(The following article is from the February 1-28, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Gurpreet Singh, Surrey, BC

The death of Jyoti Basu, a towering communist leader and the longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal, has saddened the Sikhs residing in Kolkata. Community leaders remember him as a saviour for not letting Congress-led goons murder Sikhs during the 1984 pogrom. Violence against Sikhs broke out in provinces ruled by the Congress Party following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards on October 31, 1984.

     While New Delhi, the national capital and other parts of India witnessed large scale mass murders of Sikhs, Basu ensured that the minority community was protected in his territory.

     "He had not only placed Kolkata under curfew, but his party supporters were seen patrolling the Sikh-dominated areas to prevent violence," remembers Surjit Singh Walia, who lives in Dunlop area. Walia, a community activist who remembers how a mob tried to attack him, was able to escape.

     The leader of the Sikh coordination committee, Bachan Singh Saral, spearheaded the campaign for justice for Sikhs who were murdered during the violence. He says that only 10 lives were lost in West Bengal compared to several thousand in New Delhi. "The Sikhs were grateful to Basu and always stood behind his government like a rock," says Saral, who also thinks that Bengal should have made a stronger case to the central government for compensation to the Sikhs. He also remembers that Mamata Banerjee, leader of West Bengal's Trinamool Congress, was in the Congress Party back then and incited the mob.

     Sohan Singh Aittiana, a staunch communist in Kolkata, says that the Sikhs had always supported Basu and his Communist Party of India (Marxist) since 1984. "It can be described as his legacy. It's a separate matter that many Sikhs of the new generation have also started identifying themselves with other parties". Aittiana had led a delegation of the Sikhs to AMRI hospital, where Basu was under treatment. "They prayed for his well being."

     Hardev Singh Grewal, the editor of Navin Parbhat, a Punjabi daily of Kolkata, says that Basu will always be admired and missed by the Sikh community. "Due to his strong political will to protect our community, there was no mass exodus of the Sikhs from West Bengal."

     Sarabjit Singh Sohal, a Singh Sabha leader from Chandigarh, feels the same. "Basu was a true communist, who according to his party's secular ideology did not allow the Hindu fundamentalists to shed the blood of the Sikhs."

     It is pertinent to mention that the CPI(M) forced the previous Congress-led coalition government to remove Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler as cabinet ministers after the Nanavati Commission looking into the pogrom had indicted these two leaders.