Kolkata: Tributes Pour in for ‘Spartan’ Writer, Poet Buddhadeb Bhattacharya

Kolkata: Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, former Chief Minister of West Bengal, who passed away on Thursday in his two-room apartment in Kolkata, was known for his spartan life style.

The octogenarian communist leader was a member of the Communist Party of India or CPI(M) politburo until 2015. Suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD), he had to severely curtail his activities since 2012. 

Bhattacharya was Chief Minister of West Bengal from 2000 to 2011, as was considered a major force behind the industrialisation of the state and providing a corruption-free administration. He had received praise from then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who referred him as the “best Chief Minister” of the country. He was awarded with the Padma Bhushan, which he declined.

Hearing the news of his demise, people from across the spectrum began thronging his two-room Palm Avenue government flat. Among those who paid tributes to him were West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, Governor CV Ananda Bose, CPI(M) state secretary Mohd Salim, among others. The West Bengal has declared a holiday on Friday in honour of the communist leader and former Chief Minister.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi too expressed his condolences on social media site, X.

In her post on X, Chief Minister Banerjee wrote, “Shocked and saddened by the sudden demise of the former Chief Minister Sri Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. I have been knowing him for last several decades, and visited him a few times when he was ill and effectively confined to home in the last few years. My very sincere condolences to Meeradi and Suchetan at this hour of grief. I communicate my condolences to the members of the CPI(M) party and all his followers. We have already taken a decision that we shall give him full respect and ceremonial honour during his last journey and rites.”

Bhattacharya was a minister for 28 years at a stretch and had corruption-free image. He was the nephew of revolutionary poet Sukanta Bhattacharya, one of the most read youth poets of Bengal, who had died at a very young age in 1947 whng the British colonisers.

Born in 1944 to parents Nepal Bhattacharya and mother Neela Bhattachrya, Buddhadeb’s family was political with keen interest in the culture of Bengal. He did his schooling from Sailendra Sarkar Institution, and after school got interested in Left politics. He completed his graduation in Bengali literature from Kolkata’s prestigious Presidency College.

Bhattacharya began his political life with the student movement in the stormy 1960s in West Bengal. In 1968, he was elected state secretary of the Democratic Youth Federation in West Bengal, which later became a part of the DYFI in 1980. He took part in various student and youth struggles, and also in political movements that were then rocking Bengal.

In 1996, he joined the CPI(M), and gradually rose to its leadership from the district to the state to the national level, being elected to the central committee in 1985 and the polit bureau in 2000. He remained in these positions till 2015, when he retired due to poor health.

In November 2000, Bhattacharya succeeded the legendary Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister, and it was under his leadership that the Left Front won two Assembly elections in 2001 and 2006 with resounding majority, testifying to his contribution as Chief Minister and the work of the Left Front government.

Bhattacharya took great interest in literature and culture, and was himself a writer, poet, and an accomplished translator. He had translated important works of the Latin American Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the great Soviet poet Vladimir Mayakovsky, among others.

His simple lifestyle, living throughout in a modest two-room apartment even when he was the Chief Minister, endeared him to the people, and needs to be emulated by the Left today.

Paying tributes, Tapan Sen, general secretary of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) recalled how he had worked under Buddhadeb Bhattacharya in the Democratic Youth Federation in the 1970s. Under his guidance, the state of West Bengal had advanced in agriculture as well in the , he said, adding that Bhattacharya’s  spartan  lifestyle had endeared him to the working class.