Author: Editorial
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: November 17, 2001
The meaningless controversy over
the Russian film, Taurus, contains a warning for the chief minister, Mr
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. It is clear that stalwarts within his own party,
the Communist Party of India (Marxist), have decided to pressurize and
override him on his own turf, culture. Mr Bhattacharjee saw the film based
on the life of Vladimir Illych Lenin and from all accounts did not find
anything objectionable in it. But this did not deter the former chief minister,
Mr Jyoti Basu, the CPI(M) politburo member, Mr Biman Bose, and other left
luminaries from protesting against the screening of Taurus at the seventh
Calcutta Film Festival. It will take an immense effort of the imagination
and a fair degree of persuasion to believe that the ultimate withdrawal
of the film had nothing to do with the protests and was not the result
of some amount of unofficial arm twisting. Whatever the facts, there can
be no denying that the victim of the unseemly episode is the credibility
of Mr Bhattacharjee and of his government. This is not the first occasion,
in recent months, that the chief minister has been somewhat humbled by
machinations within his party He was forced by the aparatchiki to retract
the proposed law to curb organized crime, Prevention of Organized Crime
Ordinance. It is clear that Mr Bhattacharjee is yet to clinch the vital
issue of who rules West Bengal: comrades in Alimuddin Street or the chief
minister in the Writers' Buildings? The failure to resolve this contradiction
is fast emerging as Mr Bhattacharjee's Achilles' heel.
This weakness is being exploited
by the ideological opponents of Mr Bhattacharjee within the party and by
people who are stricken by envy at the accolades Mr Bhattacharjee has received
during his short tenure in office. In the second lot falls, unfortunately,
Mr Basu, the former chief minister. He remains uncomfortable in retirement
and fails, occasionally, to rise above pettiness. He could not have been
unaware that his condemnation of Taurus, without having seen the film,
could only serve to embarrass his successor and provide some legitimacy
to the mindless protestors. The reactions of Mr Biman Bose may not have
been completely bereft of factional and sectarian considerations. Mr Bhattacharjee
is battling against a particular mentality within his party It is a mentality
informed by hidebound ideas and dogmatic attitudes. There is a refusal
to accept that the world has moved beyond the shallow certainties which
made communists believe that history was on their side. In this battle
Mr Bhattacharjee has very few friends among the orthodox. Moreover, according
to the laws of human nature, success inevitably produces enemies.
Against his enemies on many fronts,
Mr Bhattacharjee has two allies: his own strength and good sense. He cannot
surrender these in the name of loyalty to the party He must remember that
his government must bear his own stamp, not that of Alimuddin Street. To
do otherwise would be to reduce himself to a shadow. For too long, West
Bengal had a non-functioning chief minister; it can ill afford, in the
present conjuncture, to have half a chief minister.
