Leader in life & death

IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION: I, Sri Jyoti Basu, age 88, by profession political worker, of sound mind and capable of conscious decision-making, do hereby pledge to donate my mortal body along with my eyes, all organs and body cells to medical research.

I declare that as soon as I am clinically dead my eyes/body will belong to medical science.

I also declare that I make this pledge not under any threat or other kind of persuasion but of my own free will.

I will inform Ganadarpan if there is ever any change in my name or address.

I sign this pledge on this 4th day of April, 2003, Friday.

Jyoti Basu* * *

For so long I believed that communists worked for the benefit of mankind until their last breath. Now I know they can serve mankind even in death. Jyoti Basu

IN April 2003, Ganadarpan, an organisation that encourages donation of body after death for medical research, approached Jyoti Basu to inaugurate a conference on human body donation awareness. According to Brojo Roy, general secretary of the organisation, Jyoti Basu was immediately agreeable. Roy says he told him: But how can I inaugurate the conference without pledging to donate my body myself? So give me a form. The patriarch of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) had decided to inaugurate the programme on April 4, 2003, by handing over to the organisers the form in which he had pledged his own body.

Jyoti Basus words quoted at the start of the story were made in his speech at the inauguration and have since become the logo of Ganadarpan. When a man like Jyoti Basu steps up for our cause in such a manner, it serves as an enormous inspiration for others. Subsequently, I have been told that he, in his own way, spread the word for us by talking about our programme to many people, Roy told Frontline.

Jyoti Basus body was taken to the Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research after his death.

The form, written in Bengali, reads:

I, Sri Jyoti Basu, age 88, by profession political worker, of sound mind and capable of conscious decision-making, do hereby pledge to donate my mortal body along with eyes, all organs and body cells to medical research.

It is dated Friday, 2003, April 4.

Ganadarpan was established in 1977 by a group of people involved in cultural and social work to promote science and rationalism. One of its chief functions is to motivate people to donate their bodies after death for the promotion of medical science.

Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay