People's Democracy

Anil Biswas: Farewell Beloved Comrade!

A VALUED COLLEAGUE AND A CLOSE FRIEND: Prakash Karat with Comrade Anil Biswas during the last Party congress in Delhi.

Prakash Karat

COMRADE Anil Biswas is no more. It is still difficult for us to absorb this shocking reality. He had attended the Polit Bureau and central committee meeting between March 10 and 12 in New Delhi. He was an active participant in the discussions in these meetings. He had returned to Kolkata and continued his usual strenuous schedule of work. On March 18, he attended the daylong state committee meeting of the Party. He was preparing to leave for Malda by the night train when he was struck by a massive cerebral haemorrhage in his house, which eventually took his life on March 26.

For more than forty years, Anil Biswas served the communist movement. He joined the CPI(M) in 1965 after emerging as one of the leaders of the Bengal Provincial Students Federation. From the time he became a wholetimer in 1969, all his energies and time was entirely devoted to the sole cause of the Party.

Anil Biswas rose from the ranks to become the secretary of the West Bengal state committee, the premier state unit of the Party. It is while being at the helm of the West Bengal unit of the Party that the full abilities and the political and organisational mettle of Anil Biswas were displayed. Earlier, his long stint as the editor of Ganashakthi for fifteen years provided a glimpse of his immense talents in expounding the Party line, in interpreting ideological issues from the Marxist standpoint, in organising a modern communist newspaper and in attracting and developing the best journalistic talent. This was often not seen given his extreme modesty and tendency to be self-effacing.

As secretary of the West Bengal state committee, Anil Biswas proved to be a model of what a Party secretary should be. He had a clear foresight of what were the priorities for the Party on the political and organisational fronts in West Bengal. For a Party which was leading the state government for more than two decades when he took over, Anil Biswas stressed the importance of raising the political and ideological level of the Party members so that the revolutionary character of the Communist Party can be maintained and consolidated. He firmly believed that the principle of democratic centralism must be adhered to at all levels of the Party. He believed that the strength of the CPI(M) had not increased solely due to the presence of the Left Front government but the chief reason was the correct stand of the Party, the Party programme and its implementation, the intense political campaign conducted amidst the people and the work among the masses without any personal interest by the vast bulk of the Party members.

At every juncture during the past nearly eight years of his secretaryship, whenever a serious problem or challenge was faced by the Party in West Bengal, Anil Biswas would coolly assess the situation and come out with a plan of action which would be the most appropriate in the circumstances. It was this cool headed and dispassionate approach which would help the Party formulate the correct tactics to meet any eventuality.

As the secretary he was totally devoid of a bureaucratic approach and showed how a collective leadership should function. Uncompromising on the line of the Party, he would be flexible in accommodating and assigning responsibilities to those whose views may be different, but whose contribution should not be denied for the Party.

Conscious of the fact that the Party running a state government for a long time leads to an environment where undesirable elements try to enter the Party and immoral practices and corruption can creep in, Comrade Anil Biswas paid the highest importance to rectification within the Party. Pinpointing the wrong trends, correction and removal of members unfit to be in the Party was a process which he continuously initiated.  At every Polit Bureau meeting when organisational matters were discussed, Anil Biswas would report on the steps taken for rectification and on the number of Party members who were removed for not being worthy of membership.

He had a special ability to identify and nurture cadres. He could get the best out of the cadres he personally selected for responsibilities and oversaw their development. He had great respect for revolutionary traditions and the veterans of the Party. He would give special attention to their views and for their welfare. As the secretary, he enjoyed the confidence of comrades at all levels and a wide section of people outside the Party.

Under his leadership the Party and the government relations were coordinated smoothly and the unity of the Left Front was strengthened.

He was elected to the Central Committee in 1985 and to the Polit Bureau in 1998. It was a period which witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the setbacks to socialism. Anil Biswas could critically assess the reasons for the setbacks while being grounded firmly in Marxism-Leninism.  Anil Biswas was a leader who always understood the importance of ideology for a Communist Party and the necessity to grapple with the changing realities and challenges. When the Polit Bureau and Central Committee engages itself in updating our ideological position as set out in the 18^th Congress, Anil Biswas’s contributions will be sorely missed.

His intense interest in ideological and programmatic issues was evident in the role he played in the updating of the Party programme. He was a member of the Commission set up to prepare the draft of the updated Party programme and he made an important contribution in this work.

Similarly, the project of writing the Party history could not have taken off without his drive and initiative. As a member of the history commission he was the de facto secretary of the History Commission who put together the team to do the research and collection of materials. Because of his insistence the work on the first volume got completed in time to be released at the 18^th Party Congress.

In the recent period he was deeply concerned about the inroads made by US imperialism in India in the region. He considered the UPA government’s vote on the Iran nuclear issue a serious matter signifying a major departure from an independent foreign policy. His last pamphlet published in English was for the January 24, 2006 anti-imperialist day campaign observed by the Party.

Though physically diminutive in stature, Anil Biswas had an enormous capacity for hard work. From his days in the Ganashakti he would sit in the office till late in the night. When we think of Anil Biswas we see him working ceaselessly without taking a single day off. Even in the last few years when he had health problems he refused to change his schedule.

It is all these characteristics and the all round contribution of Anil Biswas which made him stand out among the second generation of leaders who emerged after the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formed. The great sadness is that the Party and the movement have been deprived of what more he could have done.

For me personally, the loss is not only of a valued colleague but also of a close friend. Over the years I had come to rely upon Anil Biswas’s advice and judgement on all important issues. In the last one year after becoming the general secretary this consultation and mutual exchange of views had become practically a daily affair. The entire Party and the central leadership have been devastated by his death.  Our thoughts are with his wife Gitadi and daughter Ajanta who constituted an exemplary Party family. We have to draw upon the rich legacy of Anil Biswas’s work and example to sustain us in carrying forward what he believed in and lived for.