Date:27/04/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/04/27/stories/2007042702351500.htm

National

Jyoti Basu honoured

Antara Das

Veteran conferred the Doctor of Law

— Photo: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

DOWN MEMORY LANE: CPI(M) leader Jyoti Basu being conferred the Doctor of Law by West Bengal Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi in Kolkata on Thursday. — Photo: SUSHANTA PATRONOBISH

Kolkata: In a simple yet touching ceremony, Jyoti Basu, veteran Marxist leader and the grand patriarch of West Bengal politics, was conferred the Doctor of Law [honoris causa] by Calcutta University in recognition of his contribution over the years to politics and society at large. The convocation was chaired by the Governor Gopalkrishna Gandhi, who is also the Chancellor of the university.

While recounting his early days in his convocation address, Mr. Basu, now 93, said he had never regretted the decision to give up his career as a barrister and that his experience of being involved in the various pre and post-independence protest movements had been a "fulfilling experience." "I have always tried my best to play the role that the party wanted me to perform," he said.

Mr. Basu, who had led the Left Front Government as Chief Minister ever since it came to power in 1977 till he stepped down on November 11, 2000, said this uninterrupted rule was a "record for a Communist government within a bourgeois democratic structure."

Pointing out the radical measures adopted by the Government, including land reforms, redistribution of land, extension of democracy to the grass roots level through Panchayati Raj, among others, Mr. Basu said it was on the basis of the agricultural and rural successes that West Bengal was now embarking on its industrialisation programme.