Kolkata:
Veteran Communist leader and former West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu died at a Kolkata hospital on Sunday. He was 95.
A man of diminutive physical stature, Jyoti Basu made his place among the tallest statesmen of the country. He was chief minister of West Bengal for 23 years and could have been India's Prime Minister, but turned down the post.
Basu was born as Jyotirindra Basu in Kolkata on July 8, 1914. The third child of Dr Nisikanta Basu and Smt Hemlata Basu, he was affectionately called Gana. He grew up in a joint family. It was when he went to Loretto School in 1920 that his father shortened his name to Jyoti Basu.
He was at Loretto for four years. In 1925, he was granted admission at St. Xaviers School. He finished his Matriculation there and joined Presidency College (then the Hindu College). He studied English. Basu was a back-bencher along with his friend Rahaman. He graduated in 1935 and opted for the law rather than follow his father's profession (His father was a doctor). He left for England to study law, became a Barrister, and returned to India in 1940, already intoxicated by Marxism and politics.
On the personal front, Jyoti Basu married Basanti Ghosh in 1940. Tragically, his wife died in 1942. In 1948, Basu married Kamal Basu. Their son, Chandan was born in 1952, after they lost a baby girl to diarrhoea in 1951.
Back in India, Basu became actively involved in the Communist movement, much to the consternation of his family. They tried to dissuade him from taking up politics, but to no avail. He got engaged in trade union activities in 1944 and was entrusted with the responsibility to work among railway labourers.
Basu's rise within the CPM was meteoric. He won his first election in 1946 to the West Bengal Assembly. He was deputy chief minister in 1967 and 1969 and, on June 21, 1977, when the Left swept the polls in West Bengal, he was sworn in as the chief minister.
By 1996, when he became chief minister for the fifth time, Basu had acquired national stature. And that year, when the United Front was all set to form the Union government, Basu was asked to be prime minister. Bowing to his party's decision, Basu declined the offer but later called it a historic blunder.
Jyoti Basu quit as chief minister in November 2000 but remained politically active as a CPM Politburo member. Communists never retire, he said, and till the end, showed that he meant that in letter and spirit.
One of Jyoti Basu's last public appearances was on July 8, 2009 - his 95th birthday. His birthday wish -- that the Left's 30-year reign in West Bengal would remain uninterrupted.
Basu is survived by his son and several grandchildren to whom he was simply an affectionate patriarch.
For the rest of the world, Jyoti Basu was one of those rare men who became legends in their lifetime. That legend will now live on.