Veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) leader and former party general secretary A.B. Bardhan died at a hospital in the national capital on Saturday evening.
Veteran Communist Party of India (CPI) leader and former party general secretary A.B. Bardhan died at a hospital in the national capital on Saturday evening. Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan, 91, had been undergoing treatment at G.B. Pant Hospital since December 7 following a paralytic stroke last month.
According to Dr Vinod Puri, who led the medical team at G.B. Pant Hospital, the CPI leader died at 8.20 pm. “Our team tried hard but could not save him. His condition was very critical since he came for treatment. He was kept in the ICU since December 7. However, his condition deteriorated since Saturday morning and he breathed his last at 8.20 pm,” said Dr Puri, director and professor of neurology at the hospital.
Dr Puri said Bardhan had died due to blockage in the middle cerebral arteries caused due to the brain stroke. “Mr Bardhan was put off the ventilator yesterday and was able to breathe normally. But today his blood pressure (level) fell and his condition turned very critical,” added Dr Puri.
Hospital sources said that at the time of his death his daughter Dr Alka Barua and son Ashok Bardhan were by his side. His wife Padma, who was a professor in Nagapur University, had died in 1986. After that, he started staying at CPI headquarters in New Delhi.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted, “Will always remember Shri AB Bardhan as a passionate Communist, fully committed to his ideology & principles. May his soul rest in peace.” Home minister Rajnath Singh condoled the demise of the veteran CPI leader. “With the demise of AB Bardhan the country has lost one of the pillars of left wing politics. My condolences to his grieving family. Saddened to hear of the demise of senior CPI leader AB Bardhan ji. He was known for his deep concern for workers, poor and needy,” tweeted Mr Singh.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi expressed deep condolences. CPI national secretary D. Raja said, “It’s a great loss not only for the CPI but for the entire Communist movement of the country. His demise marks the end of an era of Communist leaders who fought for the independence of the nation.” Condoling Bardhan’s death, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee tweeted, “Saddened at the passing of veteran politician AB Bardhan. Condolences to his family and colleagues in his party.” “Deeply saddened to hear of veteran CPI leader AB Bardhanji’s death. He was a leading figure of the trade union movement and a voice of the poor,” said Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar in a tweet.
Born on September 25, 1925, in Sylhet (now in Bangladesh), Bardhan began his political career in the 1940s during the freedom struggle as a leader of the All-India Students’ Federation and was drawn into the Communist stream and joined the CPI. He was arrested over 20 times and spent over four years in jail.
Ardhendu Bhushan Bardhan has been a leading figure of the trade union movement and Left politics in Maharashtra. He had won as an Independent candidate in Maharashtra Assembly polls in 1957. He later rose to become general secretary and then president of the All-India Trade Union Congress, the oldest trade union in India.
Mr Bardhan had moved to Delhi politics in the 1990s and became CPI deputy general secretary. He succeeded Indrajit Gupta as CPI general secretary in 1996. Even after stepping down as general secretary in March 2012, a role he had performed for four consecutive terms spanning 16 years, Bardhan continued to guide his party members, firmly believing in the maxim “Once a Communist, always a Communist”.
Soon after the Left Front’s debacle at the hands of the Trinamul Congress in the 2011 Assembly polls in its one-time bastion West Bengal, he would warn Left leaders, “either change or you are out”. Bardhan had also reiterated the late Marxist Jyoti Basu’s statement that not accepting the Prime Minister’s post in 1996 was a “historic blunder” of the Left. An avid reader, he maintained that books on Communism had influenced him to join the Communist movement.
He read works in various languages, including Bengali, Marathi, Hindi, English and French.
When asked by journalists about his autobiography, Bardhan used to say that biographies are “an exercise in self-congratulation and meant to blame others. I will not write.”
Bardhan is survived by his Ahmedabad-based doctor daughter Alka and son Ashok, who teaches economics at the University of California, Berkeley, in the US.
