How I remember Left stalwart AB Bardhan

With the death of Comrade AB Bardhan, very few of the communist stalwarts who not only built the Left, but also made the Communist Parties a formidable force, are still active.

Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan was born in Sylhet in 1924. As is now known, Bardhan was moulded to a considerable extent by his initial period of Communist Party of India (CPI) activism in Maharashtra. He was less critical of VD Savarkar than many of his Left contemporaries, pointing out that Savarkar was a freedom fighter and secular to the extent that he supported beef eating as a cheap source of protein for the poor.

He was profoundly political and prepared to differ sharply from his comrades if he thought they were wrong. On the Sino-Indian border war, he strongly criticised Nehru's "forward policy," which led to the war, and went to jail for opposing the Indian position.

 Watch: A B Bardhan's speech against communalism and LK Advani's Rath Yatra from Anand Patwardhan's film Ram Ke Naam (1992)

Even comrades like Harkishen Singh Surjeet, a redoubtable Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader misunderstood Bardhan's position, to be reminded by Bardhan later.

An outstanding organiser, theorist and one of the longest serving General Secretaries of the CPI, Bardhan will be remembered for his intellect, his voracious reading of radical texts and even for his interest in Vivekanda on which he wrote a long piece.

He was quick to ask several intellectuals about historical and contemporary theoretical texts, which was his forte, and would write even party programmes, which he believed should substantially incorporate new developments.

He will be remembered most for his valiant effort to bring about a merger between the CPI and CPI(M), which did not succeed, but was testimony to his lifelong commitment to Left unity.

I will miss the discussions I regularly had with him since the nineteen eighties till a couple of years ago.