INDRAJIT GUPTA, veteran leader of the Communist Party of India, longest serving member of the Lok Sabha and former Union Home Minister, died on February 20 at the age of 82.
Parliament had missed the presence of Indrajit Gupta all through its winter session. The "Father of the House", as he was known in the Lok Sabha, was in Delhi's All India Institute of Medical Sciences, undergoing treatment for a cancer that had been disc overed a few months earlier. As tempers flared over the Opposition parties' demand that Ministers charge-sheeted in connection with the Ayodhya vandalism of 1992 should be held to account, Gupta's sage counsel and principled moderation were sorely missed . Those who valued his long years of association with the institutions of parliamentary democracy knew that he was probably waging his final battle in Kolkata, where he had been shifted. But even so, when news of his death reached Delhi, the sense of los s that his colleagues in Parliament felt was profound.
Words, though, proved inadequate to the occasion as members of Parliament assembled to pay homage to a man who had brought honour and dignity to the deliberations of the Lok Sabha for close to four decades. S. Jaipal Reddy of the Congress(I), in obvious distress, referred to Gupta as an "icon" who had been a role model for his generation of politicians. Somnath Chatterjee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), who from the front benches of the Lok Sabha often worked in tandem with his fraternal coll eague, spoke of how he was privileged to function for many years as a "younger brother" of Indrajit Gupta. Though a reluctant Minister in the United Front government of 1996-98, he had served with "sincerity and compassion", he added.
Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee referred to Gupta's ideological steadfastness which always commanded his respect, despite the wide gulf in political beliefs that separated them. In times of crises, he could always be counted on to work towards buildi ng a consensus, said the Prime Minister. Agriculture Minister Nitish Kumar suggested that Gupta's speeches in Parliament, which invariably constituted one of the high points of every major debate, be compiled into a volume. Others thought that a portrait of the veteran member would be appropriate within the premises, to commemorate his services to the institution.
INDRAJIT GUPTA was one among a generation of Left-wing politicians who parted with their moorings in the privileged strata to embrace the cause of the working class. The British universities of the 1930s, which witnessed an intellectual ferment during th e years of global capitalist crisis, were the crucible in which the views of this generation were moulded. Indrajit Gupta, Jyoti Basu, Bhupesh Gupta, Mohan Kumaramangalam, Parvati Kumaramangalam, N.K. Krishnan, Renu Chakravarti and Nikhil Chakravartty, w ere all part of an active group of Indian students committed to both the struggle for national independence and the fight against fascism in Europe.
Returning to India, Gupta volunteered for political work in the Communist Party of India, then declared an unlawful organisation and facing the brunt of the imperial government's repression. It was a radical step of social commitment for one who came fro m a family of wealthy Bengal land-owners and public servants. But it was in keeping with the temper of the times for Indrajit Gupta to serve as an underground "courier" in the Communist movement, transporting proscribed literature and linking up the more senior leaders who were otherwise immobilised by the constant vigil of the authorities.
With the removal of the formal ban on Communist organisations, Indrajit Gupta was sent to Calcutta and assigned to the trade union wing of the party. His initial engagements were with the jute workers and then the port and dock workers of Calcutta. This was to be a lifelong commitment, taking him to the apex of the CPI's trade union wing, the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), in his later years. Although his speeches and polemics always reflected a deep literary sense, Indrajit Gupta has few publi shed works. One of these, Capital and Labour in the Jute Industry, was written shortly after independence, and is still a valuable reference work from that period. Another contribution of his is Self-Reliance in National Defence, a w ork that reflects some of the abiding concerns and commitments of his party.
Indrajit Gupta was first elected to the Lok Sabha through a byelection in 1960. The poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar, himself a long-time fellow-traveller of the Left parties, recalls how he visited the Lok Sabha as a young and impressionable schoolboy and saw the youthful prodigy of the CPI taking on Jawaharlal Nehru in debate. It was, he confesses, a moving experience, actually to see the freshman parliamentarian taking on the redoubtable veteran of India's freedom struggle.
When the Communist Party split in 1964, Indrajit Gupta went with the more moderate faction that believed that a compact with what was then known as the "national bourgeoisie" was still the appropriate policy for the Left movement. It was a political cour se that saw the party lurch sharply to the Right, especially in the context of the upsurge of Left extremism following 1967. The logical consummation for the CPI was the embrace of Indira Gandhi's Congress and the controversial endorsement of her authori tarian Emergency regime. In the elections which followed the Emergency, Indrajit Gupta suffered his only defeat. The next three years mark the only interruption in his otherwise unbroken tenure in the Lok Sabha.
When his party corrected course and came back to its traditional moorings on the Left, Indrajit Gupta was naturally enough seen as a valuable asset for the parliamentary wing. This began his second innings in the Lok Sabha, when he was invariably on the front benches, often working in close coordination with his articulate colleagues from the CPI(M). A second phase of temptation came with the upsurge of separatist insurgencies in the 1980s, and the Congress' subtle suggestions that the Left parties shou ld really be endorsing its struggle against what it branded the revanchist politics of the Right. Sections within the CPI were beguiled by the appeal, but Indrajit Gupta, along with C. Rajeshwara Rao and A.B. Bardhan, held course. Halfway through its ten ure, as the Rajiv Gandhi regime began to sink into a morass of incompetence and corruption, Indrajit Gupta emerged as one of its most trenchant critics in Parliament.
The years of Congress parliamentary hegemony induced a consolidation of all the Opposition parties in the 1989 general elections. The CPI and the CPI(M) had deep reservations about the willingness of the centrist Opposition party, the Janata Dal, to coha bit with the Bharatiya Janata Party. But they went along with the rather novel venture of the National Front government supported from outside by both Left and Right forces. Of course, when V.P. Singh took on the rampant forces of Hindutva communal mobil isation, the CPI and CPI(M) were firmly with him.
IN 1992, Indrajit Gupta took over as general secretary of the CPI. The paradigm of anti-Congressism was gradually giving way to a new model of politics, conditioned in the main by the upsurge of majority communalism. But the equivocation of the Congress( I) as it confronted this challenge - not to mention its rapid descent into the depths of corruption - left no room for any accommodation. Indrajit Gupta was one among the principal ideologues and motivating forces for the politics of consolidating a "Thi rd Force", lending valuable moral support to the more visible efforts of V.P. Singh and the CPI(M)'s Harkishan Singh Surjeet.
The 1996 general elections threw up another political oddity - a broad-based coalition of Left and regional parties propped up in government by the external sustenance of the Congress(I). It was the only response then considered feasible, given the twin threats of the Congress(I)'s malfeasance and the BJP's dangerous extremism.
Although the CPI(M) opted out of joining the Ministry, the CPI decided to enter the portals of governance. Indrajit Gupta, as one of the most senior members of the newly constituted United Front, was a natural choice for Union Home Minister. This began a new phase in a remarkable political career, the inherent ironies of which were not lost on most observers. Time magazine, in one of its many inconsequential sections which purports to list the "winners and losers" of a given week's global events, listed Indrajit Gupta among the winners. "Longtime lefty", it said, has been "appointed head of India's Home Ministry, which once policed the commies".
It was not the happiest of tenures in government. For one, Indrajit Gupta's natural instincts of openness and accessibility came into collision with the bureaucratic compulsions of maintaining maximum distance from public scrutiny. And his famous procli vities towards blunt speech and biting sarcasm, though appropriate for oppositional politics, often ran the risk of bruising tender egos among associate parties. Early in his tenure, Indrajit Gupta was provoked by some crude political pressure tactics to denounce the Congress(I) as a party that had been so thoroughly discredited that it would be "greeted with slippers" by the public were it to withdraw support to the United Front. The furies were let loose, though he managed to salvage the situation wit h his transparency and candour.
AS Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta believed firmly in the tenets of fair play, even at the expense of partisan compulsions. When the 1996 Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh threw up an indecisive outcome, he opposed the extension of President's Rule since there was no constitutional mandate to deny a State an elected government for more than a year. His stand was upheld by the Allahabad High Court, though the matter was mothballed by reference to the Supreme Court, where it lies undecided even now.
In 1997, when Laloo Prasad Yadav was indicted for involvement in the fodder scandal, Indrajit Gupta took the stand in Parliament that he should resign his chief ministership in Bihar. However, he also ruled out of court the BJP demand that he should be d ismissed under Article 356 of the Constitution. Later when the BJP-led government in Uttar Pradesh was dismissed by Governor Romesh Bhandari, as meddlesome and unprincipled an occupant of the Raj Bhavan as any, Indrajit Gupta as Home Minister opposed him , even at the risk of offending his partners in the U.F. Yet again, he was vindicated when the Union Cabinet withdrew its advice to the President that he dismiss the U.P. government in accordance with the Governor's advice.
IN standing up for principle, he often found himself isolated and unfairly pilloried. His final crisis as Home Minister, which also was the U.F.'s last hour, was the interim report of the M.C. Jain Commission of Inquiry into the conspiracy behind the ass assination of Rajiv Gandhi. Irked by what he thought was a farcical report long on rhetoric and short on substantive findings, Indrajit Gupta referred the report to a team of officials for an evaluation of its factual basis. The Congress(I) reacted with almost theological fury to this measure, which it saw, with characteristic illogic, as questioning the legacy of a departed leader. But the veteran of many battles was unfazed, even by thundering denunciations from the Congress(I) about his unsuitability for the office of Home Minister. The rest, of course, is recent history. Indrajit Gupta held firm as did the rest of the U.F. The Congress(I) pulled out of its commitment to support the government unconditionally. Three months later, the BJP was ensconc ed in government though in the uneasy company of a disparate coalition.
As a man who had seen things from both sides, Indrajit Gupta's last three years in the Lok Sabha set a distinct tone. The scathing wit and occasional sternness were set aside in favour of a more reflective, almost paternal attitude. He was invariably hea rd by the members with the respect and deference due to his moral authority, his uncompromising integrity and his deeply held convictions. His passing removes one more individual of a heroic generation from Indian politics, leaving it considerably poorer . For his colleagues in Parliament, the media and above all, for the people he represented and fought for, the void will take long to fill.
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