The end of a rather spectacular innings of one of India’s longest-serving Parliamentarians, Gurudas Dasgupta, connotes a disconnect with the last of the brightest periods of Left politics with unflinching commitment to the working people in post-independent India. Gurudas Dasgupta was to complete 83 years of his life on November 3.
His political life began in the early 1950s as a functionary of All India Student Federation, then the student front of the undivided Communist Party of India and it was his remarkable ability with words and the passion that he invested them with that attracted the senior leadership of the party. He soon became the secretary of Bengal Provincial Student Federation.
Mr Dasgupta’s parliamentary career began when he was elected to the Rajya Sabha in 1985 in the vacancy caused by the famous leader of colliery workers, Kalyan Sankar Roy. He made his mark as the chairman, sub-committee, Consultative Committee, Ministry of Labour on the Conditions of Agricultural Workers in 1985. He never looked back. His stature as a conscientious parliamentarian rose to admirable heights when he submitted a separate report as a note of dissent as a member of Joint Parliamentary Committee on the Securities Scam (known as Harshad Mehta scam). His Report to the Nation, with which The Statesman was closely associated, was published by the CPI as a book. He was elected to the upper house of the Parliament thrice and twice to the lower house, Lok Sabha.
Gurudas Dasgupta became the general secretary of All India Trade Union Congress, India’s oldest central trade union and was instrumental in the growth of AITUC in his 17-year tenure. He was elected to the national council of CPI in the early 1990s and to the central secretariat. He rose to become the deputy general secretary of the party. He stepped down from both the posts on health grounds.
As a firebrand parliamentarian, he frequently exposed the unholy collusion between corporate houses and dishonest politicians and how the combine plundered banking and institutional funds. At the same time, he fought for the legitimate rights of both blue and white colour workers. He had the uncanny ability of apprising the vox populi of the content of those issues through media and mass campaigns. He set up a new model of combining parliamentary and extra-parliamentary politics while insulating himself and his comrades from the detrimental politics of violence and individual politics.
His battle in the parliament against extremely undue privilege in award of the Krishna Godavari hydrocarbon basin and unfair pricing advantages will remain an exemplary and unforgettable feat. His powerful and successful obstruction to hiving off a block of Bailadila Iron Ore Mine with high iron content to a private corporate group inspired the TU movement. His numerous interventions inside the Parliament unnerved the vested interests.
The absence of Gurudas Dasgupta from the midst of toilers creates a vacuum. For them and his numerous admirers crossing party lines, the world will not be the same again.
The writer is a veteran journalist and a former member of the Communist Party of India