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Thursday, Mar 31, 2005

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A political journey with Jyoti Basu

By Marcus Dam

KOLKATA, MARCH 30. "A political journey with Jyoti Basu lasting more than six decades," is how filmmaker Goutam Ghose describes his latest documentary — one on the nonagenarian Marxist leader and former West Bengal Chief Minister that is to be screened for the first time to a private audience here tomorrow.

``I can see the occasion as a very special and emotional experience for Jyoti Babu who will be there at the theatre in person, along with some of his old friends and, of course, party colleagues," he told The Hindu in an exclusive interview today.

Screening in April

Called "Jyoti Basur Shange [With Jyoti Basu]," the two-hour documentary which took Mr. Ghose seven years to complete, is sub-titled in English, "Journey with Jyoti Basu," to be ready for screening in New Delhi next month when the Communist Party of India (Marxist) holds its congress. "The Bengali title is in line with the book Jyoti Babu had written called "Janganer Shange [With the People]," the director said.

It was in 1996 when the idea dawned on Mr. Ghose — known for his documentaries on, among others, Bismillah Khan, Satyajit Ray, Utpal Dutt and Dalai Lama — to make a documentary on a politician. "Who else do I choose but Jyoti Babu ... one of the oldest living politicians in our country... who has been witness to historical and political events around the world for nearly a century — from the rise of Fascism, the breakdown of the Soviet empire, the Emergency in our country to 9/11?"

Funds from friends

The shooting was done in phases — and Mr. Ghose's itinerary included a visit with Jyoti Basu to his ancestral home in Bangladesh's Dhaka-Bikrampur district on the banks of the Megna, to London where the politician had spent a lot of his younger days and places in West Bengal he had gone on whistle-stop tours, addressing congregations. "Funds for the documentary were provided by friends and associates; neither the party nor the State Government was its sponsor," he added.

All along, as "we travel around the narrative, it was as if I who was being taken on a journey by Jyoti Babu," Mr. Ghose recalls. The documentary is "also undoubtedly a historical document, a visual documentation of events spanning six decades, dotted with anecdotes dredged out of memory, some giving me goose-pimples on hearing them. They were part of his interesting experiences in London during the formative years of his political career ... and include the story of a father's regrets for not being at the nursing home when his son was born as that would have meant emerging from the underground and subsequent arrest."

Contradictions

"And, as he believed so convincingly in dialectics I have tried to put things in a dialectical order ... The dialectics and contradictions within the party — like, on whether to become part of the Government at the Centre some years ago with Jyoti Babu conceding it a historical blunder not to have done so even if that was the party's decision."

Underpinning the contradictions is "the one between his personal and public life, that between a partisan with a strong personality, an individual whose only identity was the one shaped by the party."

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