Author:
Publication: BJP Today
Date: August 1-15, 2000
Severely condemning the
decision of West Bengal Deputy Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya to
stay away from the July 6 centenary celebration of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee
at Calcutta presided over by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Dr. Nitish
Sengupta, General Secretary of the Trinamool Congress, has said that the
CPI-M leader has betrayed his colossal ignorance of the history of Bengal
in the 1920s, 30s and 40s and Dr. Mookerjee's contribution then.
Here are excerpts from
Dr Sengupta's Press note:
The CPM view of history
has not been known to be particularly rational or scientific. How jaundiced
or myopic it can be is blatantly illustrated by the way the CPM government
in West Bengal has sought to dissociate itself from the birth centenary
celebration of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, great national leader of 20th
century India. What is much more galling is the ideological differences
argument that Mr. Budhadev Bhattacharya has childishly given in justification.
He has ignored Syama
Prasad's very successful Vice Chancellorship of Calcutta University, his
coalition government with Mr. Fazlul Huq (1941-43) when he courageously
fought both Muslim League's communalism and British authority's imperialism,
his role during the 1942 uprising in Midnapore in opposing repression of
the freedom fighters by the army and the police, and his role during the
1943 Bengal famine in uncovering corruption and bungling leading to his
resignation. His letters to Governor General Linlithgo and Governor Herbert
are worth reading by students of history even at this distance of time.
The Syama-Huq coalition (1941-43) was almost the last effort to save Bengal
from communalism.
He opposed India's partition
all along. But when the Congress leadership accepted partition, he, along
with Mr. N. C. Chatterjee, demanded the partition of Bengal so that the
Hindu majority areas of Bengal could stay on in India. This call gathered
support like a rolling snowball leading to the eventual partition of Bengal.
Some one should remind Mr. Budhadev Bhattacharya that the state of which
he is Deputy Chief Minister owes its origin in no small measure to Syama
Prasad Mookerjee. He accepted Nehru's request to become a Central Minister
of Commerce and Industry in independent India's first cabinet. Who can
forget his role in doing things for West Bengal like Chittaranjan Locomotive
factory?
He resigned from the
Government in 1950 in protest against the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Pact and the
sacrificing of the rights of the Hindu minority in East Pakistan in that
pact. Public opinion in West Bengal was overwhelmingly in his favour. But
he did not return to the Hindu Mahasabha but set up a new nonsectarian
party viz. the Indian People's Party or Bharatiya Jan Sangh which long
afterwards became the BJP. He was never a member of the R.S.S as the CPM
have sought to make out. The new party faced the election in a few months
time and secured 15 seats in the West Bengal Assembly. Syama Prasad was
elected to the Lok Sabha by an overwhelming majority from South Calcutta.
Had he lived longer it is possible that his party would have been the main
opposition in West Bengal rather than the Communist Party.
