All political gimmicks are bad but some at least are funny. The latest gimmick in West Bengal politics is appalling. This refers to the announcement made by Mr Biman Bose of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) that he will collect alms to raise the money required to appeal to the Supreme Court against the verdict of the Calcutta high court that indicted him to three days? imprisonment. The high court punished Mr Bose for ridiculing Mr Amitava Lala, who was at that time a judge of the Calcutta high court. Mr Bose?s claim has been that he was merely articulating popular opinion against Mr Lala and therefore the verdict against him is unfair. Apart from the arrogance embedded in the claim, it makes a mockery of the existing laws of the country. If popular opinion is against the laws of the land, will that justify a transgression of the law? Mr Bose is either ignorant or na?ve. Or he might be neither, for his ploy to turn beggar and make the public pay for his legal expenses displays a low cunning deplorable in a man involved in public affairs.

When the high court ordered his incarceration, Mr Bose had one option open to him. He could have gone to prison and made a political point. A previous generation of communists had done precisely that, not once but many times. They went to prison for their beliefs when those beliefs came into conflict with the laws of the land. They could do so because as communists they had the experience of mass movements, underground party activity and, above all, had made sacrifices for their professed ideology. Mr Bose comes from a different generation. Beyond the infantile disorder of student protests in College Street, Mr Bose knows of no other kind of political activity; his mass contact consists of nothing more than organizing cultural fairs in the mofussils. For the better part of his political life, he has sat in the party office in Alimuddin Street and occasionally made irresponsible comments which have often embarrassed the party. His political track record has not prepared him to spend even three days in a prison.

To avoid this predicament, Mr Bose has decided to collect one rupee per person to build a corpus that will enable him to take his case to the Supreme Court. Understandably, the CPI(M) has supported Mr Bose?s gimmick. It wants to use Mr Bose?s begging to begin the process of creating an atmosphere for the forthcoming municipal elections. Mr Bose?s motives are disingenuous. He claims to represent popular sentiment and he believes that the populace should pay for the expenses which he has to bear on the populace?s behalf. Mr Bose can hardly claim to be a representative of the people. He has never fought an election in his life. He has worked to strengthen his party?s organization, and his party has a tenuous claim to represent the people. Mr Bose is, at best, once removed from the people, at worst, far removed. If Mr Bose has a modicum of decency, he should have the courage to face on his own the consequences of his own irresponsibility.