Sir Winston Churchill said of Vladmir Lenin, the earliest of the first batch of Marxists , "the big catastrophe that befell Russia was the appearance of Lenin and the bigger catastrophe was his death."

While the London School of Economics was the creation of Fabian socialists like Harold Laski , Dr. Dalton and others and produced more of them, Cambridge University proved a fertile ground for the sprouting of Communists. Their inspiration was Rajani Palme Dutt, the first Communist member of British parliament; Mohan Kumara Mangalam, Jyoti Basu and a host of others came under his spell. Many of them returned to India before the Second World War or during the War.

In India the Congress Socialists joined the Quit India movement of 1942 and filled the jails. Not all of them. Some hesitated and became unbranded Communists.They did not support the Second World War, as the USSR under Stalin was a partner of Hitler and Mussolini in the war against Britain and France. Indian Communists called it as Imperialist War. However, when Russia turned against Hitler's Germany, Indian Communists saw a virtue in the war and called it ‘People's War.’ The party journal published from Bombay and edited by P C Joshi was named ‘People's War.’

To soft-pedal the aggressive posture against the British government, they proclaimed the 'self-determination' by provinces or large groups of population.This helped Mohamed Ali Jinnah to raise the pitch for Pakistan.

A few of the Congress socialists joined the Communist Party of India P.Ramamurthy, Anandan Nambiar, A S K Iyengar and K Bala Dhandayutham were former Congressmen.

The arrival of Jyoti Basu...

Jyoti Basu, who studied for barrister, returned to India and did not become junior to either C R Das or his brother S R Das. Instead he became a trade union leader and worked among railway employees.

Partition and the Bengal famine, which occurred a few years earlier, offered immense oppurtunities for the Bengal Communists to earn the goodwiil of the masses. What was also in favour of the Communists was their acceptability to Muslims.

Bengal and Punjab were the worst sufferers of partition. Apart from large scale massacres on both sides, their economies were shattered. Jute plantations were in the east which earlier fed the jute mills in the west.

The well-irrigated paddy fields were also in the east. Dacca (Dhaka) and Chittagong went to East Pakistan, West Bengal was left only with Calcutta as a major city. Politically, after Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose, there was no Congress leader of national stature in Bengal. Sarat Chandra Bose, elder brother of Subash, was a sick man and he opted for the Centre.

The only leader of any consequence was Dr.Shyama Prasad Mukherjee of the Hindu Mahasabha. He worked with Fazlul Huq and later with Suhrawardy in the coalition government and was known as an able administrator.

He too was called to the Centre by Sardar Patel. In the political vaccum, Dr P C Ghosh, a Gandhian,was chosen as chief minister of West Bengal. Dr B C Roy was named as the governor of Uttar Pradesh and as Dr Roy needed more time to join the gubernatorial office, Sarojini Naidu was offered the post. Sarojini Naidu pleaded with Sardar Patel quipped: "that is why we were sending a doctor after you."

The golden era under B C Roy

Dr B C Roy never went to Lucknow. Instead he jettisoned Dr Ghosh and became chief minister. A Golden era began in West Bengal.

Roy converted all disadvantages into opportunities. Calcutta's back-bone was the engineering industry like Martin Burn which built the Howrah bridge. So were Braithwaite, Jessop, Andrew Yule , Indian Iron , Pilkington, Metal Box, Hindustan Motors and numerous foundries.

Roy envisaged the Damodar Valley as a navigation canal and a source for power generation. He planned a chain of industries in and around Durgapur.In addition to the Durgapur Steel Plant, the Alloy Steels Plant, Mining and Allied Machinery Corporation and helped expand the Indian Iron & Steel Co. He invited Birlas and Goenkas to set up shop in the Durgapur complex. Thus came the AVB, the boiler plant, Philips Carbon, Birla Cement and the state government's Durgapur power plant and coke oven plant, a regional engineering college and the Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute (CMERI). Any time in the assembly, Roy could put his hand in his long side pocket and draw out a development scheme .

Into this West Bengal assembly Jyoti Basu was elected as a MLA of the Communist Party. At the same time were also elected to the Lok Sabha some eminent intellectuals.

The tallest among them was Prof.Hiren Mukherjee, a scholar and a liberal who cherished the ancient values and a parliamentarian. In another age and in a different context, Prof Mukherjee would have been a Harold Laski or Amartiya Sen, the Nobel laureate. Instead he sat in the opposition, listening mesmerized to Jawaharlal Nehru. The Congress was very popular and powerful in Bengal, even though the cadre-based Communist party was popular among industrial workers and students. Those years also saw the rise of regional satraps in Indian politics: Prathap Singh Kairon in Punjab. Dr B C Roy in West Bengal, Biju Patnaik in Orissa and Kamaraj in Tamil Nadu became powerful leaders.

After a glorious career, Dr Roy fell sick and died on his birthday. As long as he was alive, Atulya Ghosh, the Congress strongman, never stepped into the Writer's Building. P C Sen became, chief minister, with the support of Atulya Ghosh; Congress party lost its image.

Quick spread of Communist rule

Communists spread their tentacles to industrial units, bullying managements and encouraging labour. Top managers of public and private sector units were locked inside their rooms till the demands were met. ‘Gherao' became a new weapon of harassment against authority. In Durgapur even families of officers were not spared. A rule of terror was unleashed. Against this background, Communists won a large number of seats in the assembly, but not enough to form the government. Ajoy Mukherjee, who was state Congress president, left the parent body and formed a splinter group. Jyoti Basu projected him as chief minister for a short period only to topple him later.

Jyoti Basu, as chief minster, promised a fair deal for agriculturists particularly share-croppers. The land reforms Jyoti Basu initiated and the panchayat raj system won for the Communist government some respectability.

A peculiar system of parallel government began to operate from panchayats to the secretariat at all seats of power. There was a shadow member of the party everywhere. The pubic had to approach these party functionaries for getting their work done. There was paralysis in governance. Along with farm and industrial workers, Jyoti Basu wooed the immigrants of Bangladesh, most of them illegal. These became the vote banks of the Communist Party. Corruption became a way of life; party functionaries became rich. Development was at a stand still. Infrastructure perished.

The decay...

After huge cost and time escalations the Metro Railway became a reality. For years the dug-up roads remained as traffic snares and health hazards. The Second Sethu across the Hooghly was a similar story.

Calcutta's financial district, Fairle Place and Llyons Range, the stock exchange, are today tenanted by petty offices and small arcades. While most of the British businesses had left India or were sold to Indians, leading Indian companies had moved to Mumbai or liquidated themselves. Birla's business had passed into several hands to be of any consequence. The long strip on the Grand Trunk Road between Burdwan and Dhanbad where, thanks to Dr B C Roy several public and private sector industries came up, today stand as mourning monuments to the misrule of the Marxists.

The nemesis came in the form of Mamta Banerjee who originally tried to revive the Congress, but formed a new party, Trinamool Congress. She promised the people to free them from the red rule. Mamta Banerjee, a lawyer by education, a Congress woman by conviction, if not by temperament, is a trade union leader with spartan virtues. She nurtured the same constituencies as the Marxists–industrial workers and peasants. Trinamool Congress had won a majority of Lok Sabha seats in 2009 and is poised to win the next State Assembly elections.

Age and a series of set backs made Jyoti Basu to step down from chief minister- ship in 2000. His successor, Buddhaeb Bhattacharjee, though of a liberal mould, could not undo the mistakes of Jyoti Basu.

Once a topper in industrial progress, law and order, West Bengal became untouchable for new industries. Jyoti Basu regretted his mistakes admitting them to men like Amartiya Sen .

Like Lenin, Jyoti Basu brought a catastrophe to West Bengal by his rise and a worse calamity by his fall.

History is an unforgiving teacher.