Biography Of Jyoti Basu – Free PDF Download

EARLY LIFE

• Jyotirindra Basu was born 8 July 1914 in Kolkata into a very affluent brahmin family. His father, Nishikanta Basu, was a doctor while his mother Hemalata Basu was a housewife.
• Basu’s schooling started at Loreto School at Dharmatala in Kolkata in 1920, and he was moved in 1925 to St. Xavier’s School.
• After completing school, Basu took an undergraduate degree in English literature honours from Presidency College, University of Calcutta

 INDIA

• After completing his undergraduate studies, Basu left for England to study law in 1935. In England, he was introduced to politics and became greatly influenced by the Communist Party of Great Britain.
• Basu completed his studies in 1939 and was invited to the Middle Temple as a Barrister in 1939. Shortly afterwards, he returned to India.
• Having developed a firm belief in the Communist ideals, Basu returned to India in 1940 and joined the Communist Party of India, also becoming secretary of the Friends of the Soviet Union and Anti-Fascist Writers’ and Artists’ Association in Calcutta.

THE RISING

• In 1944, Basu started working with trade and railways unions of Bengal. He was instrumental in establishing the Bengal Nagpur Railway Workers’ Union in the same year, and became its general secretary. Basu was elected to the central committee of the CPI in 1951.
• In the 1952 elections in West Bengal, the CPI, the Forward Bloc, the Socialist Republican Party, and the Bolshevik Party of India (under the name of the United Socialist Organisation) formed a united antiCongress front

POLITICS

• Basu was also part of this front, representing the CPI and defeating the Congress’ Harendranath Roy Chowdhury from the Baranagar assembly seat.
• The CPI won 28 of the 71 seats it contested in the 238-member assembly, and Basu was unanimously chosen as its leader in the legislature.
• He retained the seat in 1957, and with the CPI’s numbers increasing to 46 plus five independents backed by the party, Basu became the leader of the opposition.

POLITICS

• Jyoti Basu was the secretary of the West Bengal Provincial Committee of the Party from 1953 to January. 1961.
• After the India-China War of 1962, differences arose in the CPI. Two years later, the party split, leading to the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), and Basu became one of the founding members of its politburo.
• In 1967, two anti-Congress groups, led by the CPI(M) and the Bangla Congress-CPI, formed the government, with Ajoy Mukherjee as CM and Basu as his deputy and finance minister.

CM

• Though CPI(M) became the single largest party in the assembly elections in 1971, the party was refused the chance to form a ministry and presidents’ Rule was imposed in West Bengal.
• After the sweeping victory of the Left Front in 1977, Jyoti Basu became the Chief Minister of the Left Front government, a position he held continuously for a record more than 23 years, until his deputy Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee took over the reins primarily due the former’s deteriorating health

CM

• In 1996 Jyoti Basu seemed all set to be the consensus leader of the United Front for the post of Prime Minister of India.
• However, the CPI(M) Politburo decided not to participate in the government, a decision that Jyoti Basu later termed a historic blunder.
• H.D. Deve Gowda from the Janata Dal instead became prime minister. Basu resigned from the Chief Ministership of West Bengal in 2000 for health reasons, and was succeeded by fellow CPI(M) politician Buddhadeb Bhattacharya.

DEATH

• At present, Basu remains as the second longestserving Chief Minister in Indian political history serving for 23 years 4 months and 17 days behind Sikkim’s ex CM Pawan Kumar Chamling.
• The 18th congress of CPI(M), held in Delhi in 2005, reelected Basu to its Politburo, although he had asked to be allowed to retire from it.
• On 1 January 2010, Basu was admitted to AMRI hospital after he was diagnosed with pneumonia. He died on 17 January 2010 at 11:47 am IST

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