Manners maketh a man. Manners also make politicians in a parliamentary democracy. It is always assumed in parliamentary democracy that exchange of words and hostilities will remain confined to the floor of Parliament and never be carried outside it. This automatically imposes certain limits on the kind of language that is used and ensures that political hostilities do not turn personal. Communists across the world, perhaps because they did not, for a long time, believe in parliamentary democracy, have never hesitated to use abusive epithets against their political and ideological rivals. No less a person than Vladimir Ilych Lenin showed the way in this regard. He used vile abuse against his opponents in speech as well as in writing. In Indian politics, the venerable Rajani Palme Dutt, a leader of the Communist Party of Great Britain who ran the Indian communist party by remote control from London, did not hesitate to call Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi “a lackey of British imperialism’’. Grace was not a quality that the communists either believed in or valued.

Within the ambit of West Bengal politics, there are many examples of graceless behaviour and tasteless decisions. One was the renaming of Harrington Street as Ho Chi Minh Sarani because the consulate of the United States of America was situated there. How would the comrades feel if today Alimuddin Street were to be renamed after an anti-communist leader like McCarthy or Golwalkar? The communists consistently ridiculed the Congress leader, Atulya Ghosh, because he was visually challenged. Jyoti Basu was notorious for his bad manners and brusque manner; and true to form, he showed his lack of grace when he refused to attend the funerals of two of his predecessors. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, known for his pose of intellectual superiority, did not even call on the widow of Siddhartha Shankar Ray, the erstwhile chief minister of West Bengal. But Mr Bhattacharjee had taken pains to accord a State funeral to Mr Basu, another former chief minister. Instances can be multiplied.

The point of citing these instances is to contrast them with the decision of Mr Bhattacharjee and some of his comrades to attend the swearing-in ceremony on Friday. It was an unexpected exhibition of grace and courtesy, and all the more laudable for it. The new chief minister, Mamata Banerjee, had extended a personal invitation to which Mr Bhattacharjee and his comrades responded in the best possible way. It can only be hoped that this exchange of courtesy marks a new beginning in West Bengal politics. The smugness and arrogance of the communists had made common decency a rare commodity in the public life of the state. Defeat has restored decency. This has been possible because Ms Banerjee has chosen to be magnanimous in her triumph. This may not quite be the return of good manners but praise be for a small beginning.