Comrade Nripen Chakraborty (1905-2004)

COMRADE Nripen Chakraborty, the former Chief Minister of Tripura and a pioneer of the Communist movement in India, belonged to a rare breed of politicians. Particularly, he had a major contribution to the shaping of communist movement in Tripura.

Born in 1905 at Bikrampur of undivided Bengal, situated at present in Bangladesh, Comrade Nripen Chakraborty jumped headlong in the Indian freedom movement towards the end of the 1920s while studying in Dhaka University and courted arrest. Following his release from jail, he came to Kolkata to study MA in economics. He also studied law for a brief period. He started his political life as a member of ‘Comilla Abhay Ashram’ under Dr Prafulla Ghosh and Dr Suresh Banerjee. In 1931 he took part in the civil disobedience movement and was imprisoned. Later he joined the socialist movement. Hiren Mukherjee and Nripen Chakraborty were the first joint secretaries of the Bengal unit of the Socialist Party. He had a considerable skill in journalism and joined Ananda Bazar Patrika as a sub-editor.

Nripen Chakraborty came to Marxism through self-study and analysis of the political movements of 1930-34. He came in contact with other revolutionaries of communist ideology during this period and joined the Communist Party of India in 1934. He started organising the working class for the freedom movement. He played a robust role in strengthening the banned party Organisation in undivided Bengal, rising to the post of its state secretary in 1937.

He was incarcerated as also tortured in jail time and again by the colonial British government. As a communist freedom fighter, he made a huge impact on the then revolutionary movement by escaping from the Hijli jail along with his compatriot Panchu Gopal Badhuri. He carried out his Party organisational functions from underground for a long time. He played an outstanding role in the realm of communist journalism by co-editing with Somnath Lahiri, the Bengali Party daily Swadhinata, in which incidentally the renowned revolutionary poet Sukanta Bhattacharjee was in charge of the juvenile section. Though Somnath Lahiri was the editor of the paper, Nripen Chakraborty used to look after every aspect. He even taught journalism to a number of comrades.

Shortly after Independence, Congress goons made an attempt on his life by attacking him near the Party office in Kolkata, and left him lying on the road presuming him to be dead. He was taken to a hospital by certain Party sympathisers who happened to recognise him. He survived this bid on his life.

Nripen Chakraborty was also one of the organisers of the armed resistance movement of the peasants of Kakadip. In 1950 Comrade Nripen Chakraborty was entrusted with building the Party organisation in Tripura at a time when the Party was banned and armed resistance movement was under way in the state’s hilly areas against the oppression of the Congress-led government’s army.

Since the fifties he rendered tremendous contribution towards developing the Left, democratic and communist movement in Tripura, besides taking a robust role in the sphere of strengthening the Party organisation by waging relentless ideological struggle against revisionism and ultra-Left deviation. He remained Party state secretary from 1967 to 1977.

Along with other Party leaders, he was incarcerated in the Bhagalpur Jail of Bihar under Preventive Detention Act by the Congress government in 1962. As a mass movement leader he was incarcerated several more times during the food movement of 1966-67, during the 1974 indefinite strike of Government employees, and following the promulgation of Emergency in 1975, when he was incarcerated in the Vellore Jail of Tamilnadu. In all he spent 18 years of his life in jail.

Comrade Nripen Chakraborty was elected to the Tripura Territorial Council in 1957, and became opposition leader in 1962. Following Tripura’s attainment of full statehood, he became member of the state assembly from 1972 to 1998. After joining short spells of coalition governments, with first the Congress for Democracy (CFD) and then with the Janata Party in 1977, in both of which he was a minister, the CPI(M) got a massive mandate in the state assembly elections of December 31, 1977. Comrade Nripen Chakraborty became chief minister of the state’s first Left Front government in 1978 and also of the second one in 1983. Following removal of the Left Front government by the Congress-led centre through falsification of the 1988 assembly elections with assistance of the extremists and deployment of Army, Comrade Nripen Chakraborty discharged his role as the opposition leader effectively in the strenuous struggle against Congress-TUJS semi-fascist coalition regime. With the formation of the third Left Front Government in 1993, he became chairman of the State Planning Board.

As a successful chief minister of the state for 10 consecutive years, Comrade Nripen Chakraborty attracted attention of the country with his relentless fight for the development of Tripura and his spartan lifestyle, which he maintained through out his life. He was an erudite person and a bachelor.

Comrade Nripen Chakraborty was elected to the central committee of CPI(M) in 1972 and became the member of the Polit Bureau of CPI(M) in June 1984.

However in 1995, Comrade Nripen Chakraborty seriously violated the Party discipline and the CPI(M) was forced to expel him from the primary membership of the Party. The Party, in line with its principle that nobody is above the Party, had to take this unpleasant decision. But even after his expulsion, the Party comrades of Tripura used to look after him. In December 25, 2004 he he breathed his last. Keeping in mind the contribution of Comrade Nripen Chakraborty to the communist movement of our country, the CPI(M) Polit Bureau decided to restore his primary membership on December 24, 2004.

:: Added 28-07-2005 @ 1509 GMT