Jyoti Basu welcomes Indira Gandhi to Bengal in January 1984

Basu with Sonia Gandhi in November 1998

Basu and Mamata Banerjee in January 2000

‘Indu’ and ‘Jyoti’

Nothing illustrates the depth of the relationship between Indira Gandhi and Jyoti Basu better than a baton-charge by police on unruly Congress legislators inside the Bengal Assembly one day in 1983.

To give the Basu government a red face by preventing it from presenting the state budget the next day, the Congress legislators, then a far tougher lot, had kicked up a storm on a law-and-order issue, frustrated all government efforts to resolve the dispute and hunkered down for an overnight stay in the House.

The enterprising ones had even managed to organise food packets supplied from a Chandni Chowk restaurant. The idea was to force the government into submission if it wanted to hold the next day’s event as scheduled.

“They (the Congress legislators) were determined to create a crisis,” recalled Hashim Abdul Halim, the Assembly Speaker, “by stopping the unveiling of the budget. Never before had such a situation cropped up”.

After all attempts at crisis resolution came to nought, chief minister Basu, who also oversaw police affairs, ordered a crackdown. Giving him company was the late advocate-general Snehanshu Acharya, also a close friend for years.

On paper, the Assembly marshal and the security men under his watch carried out the “clean-up” but, in reality, policemen in plainclothes, placing themselves amid the Assembly staff, did the job. It was a first in the annals of the Assembly.

The expected telephone call came the next day, which Basu took in his chamber at the Assembly. Watched by a few onlookers present in the chamber, Basu listened for a few moments, nodded and said: “Rest assured, it was necessary. You know your people, don’t you?”

After the call was over, Basu explained in characteristic unfinished sentences: “(That was) Indira, she was enquiring about the incident… some of them (the Congress legislators) appear to have complained (to her).”

It was Acharya, a consummate networker with friends in all political camps, who would buttonhole Congress leaders to rub salt into their wounds: 'You know what came out of your complaint? She called to ask, ‘Jyoti, was it necessary?’ To which Jyoti said, ‘Trust me Indu, it was’.”

Acharya would then add with a hint of a smile: 'And, mind you, it did not stop at addressing each other by first names, they even discussed how nice it would be for all concerned if the ruling front and you people (the Congress) functioned under a single command (Basu).'

At this point, the targets of his ridicule would swear violently and leave the spot.

In a conversation with this newspaper years later, Basu would say with a twinkle in his eyes: “I think Dodo (Acharya’s nick name) exaggerated the last bit (single command).”

It is one of numerous instances that provide an insight into how two towering political personalities - who symbolised competing and often conflicting ideologies - had woven a personal relationship free from animus. Indira Bhavan, the Salt Lake house that came to be associated forever with Basu, carries her name.

Basu and his liberal friends like Indrajit Gupta, Bhupesh Gupta and Hiren Mukherjee desisted from joining attacks such as the one related to Maneka Gandhi’s departure in the dark from Indira’s home.

Neither Indira nor Basu is alive today, yet the rancour-free relationship that the two shared continues to fascinate old-timers.

Although the two belonged to diametrically opposite poles and moved through momentous phases of history that shaped their approaches to politics and respective party agendas, the personal relationship was extraordinarily harmonious and worked on a different plane, way above narrow political interests, said Saugata Ray, Trinamul leader and a central minister.

Even when Indira straddled India’s political landscape like a colossus and struck fear into the heart of her allies and detractors in equal measure, Bengal’s Basu continued to enjoy uncluttered access to her.

Indira’s well-known loathing for communists did not include Basu who would be able to meet her either in her office or residence even after mounting political attacks on her and, at times, her family in public as part of the party line.

Sensing Basu’s importance in Indira’s Delhi, many heavyweight central ministers, bureaucrats and Bengal Congress leaders, in search of glory or rehabilitation, would try and leverage his route for reaching the then Prime Minister.

As part of the political lore, the relationship was rooted in a historical context that saw the coming together in London of young Jyoti Basu, Bhupesh Gupta, Indrajit Gupta, Acharya and several others who would later embrace communism and Feroze Gandhi who would become Indira’s husband.

In private reminiscences, Basu would portray affectionately how a shy Indira morphed into a world-renowned political leader. While doing so, he would not use the invectives that many of his comrades would freely hurl against the Nehru-Gandhi family.

“They were products of a different time,” chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee once said while interpreting the relationship in the course of an interview with this newspaper. “A time that had been cerebral and seen values at work in politics.”

The Rajiv rift

Those who witnessed the Basu story from the ring side knows that he had been deeply disturbed when Rajiv Gandhi launched an unprovoked visceral attack - allegedly on the advice of the powerful coterie around him — on the communist leader after he stepped into office following his mother’s assassination.

Riding high on the unprecedented mandate, Rajiv had chosen to backburner the Basu-Indira relationship while targeting the communists. “Retire Basu whose government is old and tired,” the young Prime Minister would thunder in one election rally after another in Bengal, “bring the Congress to power”.

Feeling humiliated by the attack which was unthinkable in Indira’s time, Basu retorted: “Let’s retire him first.”

The friction between the two intensified in the intervening years which saw, among other things, the celebrated face-off between Basu and Rajiv, aided by their top bureaucrats, over Bengal’s development in Calcutta’s Raj Bhavan. Across the table, Rajiv and Basu debated whether the Centre was neglecting Bengal or whether the state government was unable to execute projects.

Basu used to chide Rajiv in public and in private for not learning enough about “your illustrious parents and grandfather”.

The relationship hit a nadir when Rajiv called Calcutta a “dying city”.

By a curious irony of history, the same Rajiv had to make a U-turn and start wooing “Basuji” for communist support to stop his finance minister-turned-nemesis V.P. Singh from growing into a destabilising force and thwart the Opposition’s Bofors campaign which would eventually unseat him. But V.P. Singh’s first salvo that eventually led to the formation of the National Front was fired from Calcutta.

In the course of a little-known meeting in Delhi, Rajiv had sought Basu’s help after invoking memories of his parents, especially his mother’s, long association with the CPM patriarch. Knowledgeable sources recalled how the interlocutors, too, had reasoned with Basu, appealing to him to “forgive Rajiv, he is son of your friends Feroze and Indira”.

The Sonia salve

Compared with the depth of his association with Indira and later Rajiv, Basu’s interaction with Sonia Gandhi was, in a way, limited.

For one, the Sonia Gandhi story began to unfold itself at a time when Basu, suffering from irregular health and forced by circumstances which witnessed the rise of a new generation of leaders across the political spectrum, had begun to curb his role at the national level.

For another, after the retirement and later death of Harkishen Singh Surjeet, the former CPM general secretary, Basu’s link with the new set of Congress leaders in Delhi had become tenuous.

Basu had largely known Sonia as an important presence on the margins of the world of Indira and Rajiv. He got to know her better after Sonia began to revive Congress after the tenures of P.V. Narasimha Rao and Sitaram Kesri.

In private as well as in public, Basu expressed the opinion that Sonia had given a new lease of life to the Congress by taking over its reins.

His affection and goodwill for Indira’s daughter-in-law was in evidence when he successfully resisted the view within the CPM that Sonia be attacked as a foreign national as part of the party’s election plank. He also played a crucial role in steering the CPM towards a “secular” understanding with the Congress when the BJP’s march appeared unstoppable.

In interviews with this newspaper, Basu acknowledged repeatedly that the BJP led-NDA got ousted from the Centre, thanks to Sonia's skilled handling of the political situation prevailing then.

Tapping Basu's influence, Sonia would send emissaries like Pranab Mukherjee whenever friction between the Congress and the Left rocked the first UPA.

Basu's appreciation of Sonia’s political approach came through when he tried to convince his party leadership, this time unsuccessfully, not to withdraw support to Manmohan Singh’s UPA-I on the ground of the civilian nuclear deal with the US.

In a last-ditch attempt to save the Congress-Left alliance, the Sonia-Manmohan combine had tried in vain to get Basu to influence the leadership’s decision.

Mamata’s turn

The story on the warrior queens that confronted Basu through his long innings will not be complete without a chapter devoted to Trinamul Congress leader Mamata Banerjee who has come to symbolise the face of anti-communist forces in Bengal and articulate the aspirations of the poor.

“How can I be well with you around?” Basu had teased Mamata when she had dropped in at a south Calcutta hospital six months ago to check on the recovery of the CPM patriarch who had been her enemy No. 1 till he retired making way for Bhattacharjee.

For a large part of her political career, Mamata, an original Rajiv protégé, had targeted Basu and also his businessman-son to not only rally the anti-Left forces around her but also to position Trinamul as an alternative to the Congress, which she also viciously attacked for its soft approach to Basu and the CPM.

Gifted with unerring political instincts, Mamata singled out Basu for her anti-CPM campaign for she had rightly concluded that he happened to be the heart and soul of the Left Front.

Known for her visceral dislike for the CPM, Mamata had “realised she must demolish Basu to demolish the CPM”, said a Trinamul leader.

However, in 1991, upon becoming sports minister at the Centre, Mamata miscalculated when she went to Basu's residence with a sari as a gift for his wife and touched his feet to seek his blessings.

The picture of that meeting was published in newspapers and was deftly exploited by the anti-Mamata lobby in the Congress, apparently costing her the goodwill of a sizeable number of Left critics.

As long as Basu was in office, Mamata did not attempt

a second such public relations exercise, though in private she always held a kinder view of the patriarch who, according to her, did not always receive a fair deal from the party he helped rule the state for over 30 years.

Mamata’s compassion for the one-time enemy came through when she visited Basu to console him after his wife’s death or wish him recovery after he fell ill a few times.

She also called on Basu during the Singur agitation, seeking to project him as different from his successor Bhattacharjee and his policies.