of the Party.  Comrade Dasgupta had a wide circle of acquaintances and he had the unique ability to draw within the folds of the CPI(M), persons, especially intellectuals, who had hitherto remained outsiders.

As the editor of the Bengal unit of the CPI(M)’s cultural organ, the monthly Nandan, Comrade Biplab Dasgupta (who assumed the position in 1991) strove all the while to make the organ the weapon of progressive people and healthy outlook. He built up a new group of writers and essayed to create excellence in them.

Comrade Biplab Dasgupta, said Anil Biswas, firmly believed in the fact that cultivation of progressive intellectual thought played an important role in taking the Party forward.  Comrade Biplab Dasgupta was constantly engaged in the study of progressive thought and he would make it a point to enrich the Party by analysing and explaining socio-economic changes that had, and were, taking place.

Anil Biswas described the family of Comrade Biplab Dasgupta (who left behind his wife, Arati, a state committee member of the CPIM (M), and son Samya) as a disciplined communist family.

Biman Basu reminiscing about Comrade Biplab Dasgupta said that the late comrade was an organiser of the Party and a renowned exponent of the debate form.  Comrade Biplab who started his political life as a leader of the Bengal Provincial Students’ Federation (BPSF, the precursor of the SFI), went on during the seventies to lead the London branch of the CPI (M) and organised programmes of the CPI(M) against the internal emergency clamped down by the then Congress-run union government.

Describing Comrade Biplab Dasgupta as an intellectual, Biman Basu said that the late comrade specialised in analysing the rural economy and was progressive in his intellectual outlook. A memorial meeting of Comrade Biplab Dasgupta, said Biman Basu, must be viewed as an occasion where a pledge must be taken to study towards the development of the intellectual faculty and the strengthening of the power of analysis of the process of social change.

The memorial meeting ended with a rendering of the Internationale.

Elsewhere, briefing the media at the Muzaffar Ahmad Bhavan, following a meeting of the state secretariat of the CPI(M), Anil Biswas said that Aniruddha Chakraborty will be the new editor of Nandan.