Tridib Kumar Chaudhuri, a Freedom-Fighter-Turned-MP Par Excellence

The Wire

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Chaudhuri was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Berhampore constituency in West Bengal for seven consecutive terms and was a member of the Lower House from 1952 to 1984. Later, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha in July 1987 and again in August 1993.
Tridib Kumar Chaudhuri.
Tridib Kumar Chaudhuri was a freedom fighter, parliamentarian par excellence and legendary revolutionary socialist leader. He spent about 12 years in British jails and 19 months in Portuguese jails during the liberation struggles. As an member of parliament for more than four decades, he symbolised the golden era of Indian parliamentary politics. He was also a gifted orator and a prolific writer. He distinguished himself in the nation's life with his single-minded devotion to the service of the country.
Chaudhuri was born on December 13, 1911 in Dacca (now in Bangladesh). He studied in Murshidabad and Berhampore. His adolescent years and early youth coincided with the outburst of the anti-imperialist, nationalist mass movement in India of the 1920s and 1930s in the shape of the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
He was arrested in 1931 and kept in detention in the Hijli Detention Camp in the Midnapur district of Bengal near Kharagpur and then in the Deoli Detention Camp in Rajasthan up to 1937. Soon after this, in 1940, Chaudhuri and several other leaders of the newly-formed Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) and the Anushilan Marxists were arrested.
He was detained under the Defence of India Rules by the British government, with Subhas Chandra Bose. The main charge against them was that they supported Bose's anti-war and immediate-action line against the British government. Chaudhuri was kept in detention as a security prisoner in the Hijli Special Jail and in the Dacca and Dum Dum Central Jails for six years during War time from 1940 to 1946.
The years of detention in the late 1930s were a period of re-education and ideological transformation for revolutionaries. Most of them, including Chaudhuri, came back after years of study and prolonged political discussion as convinced socialists and Marxist-Leninists believing in class struggle and mass action.
Chaudhuri played a prominent role in the formation of the RSP. After Independence, he built up the RSP, as the party's general secretary. According toChaudhuri, Lenin's well-known dictum, "Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary party", also implies logically that "Without a revolutionary party there can be no revolutionary theory."
He was of the opinion that in the India of the day, the correct revolutionary theory can only be a theory of proletarian socialist revolution as a prelude to the socialist transformation of India's socio-economic structure that had become historically urgent and unavoidable for socio-economic reasons.
A distinguished parliamentarian
Chaudhuri was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Berhampore constituency in West Bengal for seven consecutive terms and was a member of the Lower House from 1952 to 1984. Later, he became a member of the Rajya Sabha in July 1987 and again in August 1993 till his death on December 21, 1997. He was the leader of the RSP in parliament.
During his tenure as a member of the first Lok Sabha, Chaudhuri participated in the Liberation Satyagraha Movement against Portuguese colonialism in Goa. He entered Goa in July 1955 with a batch of volunteers and was arrested and sentenced by the Portuguese authorities for 12 years. He was, however, released after 19 months of imprisonment, just on the eve of the second election to the Lok Sabha in 1957.
Then prime minister and Congress president Jawaharlal Nehru, describing Chaudhuri as a 'National Hero', decided not to put up any Congress candidate against him in his constituency.
In 1974, during his fifth term in parliament, Chaudhuri was unitedly put up as a candidate for the office of the president of India against Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed by a majority of the opposition parties. Though he lost the election, the contest attracted a good deal of admiration from the political public on account of the dignified way in which it was conducted.
During the Emergency, he acted as a spokesman of parties opposed to the Emergency.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Chaudhuri's speeches in the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on a large number of national and international issues throw light on his thorough grasp of a range of subjects, his analytical power, his grassroots understanding and his extraordinary high oratorical skill. He was a champion of the toiling millions and an ardent defender of the downtrodden and the oppressed. In fact, he fought for broadening the democratic rights and liberties of the people and all along he challenged and fought against any encroachment on them.
He was also very active during the Question Hour in Parliament. He raised questions on subjects like unemployment, shortage of food, issues relating to employees of the tea industry, jute mills, workers' rights, foreign policy, agriculture policy, etc. Chaudhuri was also a master of all parliamentary techniques and forms, and he used all the possible openings – special mentions, calling attentions, half-an-hour discussions, adjournment motions, etc. – to put across his points of view on varied issues.
He also spoke time and again about the plight of the people in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and stressed their democratic and human rights and the need for India to mobilise world public opinion about it.
An eminent trade union leader
A close friend and champion of workers, labourers, peasantry, youth and students, Chaudhuri was associated with various trade unions and their welfare organisations. He held senior positions in the United Trade Union Congress (UTUC), which was the trade union wing of the RSP.
Chaudhuri made his mark as a prolific writer as well. He was the editor of the RSP's theoretical publication, Call. His memoirs on the Goa Satyagraha in Bengali, Nineteen Months in Salazar's Prison, evoked a good deal of popular interest in the late 1950s when it was first published. Along with Nihar Ranjan Roy, he was the joint editor of the well-known Bengali literary-cultural monthly Kranti for several years.
He also penned several political and polemical tracts expounding the RSP's points of view on the issues of the times. As general secretary of the RSP for more than three decades, he wrote two brochures: 'Why RSP?' (Historic Need for a Party of Socialist Revolution in India Today) in 1970 and 'Four and Half Decades of the RSP' in 1985.
Chaudhuri died on December 21, 1997 at the age of 86 when he was a member of Rajya Sabha and the leader of the RSP in the parliament.
Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India's major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India's freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
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