Promode Dasgupta

Promode Dasgupta was born in July 1910 in a Baidya family in Kaurpur village in the undivided Bengal of British India; now it is part of Bangladesh. His father was a doctor employed in government service. Dasgupta had eight siblings.[1]While a student in the Brojomohun College in Barisal (now in Bangladesh) he joined the revolutionary group Anushilan Samiti to fight against British imperialism. Those were the days when the revolutionary youth of Bengal believed that with their individual heroism they can defeat the imperialist rulers and win the country's freedom. After joining Anushilan Samiti, PDG shifted his political activities to Calcutta (now Kolkata). He was arrested in connection with the famous Machua Bazzar Bomb Case in 1929 along with a number of others like Satish Pakrashi, Sudhansu Dasgupta and Satyabrata Sen. Some of them were convicted and sentenced to imprisonment, while there was not enough evidence to convict PDG. But he was detained under the Bengal Criminal Law Amendent Act. He was for eight years in various jails in Bengal and in the Deoli detention camp. He was released in 1937.[2]

After Releasing from jail PDG earned his membership in the Communist Party of India on 1938 and began working among the dock labour in Calcutta. He worked as the Secretary of the Calcutta District Committee of the Communist Party of India and was underground for some time during the period of the Second World War. Later he was arrested and was released after the legalisation of the Communist Party of India in 1942. It was then that Comrade Promode organised the press of the Bengal Committee of the Communist Party of India and the publication of its first Bengali Weekly Jan Yudh and later Swadhinata daily. During the attack on the Party in 1948-51 immediately after India attained Independence, Comrade Promode worked underground for some time and was arrested and detained in jail for the rest of the period. After he came out of jail in 1951, he took a leading part in reorganising the Party in West Bengal and resuming the publication of Swadhinata daily. PDG was elected Secretary of the West Bengal State Committee of the Party at the Burdwan State Conference prior to the Sixth Party Congress in Vijayawada in 1961. He remained in that post till his death. He was elected to the National Council of the CPI at the Fifth Amritsar Congress of the Party in 1958 and to its Central Executive Committee in 1961 and again in 1964 PDG among with other communist leaders like Muzaffar Ahmad, Hare Krishna Konar were arested and were release in 1966.[2]

In a 1978 article written during the first year of the Left Front government, India Today compared the personalities and leadership styles of Chief Minister Jyoti Basu and Promode Dasgupta. It described the former as an urbane, mild-mannered statesman from a prosperous family who had attended Calcutta's top schools and studied law in Britain, where his conversion to Marxism had occurred. In contrast, India Today characterised Dasgupta as a "homespun Marxist" whose "life has been devoted to the single-minded aim of strengthening the CPM" in West Bengal. The article pointed out PDG's genius for organisation but also his reputation for being a "shadowy figure" who is "blunt, abrasive and retiring by nature".[1] For Sumit Mitra, writing in the Hindustan Times, "it was Dasgupta who pulled the strings, and Basu was the puppet."[3]

Among the managerial skills he exhibited were thorough knowledge of CPI(M) grassroots organisations in West Bengal. "Promode da was an excellent manager. Even as he sat all by himself in his office room at the party headquarters at Calcutta and smoked his cigar," India Today quoted a party worker, "a well-oiled communication machinery brought to him exactly what was happening at various levels of the party so that he was rarely caught off guard." This knowledge enabled him to act as a mediator, brokering truces between conflicting groups within the CPI(M) and the various parties in the Left Front.[4]

In the CPI(M) politburo, PDG often took hardline stances against the national leadership, especially in their desire to seek out alliances with non-Left parties. "Those who are not strong enough in their own rights have to go in for such exercises", he quipped. He also protected the positions of his West Bengal unit from the more moderate central politburo. Upon Dasgupta's death, Basu acknowledged the difficulty of his successor's task, both as chief organiser ("When he (Dasgupta) was there none of us had to bother about the organisation. Now we will have to work as a collective body.") and as politburo representative ("Promode babu enjoyed a special position in the politburo and it would be too much to hope that his successors will command the same respect.").[4]

On the flip side, Dasgupta is routinely cast as "Stalinist" and "anti-intellectual" by commentators.[5][6]

India Today wrote of his personal asceticism in 1978:[1]

A man of frugal habits, Dasgupta has few worldly possessions. He lives simply in a single room provided by the party and has his meals at the common hall of the CPM district office at Alimuddin Street, off Lower Circular Road, Calcutta. Dressed in starched and spotless dhoti-kurta, his one weakness is his Castro-style cigar which he lights and relights as he talks. He has never married and has few family attachments. "Pramode Babu is married to the party," say his followers.

• "Remembrances: PDG". Ganashakti. Retrieved on 31 July 2018.