Calcutta, May 6 :     Veteran CPM leader and freedom fighter Benoy Chowdhury died tonight after a prolonged illness. Doctors attending to him at SSKM Hospital said Chowdhury passed away around 10.15 pm. Chowdhury, 89, was in hospital for the past one-and-a-half months. Jyoti Basu described him as 'one of the most sincere Communist leaders in the country'. On Tuesday, Chowdhury's body will be taken to the CPM headquarters, the Assembly and Writers' Buildings. It will later be handed over to NRS Hospital as Chowdhury had pledged his body to medical science. Obituary Benoy Chowdhury's demise marks the end of an important era of the communist movement in Bengal and the freedom struggle that preceded it. Chowdhury was considered a 'political sanyasi' because of his simple life-style, lack of ambition, personal honesty and integrity. In his death the CPM has perhaps lost its last crusader against corruption. A firm believer in value-based politics, Chowdhury became totally disillusioned with the CPM's style of functioning and the state government's performance towards the fag end of his life. The main builder of the panchayati raj system in Bengal, Chowdhury was born on January 14, 1911, in an affluent 'petty-jotedar' family of Burdwan. His uncle was an associate of Nibaran Ghatak, a poet and teacher, who initiated Kazi Nazrul Islam into revolutionary politics. Another relative, Panchanan Chowdhury, was detained without trial for his links with Bengal revolutionaries. In 1924 Chowdhury attended a public meeting addressed by Deshbandhu Chitta Ranjan Das in Burdwan. Deshbandhu's call to the people to join the freedom struggle left an indelible impression on his mind. After passing the matriculation examination in 1928, Chowdhury and Saroj Mukherjee, his boyhood friend, came to Serampore in Hooghly where they got in touch with Bengal Congress leaders like Atulya Ghosh and Prafulla Chandra Sen. Chowdhury eventually joined Jugantar party, the well-known revolutionary outfit and also took an active interest in the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army of Bhagat Singh. At the same time he was drawn to Gandhiji's non-cooperation movement. He took part in the salt satyagraha and was arrested and sentenced to six months' jail. The circle, to which he belonged at that time, thus included some of the best-known communists and Congressmen of later years like Saroj Mukherjee and Atulya Ghosh who dominated West Bengal politics for nearly two decades. The small group often found itself torn between Congress, communist and revolutionary politics. It split ultimately with Mukherjee and Chowdhury devoting themselves to the communist movement and Ghosh staying back in Congress. In 1931 Chowdhury attended the Karachi Congress as a delegate. But the Congress' mild attitude towards the landlord class, who were exploiters in his eye, disillusioned him. Subsequently he came into contact with Abdul Halim who introduced him to Muzaffar Ahmed, one of the founding fathers of the Indian communist movement. He became a member of the communist party in October, 1938. In the turbulent forties Chowdhury worked on the party's peasants' and workers' fronts and later organised movements of colliery workers in Asansol-Raniganj. Although Chowdhury never violated party discipline, he neither allowed communist dogma to influence his thought process. This was evident from the manner in which he disapproved of the communists' assessment of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. 'Some comments made by People's War (the party's mouthpiece) about Netaji were unfortunate. His honesty, patriotism and integrity were beyond question,' he said in an article on January 23, 1997. Chowdhury entered the Assembly for the first time in 1952 after defeating Burdwan's Maharaj Udaychand Mahtab. For the next two decades Chowdhury was engaged with land reforms which helped the CPM build a strong rural vote-bank. Chowdhury became the minister in charge of land and land reforms when the Left Front came to power in 1977. He served in the same capacity for 19 years till 1996 when he decided not to contest Assembly polls following serious differences with Jyoti Basu. Sattam Ghose