People's Democracy

COMRADE ABUL BASHAR (1920-2002)

State committee member of the CPI (M) and a member of the All-India Council of the CITU, comrade Abul Bashar passed away on September 8 in Kolkata. CPI (M) leaders Jyoti Basu, Anil Biswas, Biman Basu, and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, among others, expressed their deep sorrow at the demise of this veteran leader of the working class movement of Bengal.

Born in a poverty-ridden family of the Noakhali district in the then eastern Bengal, comrade Bashar came over to Kolkata at a tender age to earn his keep as an itinerant salesman of hosiery goods in Howrah. He would supplant his meagre income by working part-time as a newspaper hawker, and often worked late into the night tending a small roadside tea stall.

Drawn into the Communist movement as far back as 1941 while he was a worker at the Bata shoe company, comrade Bashar became a member of the Communist Party early in August 1947 when India was in the process of gaining her political independence from British rule. Subsequently, comrade Abul Bashar would join the CPI (M) when it was formed in 1964.

Involved in the movements and struggles of the ostagars (or tailors) in southern localities of the 24 Parganas district, comrade Abul Bashar was also one of the chief organisers of the Tramways movement of Kolkata in 1953. During the greater part of his active life as a Communist, comrade Abul Bashar preferred to spend his time among the ostagars of 24 Parganas, organising them and striving to enhance their political consciousness.

Largely a self-taught man himself, comrade Bashar would spend long hours at the Muzaffar Ahmad Pathagar library in Kolkata whenever he could find a bit of spare time. A man of simple habits, comrade Abul Bashar found an admirer in the late dramatist and actor Utpal Dutt who often freely confessed how some of his most famous and life-like portrayals of leaders of the working class movement were based on the life of comrade Abul Bashar.

When on the eve of the Assembly elections of 2001, a clutch of opportunists chose to forsake the CPI (M) in south 24 Parganas, comrade Abul Bashar readily agreed to shoulder the responsibility of the post of the district secretary. Comrade Bashar was also elected twice to the Vidhan Sabha from the Mahestala constituency 1987 and 1991. (INN)