201-836: Post-independence and Cold War Contemporary history The Left Front ( Bengali : বামফ্রন্ট ) is an alliance of left-wing political parties in the Indian state of West Bengal . It was formed in January 1977, the founding parties being the Communist Party of India (Marxist) , All India Forward Bloc , the Revolutionary Socialist Party , the Marxist Forward Bloc , the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and
402-596: A land dispute issue surged over a planned chemical factory in Nandigram . These two conflicts put severe strains on the Left Front 2007–2008. On 8 September 2008 the Left Front and the opposition All India Trinamool Congress reached an agreement on Singur dispute but in the next month Tata Motors announced that it withdrew from West Bengal. Bengali language Bengali , also known by its endonym Bangla ( বাংলা , Bāṅlā , [ˈbaŋla] ),
603-500: A bid to lessen this burden on young learners, efforts have been made by educational institutions in the two main Bengali-speaking regions (West Bengal and Bangladesh) to address the opaque nature of many consonant clusters, and as a result, modern Bengali textbooks are beginning to contain more and more "transparent" graphical forms of consonant clusters, in which the constituent consonants of a cluster are readily apparent from
804-510: A consequence, the CPI-M stood as the first party other than the Congress party to become the largest party in the assembly. In the subsequent second United Front cabinet , Basu became both the deputy chief minister and in-charge of general administration and police. Under Basu, the police were instructed to not intervene in any labour disputes against striking workers. The first six months of
1005-807: A critical stage at the time and its persistence was largely blamed on the Food Ministry and the Indian National Congress wherein the Communist Party had continuously asserted that the Congress party had been reduced to the representative party of hoarders, landlords and jotedars and that there would be no solution without direct action and sustained public pressure. Initially the committee principally engaged itself in laying down demands for price control , redistribution of state lands and organising agitations with that in retrospect. On 10 February 1959, Basu and other leaders of
1206-596: A different word from a speaker of Standard Bengali in Bangladesh, even though both words are of native Bengali descent. For example, the word salt is লবণ lôbôṇ in the east which corresponds to নুন nun in the west. Bengali exhibits diglossia , though some scholars have proposed triglossia or even n-glossia or heteroglossia between the written and spoken forms of the language. Two styles of writing have emerged, involving somewhat different vocabularies and syntax : Linguist Prabhat Ranjan Sarkar categorises
1407-480: A diphthong. The total number of diphthongs is not established, with bounds at 17 and 31. An incomplete chart is given by Sarkar (1985) of the following: In standard Bengali, stress is predominantly initial. Bengali words are virtually all trochaic ; the primary stress falls on the initial syllable of the word, while secondary stress often falls on all odd-numbered syllables thereafter, giving strings such as in সহযোগিতা shô -hô- jo -gi- ta "cooperation", where
1608-542: A former Naxalite student leader, had unsuccessfully contested the 1991 assembly election as a CPI(M)-supported candidate. Ahead of the 1996 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election , WBSP had merged into the Samajwadi Party which became a member of the Left Front. CPI(M) fielded 217 candidates in the assembly election, CPI 12, AIFB 34, RSP 23, RCPI 2 and BBC 1 candidate on an independent ticket. DSP, WBSP and MFB candidates contested on CPI(M) tickets. In 5 seats
1809-672: A key role. Even after the Independence of India , the Calcutta Tramways Company had remained a British-owned company which operated in partnership with the Government of West Bengal . On 25 June 1953, the company announced a fare hike for second class passengers that was to be implemented from 1 July onwards, which was supported by the West Bengal Government. In response to the move,
2010-605: A large picketing of the company headquarters at Mango Lane in Calcutta, five Resistance Committee leaders including Basu met with A.C.T Blease who was the agent of the company in India and presenting him with the demands of unilateral withdrawal of the fare hike. On the evening of the same day, 500 citizens including Basu were arrested under the Preventive Detention Act which had been earlier implemented through
2211-692: A large scale and were communally limited. Owing to Bengal's geographic location, Bengali areas bordering non-Bengali regions have been influenced by each other. Small numbers of people in Midnapore , which borders Odisha , have used the Odia script to write in Bengali. In the border areas between West Bengal and Bihar , some Bengali communities historically wrote Bengali in Devanagari , Kaithi and Tirhuta . In Sylhet and Bankura , modified versions of
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#17327913940032412-682: A majority in Bangladesh speaks dialects notably different from SCB. Some dialects, particularly those of the Chittagong region, bear only a superficial resemblance to SCB. The dialect in the Chittagong region is least widely understood by the general body of Bengalis. The majority of Bengalis are able to communicate in more than one variety – often, speakers are fluent in Cholitobhasha (SCB) and one or more regional dialects. Even in SCB,
2613-805: A majority of seats and left office. As of 2016 Biman Bose is the Chairman of the West Bengal Left Front Committee. The Left Front has its roots in various past platforms of collaboration of the West Bengal left parties and anti- Indian National Congress forces. Such examples were the United Left Front , the People's United Left Front and the United Front that governed West Bengal 1967–1971. However, ahead of
2814-522: A meeting in Delhi with the stated intent of forming the "real communist party". The section organised their conference in Tenali , Andhra Pradesh which concluded with a resolution to form a new party and in the seventh congress held between 31 October to 7 November in Calcutta, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was formally founded. Basu was elected to the first politburo of the new party being one of
3015-464: A method of protest. The labour militancy combined with the state policy of non intervention drove an exponential rise in daily wages ranging between a 100–200% increase in the unorganised sector and 100–300% increase in the organised sector. Previously in light of the appalling conditions of agrarian poverty and rural discontent, a radical section of the CPI-M had also split due to the party's involvement in parliamentary politics and subsequently launched
3216-576: A new candidate in Barasat . RSP and CPI retained all their sitting parliamentarians as candidates for re-election. CPI(M) won 21 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 2 seats and RSP 3 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal reached 16,494,424 votes (46.1% of the votes cast in the state). CRLI left the Left Front in 2000 in the wake of the Saifuddin Choudhury 's expulsion from CPI(M). In 2000, the WBSP
3417-521: A part in the adoption of the English alphabet to write Bengali, with certain social media influencers publishing entire novels in Roman Bengali. Jyoti Basu Jyoti Basu (born Jyotirindra Basu ; 8 July 1914 – 17 January 2010) was an Indian Marxist theorist, communist activist, and politician. He was one of the most prominent leaders of Communist movement in India . He served as
3618-522: A peasant's uprising. Eventually this section known as the Naxalites formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969 under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar calling for the annihilation of the class of joteodars (wealthy landlords) and an armed revolution to overthrow the Indian state. Although the previous United Front government had tolerated initial landgrabs by the Naxalites,
3819-628: A result Basu was initially involved in providing liaison and safe houses for underground Communist leaders in the Independence movement. However soon afterwards, he also became involved in organising railway workers, planning strikes and is described to have preferred direct action over ballot box in the initial years. In 1941, Basu was appointed the party secretary of the Bengal Assam Railway (now Bangladesh Railway and Northeast Frontier Railway ) and tasked with organising
4020-583: A result; on 24 March 1948, he was imprisoned for a period of three months and released on the orders of the Calcutta High Court . In December 1948, he married a second time, but soon went into hiding and kept changing residences due to an ongoing crackdown on communist leaders. For a period at the time, he had reportedly lived alongside Indrajit Gupta , who would later become the Home Minister of India . In 1949, Basu had remained as
4221-523: A rounded total of 280 million) worldwide. The Bengali language is native to the region of Bengal , which comprises the present-day nation of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal . Besides the native region it is also spoken by the Bengalis living in Tripura , southern Assam and the Bengali population in the Indian union territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands . Bengali is also spoken in
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#17327913940034422-479: A short period of time, on this occasion the chief minister Ajoy Mukherjee resigned in March 1970 after facing an aggravated and dysfunctional government where smaller member parties were in confrontation with the CPI-M, the largest among them on various issues. There was also an assassination attempt on Basu on 31 March while he was on a party visit to Patna which resulted in the death of one accompanying party worker;
4623-406: A single state called Purva Pradesh was floated which was supported by the Indian National Congress . The Communist Party having maintained the stance of supporting linguistic reorganisation of states in India since 1920, was vehemently opposed to the proposal of the merger. The announcement of the proposal caused widespread protests in West Bengal led by students, workers and even peasantry ,
4824-408: A special diacritic, called the hôsôntô (্) , may be added below the basic consonant grapheme (as in ম্ [m] ). This diacritic, however, is not common and is chiefly employed as a guide to pronunciation. The abugida nature of Bengali consonant graphemes is not consistent, however. Often, syllable-final consonant graphemes, though not marked by a hôsôntô , may carry no inherent vowel sound (as in
5025-581: A state language of the then Dominion of Pakistan . On 21 February 1952, five students and political activists were killed during protests near the campus of the University of Dhaka ; they were the first ever martyrs to die for their right to speak their mother tongue. In 1956, Bengali was made a state language of Pakistan. 21 February has since been observed as Language Movement Day in Bangladesh and has also been commemorated as International Mother Language Day by UNESCO every year since 2000. In 2010,
5226-463: A vowel in isolation from any preceding or following consonant, the independent form of the vowel is used. For example, in মই [moj] "ladder" and in ইলিশ [iliʃ] "Hilsa fish", the independent form of the vowel ই is used (cf. the dependent form ি) . A vowel at the beginning of a word is always realised using its independent form. In addition to the inherent-vowel-suppressing hôsôntô , three more diacritics are commonly used in Bengali. These are
5427-726: A workers union. By May 1943, he had become the representative of the Calcutta Port Engineering Workers' Union in the All India Trade Union Congress , while the Bengal Assam Railway Workers Union under him increased its membership to over 4,000 with union members present in Dacca , Calcutta , Kanchrapara , Mymensingh , Rangpur and Assam . In the following Bengal famine of 1943 , the members of
5628-500: Is Bangladesh's national march, written by The National Poet Kazi Nazrul Islam in Bengali in 1928. It was adopted as the national marching song by the Bangladeshi government in 1972. Additionally, the first two verses of Vande Mataram , a patriotic song written in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee , was adopted as the "national song" of India in both the colonial period and later in 1950 in independent India. Furthermore, it
5829-547: Is a classical Indo-Aryan language from the Indo-European language family native to the Bengal region of South Asia. With over 237 million native speakers and another 41 million as second language speakers as of 2024, Bengali is the fifth most spoken native language and the seventh most spoken language by the total number of speakers in the world. It is the fifth most spoken Indo-European language . Bengali
6030-468: Is a cursive script with eleven graphemes or signs denoting nine vowels and two diphthongs , and thirty-nine graphemes representing consonants and other modifiers. There are no distinct upper and lower case letter forms. The letters run from left to right and spaces are used to separate orthographic words . Bengali script has a distinctive horizontal line running along the tops of the graphemes that links them together called মাত্রা matra . Since
6231-400: Is an abugida , a script with letters for consonants, with diacritics for vowels, and in which an inherent vowel (অ ô ) is assumed for consonants if no vowel is marked. The Bengali alphabet is used throughout Bangladesh and eastern India (Assam, West Bengal, Tripura). The Bengali alphabet is believed to have evolved from a modified Brahmic script around 1000 CE (or 10th–11th century). It
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6432-707: Is believed by many that the national anthem of Sri Lanka ( Sri Lanka Matha ) was inspired by a Bengali poem written by Rabindranath Tagore , while some even believe the anthem was originally written in Bengali and then translated into Sinhala . After the contribution made by the Bangladesh UN Peacekeeping Force in the Sierra Leone Civil War under the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone ,
6633-721: Is considered a separate language, although it shares similarities to Northern Bengali dialects. During the standardisation of Bengali in the 19th century and early 20th century, the cultural centre of Bengal was in Kolkata , a city founded by the British. What is accepted as the standard form today in both West Bengal and Bangladesh is based on the West-Central dialect of Nadia and Kushtia District . There are cases where speakers of Standard Bengali in West Bengal will use
6834-712: Is described to have spent part of his childhood. The Barudi home of Basu was later turned into a library after his death, reportedly on his wishes. Basu's schooling began in 1920 at Loreto School Kindergarten in Dharmatala , Calcutta . His father shortened his name from Jyotirindra to Jyoti during the time of admission. However, three years later he was shifted to the St. Xaviers School, Calcutta . He completed his intermediate education from St. Xaviers in 1932. Subsequently, he took an undergraduate course in English from
7035-404: Is known as Apabhraṃśa , by the end of the first millennium. The Bengali language evolved as a distinct language over the course of time. Though some archaeologists claim that some 10th-century texts were in Bengali, it is not certain whether they represent a differentiated language or whether they represent a stage when Eastern Indo-Aryan languages were differentiating. The local Apabhraṃśa of
7236-490: Is set out below in the International Phonetic Alphabet (upper grapheme in each box) and romanisation (lower grapheme). Bengali is known for its wide variety of diphthongs , combinations of vowels occurring within the same syllable . Two of these, /oi̯/ and /ou̯/ , are the only ones with representation in script, as ঐ and ঔ respectively. /e̯ i̯ o̯ u̯/ may all form the glide part of
7437-503: Is the official , national , and most widely spoken language of Bangladesh , with 98% of Bangladeshis using Bengali as their first language. It is the second-most widely spoken language in India . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura and the Barak Valley region of the state of Assam . It is also the second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. It
7638-508: Is the most widely spoken language in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal , and is spoken by significant populations in other states including Bihar , Arunachal Pradesh , Delhi , Chhattisgarh , Meghalaya , Mizoram , Nagaland , Odisha and Uttarakhand . Bengali is also spoken by the Bengali diasporas ( Bangladeshi diaspora and Indian Bengalis) across Europe, North America,
7839-462: The 1989 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 31 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. In Calcutta Northwest the Left Front supported a Janata Dal candidates who failed to get elected. CPI(M) won 27 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 4 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal, including the votes for the JD candidate, reached 16,284,415 votes (50.6% of the votes cast in the state). In
8040-904: The 1991 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election the Left Front won 244 seats. CPI(M) had fielded 205 candidates (excluding minor parties contesting on CPI(M) tickets), CPI 11, AIFB 34, RSP 23, MFB 2, RCPI 2, DSP 2, WBSP 4 and BBC 1. Several leaders of minor Left Front parties contested on the CPI(M) symbol, such as Kiranmoy Nanda (WBSP), Gouranga Samanta (BBC) and Prabodh Chandra Sinha (DSP). However, DSP also one candidate with its own symbol in Pingla. Two different RCPI tickets contested Hansan (RCPI (Rasik Bhatt)) and Santipur ( Real Communist Party of India ) respectively. MFB fielded 1 candidate on an independent ticket and 1 candidate on CPI(M) ticket. The Left Front supported Janata Dal candidates in 8 constituencies, mainly in and around Calcutta, as well as 1 candidate of
8241-509: The Aesop's Fables in Bengali was printed using Roman letters based on English phonology by the Scottish linguist John Gilchrist . Consecutive attempts to establish a Roman Bengali have continued across every century since these times, and have been supported by the likes of Suniti Kumar Chatterji , Muhammad Qudrat-i-Khuda , and Muhammad Enamul Haq . The Digital Revolution has also played
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8442-690: The All India Gorkha League and 1 candidate of the Communist Revolutionary League of India . CPI(M) won 182 seats, CPI 6 seats, AIFB 29 seats, RSP 18 seats, WBSP 4, seats, DSP 2 seats, RCPI 1 seat, MFB 2 seats and DSP 1 seat (on its own symbol). One JD candidate won. The combined vote for Left Front and allies stood at 15,090,595 (48.92% of the votes cast in the state). In the 1991 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 30 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. In Calcutta Northwest and Calcutta Northeast
8643-675: The Arabic , Persian , and Turkic languages . The arrival of merchants and traders from the Middle East and Turkestan into the Buddhist -ruling Pala Empire , from as early as the 7th century, gave birth to Islamic influence in the region. In the 13th century, subsequent Arab Muslim and Turco-Persian expeditions to Bengal heavily influenced the local vernacular by settling among the native population. Bengali absorbed Arabic and Persian influences in its vocabulary and dialect, including
8844-685: The Bengal Legislative Assembly . He subsequently defeated Humayun Kabir of the Indian National Congress and was elected to the assembly. He is noted to have given a "soul stirring speech" on the presiding food crisis in the Bengal Assembly; according to him the only means of solving the issue was to completely dismantle the Zamindari system and the Permanent Settlement agreement, and to drive out
9045-491: The Biplobi Bangla Congress . Other parties joined in later years, most notably the Communist Party of India . The Left Front ruled the state of West Bengal for seven consecutive terms 1977–2011, five with Jyoti Basu as Chief Minister and two under Buddhadev Bhattacharya . The CPI(M) is the dominant force in the alliance. In the 2011 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election the Left Front failed to gain
9246-485: The Calcutta High Court , and married Basanti Ghosh. However, in the same year, he also inducted himself as an activist affiliated with the Communist Party of India (CPI). His entry into the communist movement at the time had reportedly been in opposition to the wishes of his relatively well off family. Following the Meerut conspiracy in 1929, the Communist Party had also been made illegal by British authorities, as
9447-760: The Calcutta South seat , but Sur failed to defeat Banerjee. The Left Front also fielded Prasanta Chatterjee, the sitting mayor of Calcutta for the Calcutta Northeast seat as well as fielding sitting Howrah mayor Swadesh Chakravarty against the Congress(I) MP Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi . AIFB fielded a new candidate in Barasat , as the Barasat MP Chitta Basu had died. All in all, CPI(M) won 24 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 2 seats and RSP 4 seats. AIFB lost
9648-461: The Chakdaha seat . The Left Front won the election, winning 231 out of the 294 seats. CPI(M) won 178 seats, AIFB 25, RSP 20, MFB 3, RCPI 3 and 1 independent. AIFB and RSP won significant chunks of seats in northern Bengal. The combined Left Front vote was 6,568,999 votes (45.8% of the votes cast in the state). The electoral result came as a surprise to the Left Front itself, as it had offered 52% of
9849-474: The Constitution of Bangladesh states Bengali to be the sole official language of Bangladesh. The Bengali Language Implementation Act, 1987 , made it mandatory to use Bengali in all records and correspondences, laws, proceedings of court and other legal actions in all courts, government or semi-government offices, and autonomous institutions in Bangladesh. It is also the de facto national language of
10050-738: The Food movement of 1959 between May–June as the situation was further aggravated by hoarders attempting to save up stocks in illegal go-downs and warehouses . The persistent refusal of the Government of West Bengal to consider the demands presented also provoked the PIFRC into augmenting the demands to include enactment of ceilings on private land holdings and confiscation without compensation of excessive lands owned by Zamindars (trans: Landlords); these were presented in parallel with general strikes and organised direct action endorsed and supported by
10251-454: The Green Revolution in India in the 1960s. The agricultural growth jumped from an annual average of 0.6% between 1970–1980 to over 7% between 1980–1990 and the state was described as an agricultural success story of the 1980s. During this period, the state of West Bengal moved from being a food importer to a food exporter and became the largest producer of rice outstripping the states of Andhra Pradesh and Punjab which had previously held
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#173279139400310452-453: The Hindu College, Calcutta (later renamed to Presidency College). Following his graduation in 1935, he acquired admission in the University College, London (UCL) to study Law and became a barrister at Middle Temple on 26 January 1940. He had already left for India by the time he acquired his barristerial qualification which he received in absentia. During his stay in London , he became involved in political discourse and activism for
10653-428: The Hindutva movement however complicated matters, according to JP the formal inclusion of the Marxists who had undergone a splintering and whose organisation was localised in a particular region would have been detrimental to the movement as the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh members would switch sides if they joined. JP and Basu eventually agreed that the CPI-M would not formally join the Janata Party as it would weaken
10854-417: The Indian National Congress , the Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) led Left Front coalition . The results of the election was a surprising sweep for the Left Front winning 230 seats out of 290 with the CPI-M winning an absolute majority on its own, Basu became the chief minister of West Bengal for the next 23 years until his retirement in 2000. Jyoti Basu was also repeatedly elected as
11055-421: The Jayaprakash Narayan (JP)'s movement, the CPI-M began providing support to it and went on to participate in discussions for the creation of a united front under the umbrella of the Janata Party . Several of the leaders of the CPI-M were also influenced by JP with Basu noted to be one of his prominent admirers having worked under him in the All India Railwaymen's Federation during the 1940s. The involvement of
11256-410: The Kaithi script had some historical prominence, mainly among Muslim communities. The variant in Sylhet was identical to the Baitali Kaithi script of Hindustani with the exception of Sylhet Nagri possessing matra . Sylhet Nagri was standardised for printing in c. 1869 . Up until the 19th century, numerous variations of the Arabic script had been used across Bengal from Chittagong in
11457-428: The March 1977 Lok Sabha election the left parties under the leadership of CPI(M) decided to form an alliance just amongst themselves, based on past negative experiences in collaboration with centrist anti-Congress forces. The Left Front was set up when the repressive climate of the Emergency was finally relaxed in January 1977. The six founding parties of the Left Front, i.e. the CPI(M), the All India Forward Bloc ,
11658-473: The Nadia region . Bengali shows a high degree of diglossia , with the literary and standard form differing greatly from the colloquial speech of the regions that identify with the language. Modern Bengali vocabulary is based on words inherited from Magadhi Prakrit and Pali, along with tatsamas and reborrowings from Sanskrit and borrowings from Persian , Arabic , Austroasiatic languages and other languages with which it has historically been in contact. In
11859-470: The Nehru government because of its " class character " contrary to the rightist section which had declared outright support for the central government. This stance of the leftist section came as dissatisfactory to the Nehru government which had imposed a state of national emergency and introduced the Defence of India Ordinance, 1962 , and henceforth utilised them to imprison various opposition leaders and activists as well as Chinese Indian citizens . Basu
12060-433: The Prime Minister of India , Indira Gandhi imposed a national emergency on the premise of internal disturbances suspending elections, legitimising rule by decree and curbing civil liberties . The proposition for the declaration of the emergency and the formal draft of the ordinance were both notably corroborated to have been forwarded by Siddhartha Shankar Ray . The Communist Party of India (Marxist) emerged as one of
12261-416: The Revolutionary Socialist Party , the Marxist Forward Bloc , the Revolutionary Communist Party of India and the Biplabi Bangla Congress , articulated a common programme. The Left Front contested the Lok Sabha election in an electoral understanding together with the Janata Party . The Workers Party of India applied for inclusion into the Left Front, but was denied entry. In the 1977 Lok Sabha election
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#173279139400312462-432: The University of Karachi (established by East Pakistani politicians before Independence of Bangladesh ) also offers regular programs of studies at the Bachelors and at the Masters levels for Bengali Literature. The national anthems of both Bangladesh ( Amar Sonar Bangla ) and India ( Jana Gana Mana ) were written in Bengali by the Bengali Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore . Notuner Gaan known as " Chol Chol Chol"
12663-483: The West Bengal Socialist Party (both DSP and WBSP became Left Front member parties). Some of the older, smaller Left Front constituents were uncomfortable with the expansion of the alliance, claiming that CPI(M) was diluting it politically. There were also disagreements on distribution of ministerial portfolios after the expansion of the alliance. CPI(M) contested 209 seats in the assembly election, CPI 12 seats, AIFB 34 seats and RSP 23 seats. 16 candidates were fielded by
12864-509: The West Bengal Special Powers Act 1947 modelled on the Defence of India Act 1915 ; the act gave unchecked power to the bureaucracy and the police to suppress public agitations allowing law enforcement to detain individuals for up to 6 months without trial on reasonable grounds , which was justified on the grounds of maintaining the law and order situation. The bill was inordinately criticised and opposed by Basu who declared that "it seeks to perpetuate (the undemocratic rule)". In 1948,
13065-432: The Zamindari system and had instead developed vested interests with the Zamindars ( transl. Landlords ) themselves which resulted in the persistence of poor socioeconomic conditions and the employment of repressive tactics against agitations. In the following period the Communist Party was made illegal by the government on allegations of trying to incite on open rebellion and Basu repeatedly arrested as
13266-499: The boldface represents primary and secondary stress. Native Bengali words do not allow initial consonant clusters ; the maximum syllabic structure is CVC (i.e., one vowel flanked by a consonant on each side). Many speakers of Bengali restrict their phonology to this pattern, even when using Sanskrit or English borrowings, such as গেরাম geram (CV.CVC) for গ্রাম gram (CCVC) "village" or ইস্কুল iskul (VC.CVC) for স্কুল skul (CCVC) "school". The Bengali-Assamese script
13467-557: The phonology of Eastern Bengali is seen through the lack of nasalised vowels and an alveolar articulation of what are categorised as the "cerebral" consonants (as opposed to the postalveolar articulation of western Bengal). Some varieties of Bengali, particularly Sylheti , Chittagonian and Chakma , have contrastive tone ; differences in the pitch of the speaker's voice can distinguish words. Kharia Thar and Mal Paharia are closely related to Western Bengali dialects, but are typically classified as separate languages. Similarly, Hajong
13668-427: The "Tram and Bus Fare Enhancement Resistance Committee" was formed in which Basu was inducted as the representative of the Communist Party. The Calcutta Tramway Union announced their support for the committee and published statistical data through the Swadhinata which displayed that the company was privy to "swelling profits" concluding the fare hike to be "absolutely uncalled for". From the day of implementation of
13869-480: The "rightist section") and the Democratic Front (referred to as the "leftist section"). Basu belonging to the latter advocated for radical change to supplant the domination of big landlords, capitalists and monopolists in the Indian polity and opposed any conditional support for Nehruvian policies while denouncing the " revisionist position" taken by the former to support Jawaharlal Nehru on certain issues. The militant food movement in West Bengal also emboldened
14070-457: The 16th century, Portuguese missionaries began a tradition of using the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Bengali language. Though the Portuguese standard did not receive much growth, a few Roman Bengali works relating to Christianity and Bengali grammar were printed as far as Lisbon in 1743. The Portuguese were followed by the English and French respectively, whose works were mostly related to Bengali grammar and transliteration. The first version of
14271-432: The 1950s which peaked near the end of 1959. The leaders of the Communist Party adopted the twin strategy of organising anti-government mass movements by forming issue based committees to draw public support from beyond party lines and pressurise the government into providing relief measures while also badgering on about food scarcity on the floor of the legislative assembly to draw and retain public and media attention on
14472-652: The 19th and 20th centuries, there were two standard forms of written Bengali: In 1948, the government of Pakistan tried to impose Urdu as the sole state language in Pakistan, giving rise to the Bengali language movement . This was a popular ethnolinguistic movement in the former East Bengal (today Bangladesh ), which arose as a result of the strong linguistic consciousness of the Bengalis and their desire to promote and protect spoken and written Bengali's recognition as
14673-524: The 6th and longest serving Chief Minister of West Bengal from 1977 to 2000. He was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) . He was the member of Politburo of the party since its formation in 1964 till 2008. He was also the member of West Bengal Legislative Assembly 11 times. In his political career, spanning over seven decades, he was noted to have been the India's longest serving chief minister in an elected democracy, at
14874-593: The 6th century, which competed with the ancestor of Bengali for some time. The ancestor of Bengali was the language of the Pala Empire and the Sena dynasty . During the medieval period, Middle Bengali was characterised by the elision of the word-final অ ô and the spread of compound verbs, which originated from the Sanskrit Schwa . Slowly, the word-final ô disappeared from many words influenced by
15075-520: The Bangla Congress and the former deputy chief minister Basu of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) contested from the Barangar constituency which ended with Basu winning with a vote share of 57.31% and Ajoy Mukherjee emerging as runners up with a vote share of 42.69%. However, Mukherjee who led the Bangla Congress was able to regain his former position through a post-poll coalition called
15276-596: The Barasat seat to Trinamool Congress. The Left Front vote in West Bengal reached 17,101,211 votes (46% of the votes cast in the state). Ahead of the 1999 Lok Sabha election , the Left Front released its list of candidates on 30 July 1999; CPI(M) contested 32 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. The Left Front fielded nine new candidates; two sitting CPI(M) MPs were replaced ( Ananda Pathak from Darjeeling and Ajoy Mukherjee from Krishnanagar ). CPI(M) fielded new faces in five Calcutta constituencies. AIFB fielded
15477-612: The Bengali daily organ Swadhinata of the Communist Party was resumed and Basu appointed as the president of its editorial board. The legislative assembly elections for 1951 were also held by the Election Commission in March 1952 instead. In the West Bengal State Assembly election of 1952 , Basu was elected as the representative of the Baranagar constituency and the Communist Party emerged as
15678-456: The Bengali equivalent of a full stop – have been adopted from Western scripts and their usage is similar. Unlike in Western scripts (Latin, Cyrillic, etc.) where the letter forms stand on an invisible baseline, the Bengali letter-forms instead hang from a visible horizontal left-to-right headstroke called মাত্রা matra . The presence and absence of this matra can be important. For example,
15879-426: The Bengali script is an abugida, its consonant graphemes usually do not represent phonetic segments , but carry an "inherent" vowel and thus are syllabic in nature. The inherent vowel is usually a back vowel , either [ɔ] as in মত [m ɔ t] "opinion" or [o] , as in মন [m o n] "mind", with variants like the more open [ɒ] . To emphatically represent a consonant sound without any inherent vowel attached to it,
16080-427: The British with haste. Basu had also organised a continuous railway strike in support of the 1946 Royal Indian Navy ratings revolt , and later secured the release of various political prisoners on 24 July 1946. Post-independence and Cold War Contemporary history Following the partition of India , Basu remained as the member of the now divided West Bengal Legislative Assembly . Prafulla Chandra Ghosh of
16281-484: The CPI-M increased its vote share in constituencies which were Congress strongholds; the explanation provided by the CPI-M was that violence and rigging methods were mostly employed at unfavorable constituencies and that elections had been rigged in 87–172 other constituencies. One of the discrepancies pointed at by the CPI-M was that the constituency of Baranagar which had recorded a very high voter turnout despite being subject to section 144 and violent clashes throughout
16482-459: The CPI-M, the press in Calcutta at the time reported that the rigging had occurred in around 50 constituencies. According to the socialist essayist Madhu Limaye , the "black art of booth rigging" was perfected by the Congress in the 1972 election where whole constituencies had been rigged. It was also noted that several constituencies which were known as left wing strongholds had produced massive victory margins in favour of Congress (I) whereas
16683-488: The Central Committee of the Communist Party held a meeting between 28 January to 4 February protesting the move. Basu and Yogendra Sharma , the secretaries of the state committees of the Communist Party in West Bengal and Bihar respectively issued a joint press statement calling the merger proposal to be "antidemocratic and reactionary ". Basu is noted to have opposed the proposal from both within and outside
16884-643: The Central Committee's secretary for linguistic reorganisation and declared that the results should reflect the people's mandate . In the subsequent by-elections, Mohit Mitra won from the Calcutta North East constituency and Lal Behari Das won from the Khejuri constituency , defeating their Congress counterparts by a margin of over 20,000 in both constituencies which caused the Chief Minister Bidhan Chandra Roy to scrap
17085-554: The Chinese would resolve the disputes, however Basu himself was more sceptical and advocated for the adoption of a twin strategy of maintaining the border outposts inside Tibet and then engaging in talks using the outposts as a form of leverage ahead of any commencement on a new treaty. The leftist section continued to oppose the Chinese stand on the India-China frontier but was also opposed to providing unconditional support to
17286-526: The Communist Party about the nature of the Indian State and the characterisation and method of interaction with the Indian National Congress , about the approach towards the ongoing debate between the Soviet Union and China and with regards to the handling of the border disputes between India and China . These debates were further exacerbated by the food movement in West Bengal and brought to
17487-466: The Communist Party including Basu were involved in famine relief work. The party also organised "People's Food Committees" which would attempt to force hoarders into releasing their stocks for distribution; Basu participated in the organisation of such committees in Calcutta and Midnapore . According to Basu's testimony, they only had a small organisation at the time and did the best they could while
17688-429: The Congress. The opposing alliance was led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) which included the previous members of the United Left Front alongside the Biplobi Bangla Congress , a splinter of the Bangla Congress. The election was marred widespread instances of violence against opposition parties, electoral discrepancies, irregularities in process and consequent allegations of rigging from both Congress (O) and
17889-541: The Democratic Coalition which notably included Indira Gandhi's Congress and was supported by the CPI and Congress (Organisation) . The CPI-M stood as the sole opposition party and Basu once again became the leader of opposition. Within 2 weeks of the formation of the new government, Basu issued a no confidence motion which stood at exactly 141 in support of the government out of 141 required. Despite surviving
18090-525: The Left Front and the Janata Party broke down. The Left Front had offered the Janata Party 52% of the seats and the post as Chief Minister to JP leader Prafulla Chandra Sen , but JP did not accept anything less than 56% of the seats. The Left Front thus opted to contest the elections on its own. It issued a 36-point manifesto ahead of the polls. The Left Front manifesto has similarities with the past 32-point United Front manifesto. The seat-sharing within
18291-416: The Left Front contested 26 out of the 42 West Bengal Lok Sabha constituencies; CPI(M) fielded candidates for 20 seats, RSP 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. CPI(M) won 17 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 3 seats. The combined Left Front vote in West Bengal reached 5,049,077 votes (33.4% of the votes cast in the state). Ahead of the subsequent June 1977 West Bengal Legislative Assembly elections seat-sharing talks between
18492-490: The Left Front supported JD candidates, mainly in the Calcutta area. The Left Front won 203 out of 294 seats, the first major electoral set-back since its foundation. CPI(M) won 157 seats (including minor parties on its tickets), CPI 6, AFB 21, RSP 18 and BBC 1. The electoral losses were primarily felt in Calcutta and the industrial areas, and nine incumbent Left Front ministers failed to get re-elected. All JD candidates finished in second place and RCPI lost its representation in
18693-405: The Left Front supported a Janata Dal candidates who failed to get elected. CPI(M) won 27 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 4 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal, including the votes for the JD candidates, reached 14,955,151 votes (47.1% of the votes cast in the state). In 1995 the Communist Revolutionary League of India (CRLI) of Ashim Chatterjee joined the Left Front. Chatterjee,
18894-603: The Left Front was based on the 'Promode Formula', named after the CPI(M) State Committee Secretary Promode Dasgupta . Under the Promode Formula the party with the highest share of votes in a constituency would continue to field candidates there, under its own election symbol and manifesto. CPI(M) contested 224 seats, AIFB 36, RSP 23, MFB 3, RCPI 4 and BBC 2. There was also a Left Front-supported independent candidate in
19095-494: The Left Front won a landslide victory. Some 800,000 acres of land were distributed to 1.5 million heads of households between 1978 and 1982. The Left Front government was also credited with coping with the refugee situation created by the Bangladesh Liberation War and severe floods. Seeing distribution of central government funds as unjust and politicized, the Left Front government began measures to pressure
19296-520: The Middle East and other regions. Bengali was accorded the status of a classical language by the government of India on 3 October 2024. It is the second most spoken and fourth fastest growing language in India , following Hindi in the first place, Kashmiri in the second place, and Meitei ( Manipuri ), along with Gujarati , in the third place, according to the 2011 census of India . Bengali has developed over more than 1,400 years. Bengali literature , with its millennium-old literary history,
19497-466: The PIFRC had issued a press release stating intent to begin the civil disobedience movement by taking preparations to organise volunteers; Basu was among the list of signatories that included Niranjan Sengupta and Nihar Mukherjee . The committee further set the date of 20 August for the beginning of the civil disobedience movement. In August, the police arrested 35 prominent leaders of the committee including 7 members of legislative assembly through
19698-471: The PIFRC met with the Chief Minister, Bidhan Chandra Roy who gave them verbal assurances that ration shops will be restocked offering amenable prices but the assurances weren't followed through. On 26 April, Union Food Minister, Ajit Prasad Jain declared that the food situation in West Bengal was "easy, smooth and comfortable". This caused widespread public outrage and led to the intensification of
19899-594: The Preventive Detention Act were reluctant to enter the assembly to arrest a legislator . In Basu's testimony, he states that it was easier for him support the agitation from inside the assembly by projecting the police action on the movement without getting arrested. During the presentation of the recommendation of the States Reorganisation Commission in 1956, a proposal for the merger of Bihar and West Bengal into
20100-859: The Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Nationalist Congress Party . One of the RJD candidates was elected. The Left Front significantly improved its performance in comparison to 2001 in the North 24 Parganas and South 24 Parganas districts . Only in the Cooch Behar District did the Left Front suffer a reversal of fortunes. Following the 2006 election, Tata Motors announced that it would establish its Tata Nano car factory in Singur . A major land dispute surged. Likewise,
20301-519: The Security Act. Over the course of the month the movement faced progressively increased police action and subsequently heightened civil unrest spreading all across West Bengal with general strikes , mass demonstrations , tramway boycotts to hunger strikes from imprisoned agitators and even violent confrontations between the police and agitators on the streets. In the end, the five committee leaders including Basu were released on 26 July,
20502-489: The West Bengal Land (Amendment) Bill was passed. Through Operation Barga was done before in 1967 under the leadership of Hare Krishna Konar and Benoy Choudhury , in which share-croppers were given inheritable rights on lands they tilled, 1.1 million acres of land was distributed amongst 1.4 million share-croppers. On 4 June 1978 three-tier panchayat local bodies were elected across the state, elections in which
20703-562: The adoption of the Constitution of India in 1950, the ban on the Communist Party was lifted on the orders of the Calcutta High Court. In September 1951, Congress attempted to renew the Security Act with the introduction of the West Bengal Security (Amendment) Bill of 1951 which raised criticism in the assembly on the lines of creating an environment of fear and intimidation on the eve of the first elections to
20904-414: The area of Swarupnagar , leading to police firing and death of two participating teenagers on 16 February. Consequently, widespread spontaneous protests broke out over the following months and across the state of West Bengal with more frequent instances of vandalism and violent encounters between the agitators and police than in the previous agitations. This movement while having less organised backing from
21105-471: The assembly which were to be held in December. Although the bill was passed once again despite Basu's persistent opposition, this time he had garnered the support of a number of Gandhian Congress members including from the former chief minister and architect of the bill, P. C. Ghosh, all of whom had resigned from the party and formed their own Kisan Mazdoor Praja Party by the time of voting. In same year,
21306-427: The assembly, he presided over the mass meeting at Wellington Square in opposition to the proposal and severely criticised the governor's position in support of the proposal. According to his testimony, the proposal was akin to a conspiracy to annihilate the basic identity of Bengal. Basu presented the idea of the proposal as a poll issue for the by-elections of the year, supporting the candidacy of Mohit Mitra who
21507-569: The assembly. CPI(M) had fielded 210 candidates, CPI 13, AIFB 34, RSP 23, RCPI 2, WBSP 4, DSP 2, MFB 1 and BBC 1. A 38-point Left Front election manifesto was presented in March 2001 at CPI(M) West Bengal headquarters, Muzaffar Bhavan, and was signed by Jyoti Basu (CPI(M)), Sailen Dasgupta (CPI(M)), Buddhadeb Bhattacharya (CPI(M), Anil Biswas (CPI(M)), Ashok Ghosh (AIFB), Debabrata Bandyopadhyay (RSP), Manjukumar Majumdar (CPI), Kiranmoy Nanda (SP), Prabodh Chandra Sinha (DSP), Mihir Byne (RCPI), Pratim Chatterjee (MFB) and Sunil Chaudhuri (BBC). A mass rally
21708-546: The assembly. However, in terms of votes the Left Front and the five JD candidates got 18,143,795 votes (49.3%). Jyoti Basu's fifth Left Front government was sworn in, with 48 ministers representing all 13 districts of the state. In the 1996 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 31 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. In Calcutta Northwest the Left Front supported a Janata Dal candidate who failed to get elected. CPI(M) won 23 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 4 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal, including
21909-536: The basis of modern standard colloquial Bengali. In the dialects prevalent in much of eastern and south-eastern Bangladesh ( Barisal , Chittagong , Dhaka and Sylhet Divisions of Bangladesh), many of the stops and affricates heard in West Bengal and western Bangladesh are pronounced as fricatives . Western alveolo-palatal affricates চ [ tɕɔ ] , ছ [ tɕʰɔ ] , জ [ dʑɔ ] correspond to eastern চ [tsɔ] , ছ [tsʰɔ~sɔ] , জ [dzɔ~zɔ] . The influence of Tibeto-Burman languages on
22110-559: The central government to change its approach towards the state governments. These movements eventually resulted in the Sarkaria Commission . Ahead of the 1980 Lok Sabha election the Left Front and the Communist Party of India entered into a seat-sharing agreement. CPI(M) contested 31 seats, RSP 4 seats, AIFB 4 seats and CPI 3 seats. CPI(M) won 28 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 4 seats. The combined Left Front-CPI vote in West Bengal reached 11,086,354 votes (52.7% of
22311-448: The committee to locate and force the sale of hidden stocks of rice. On 25 June, the PIFRC and over 100 trade unions called a statewide hartal ( general strike ) to protest against the "anti–food" policies of the government. The agitators held an open mass meeting near the Chief Minister's residence where Basu was present among the speakers alongside Siddhartha Shankar Ray , Tridib Chaudhuri and Bankim Mukherjee , who demanded that
22512-515: The communist members under the leadership of Basu insisted on proceeding with the strike which resulted in disciplinary action being taken against the communists. Subsequently, the government also decided to crack down on the communist leadership by arresting 118 leaders involved in the railway sector in West Bengal including Basu. In the aftermath, the strike was a failure as the administration mobilised troops and police force to prevent any disruption from communist influenced union members. After
22713-442: The consensus candidate for the position while Basu became the deputy chief minister and in-charge of the finance department. The government however collapsed within a year when the food minister, P. C. Ghosh resigned from the government after facing persistent agitations led by the CPI-M (both part of the same government) against his policy of seeking voluntary measures from landlords and middlemen which were ineffective in resolving
22914-429: The conservative Indian National Congress became the first Chief Minister of West Bengal. The Congress however faced civil unrest from the onset; hartals , civil disobedience and demonstrations had soon become the order of the day in the face of a Congress government that was seen as unresponsive to the social and economic distress that was widespread in the state at the time. The new assembly therefore instituted
23115-469: The consonant which comes first is put on top of or to the left of the one that immediately follows. In these ligatures, the shapes of the constituent consonant signs are often contracted and sometimes even distorted beyond recognition. In the Bengali writing system, there are nearly 285 such ligatures denoting consonant clusters. Although there exist a few visual formulas to construct some of these ligatures, many of them have to be learned by rote. Recently, in
23316-507: The country. In India, Bengali is one of the 23 official languages . It is the official language of the Indian states of West Bengal , Tripura and in Barak Valley of Assam . Bengali has been a second official language of the Indian state of Jharkhand since September 2011. In Pakistan , Bengali is a recognised secondary language in the city of Karachi mainly spoken by stranded Bengalis of Pakistan . The Department of Bengali in
23517-456: The course of the following days between 2–5 September, civil unrest with large scale participation from students of schools, colleges and universities erupted across the city accompanied by violent encounters with the police, vandalism and mass shootings by the police; in the end around 46–80 civilians were killed. The opposition leaders including Basu accused the government of having turned " authoritarian and ruthless" and reasoned that there
23718-442: The day which had resulted in the death of one its workers. Basu refused to accept the results and declared that the new assembly was an "assembly of frauds". He also published an open editorial to the "world press" regarding terming the incidents of violence to be "semi-fascist terror". The CPI-M boycotted the assembly for the remaining term of the seventh assembly taking the stance that a "massive rigging" had occurred. In 1975,
23919-607: The death of a policeman in a clash with the Socialist Unity Centre , one of the member parties of the United Front. The agitation was notably defused by him in person, who permitted a group of dissident police personnel to enter his office in the assembly house during a demonstration and negotiated with them, reprehending them for disorderly behaviour while taking into consideration the grievances raised. The second United Front government however too fell within
24120-425: The deputy chief minister. In addition during the negotiations Basu was able to secure the portfolios of fisheries, food, excise, labour, civil defence and education for the CPI-M as well as the department of general administration and police from the home ministry forsaking the finance ministry which he had previously held. In the election, the United Front won an overwhelming victory with 214 out of 280 seats and as
24321-604: The development of Dobhashi . Bengali acquired prominence, over Persian, in the court of the Sultans of Bengal with the ascent of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah . Subsequent Muslim rulers actively promoted the literary development of Bengali, allowing it to become the most spoken vernacular language in the Sultanate. Bengali adopted many words from Arabic and Persian , which was a manifestation of Islamic culture on
24522-700: The east to Meherpur in the west. The 14th-century court scholar of Bengal, Nur Qutb Alam , composed Bengali poetry using the Persian alphabet . After the Partition of India in the 20th century, the Pakistani government attempted to institute the Perso-Arabic script as the standard for Bengali in East Pakistan ; this was met with resistance and contributed to the Bengali language movement. In
24723-553: The eastern subcontinent, Purbi Apabhraṃśa or Abahatta (lit. 'meaningless sounds'), eventually evolved into regional dialects, which in turn formed three groups, the Bengali–Assamese languages , the Bihari languages , and the Odia language . The language was not static: different varieties coexisted and authors often wrote in multiple dialects in this period. For example, Ardhamagadhi is believed to have evolved into Abahatta around
24924-555: The establishment of armed political cadres, Naxalbari uprising and widespread spontaneous agitations against prevailing conditions of extreme poverty . In the West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1967 , fourteen opposition parties contested through two pre-poll political alliances; the CPI-M led United Left Front and the CPI and Bangla Congress (splinter of the Congress party formed in 1966) led People's United Left Front . The CPI-M became
25125-518: The famine took the lives of over 3 million people. Basu was elected to the Bengal provincial committee of the Communist Party in the same year. He would later participate in the Tebhaga movement between 1945 and 1947 that sought to end the food crisis in Bengal, in a supportive capacity as a railway unionist . By 1944, Basu had started leading the trade union activities of the Communist Party. He
25326-657: The fare hike scrapped by the Chief Minister Bidhan Chandra Roy on 31 July and the remaining imprisoned agitators released by 2 August. In January 1954, the Communist party held its third congress in Madurai and Basu was elected as the new Central Committee member during the congress. In February, Basu became involved in the 1954 teachers' agitation in West Bengal. The All Bengal Teachers Association (ABTA) had been called for implementing
25527-466: The final ন in মন [m o n] or the medial ম in গামলা [ɡamla] ). A consonant sound followed by some vowel sound other than the inherent [ɔ] is orthographically realised by using a variety of vowel allographs above, below, before, after, or around the consonant sign, thus forming the ubiquitous consonant-vowel typographic ligatures . These allographs, called কার kar , are diacritical vowel forms and cannot stand on their own. For example,
25728-498: The first time. Besides his general curriculum at UCL, he would attend various lectures on political organisation , constitutional law , international law and anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). Due to which, he is also credited as an alumnus of LSE. He had reportedly attended the lectures of the political theorist and economist, Harold Laski and was influenced by his anti-fascism . By 1937, Basu
25929-513: The food crisis. For the mid-term West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1969 , the United Front Committee was formed consisting of all the coalition partners of the previous government which agreed upon a pre-poll alliance to contest the election together under a 32-point programme. Under terms of the agreement, if the alliance were to attain a majority then Mukherjee would become the chief minister while Basu would become
26130-522: The forefront by the rising border tensions between India and China. The Communist Party had also become the second largest party in the Lok Sabha following the 1962 Indian general election with nearly 10% vote share which is described to have brought prominence to the internal divisions of the party. The party was broadly divided into two sections namely the National Front (referred to as
26331-734: The general secretary. With the merger of the Bengal Nagpur Railway Workers' Union and the Bengal Delhi Railroad Workers' Union in the same year, Basu was elected the general secretary of the new combined union. He would also be elected as the secretary of the All India Railwaymen's Federation . In 1946, Basu was appointed by the Communist Party to contest as the candidate for the Railway Employees' constituency in
26532-670: The government of Ahmad Tejan Kabbah declared Bengali as an honorary official language in December 2002. In 2009, elected representatives in both Bangladesh and West Bengal called for Bengali to be made an official language of the United Nations . Regional varieties in spoken Bengali constitute a dialect continuum . Linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji grouped the dialects of Bengali language into four large clusters: Rarhi , Vangiya , Kamrupi and Varendri ; but many alternative grouping schemes have also been proposed. The south-western dialects ( Rarhi or Nadia dialect) form
26733-623: The government should meet the conditions presented by the PIFRC or resign, otherwise they would organise a mass civil disobedience movement. On 9 July, the Swadhinata gave a clarion call through an editorial which stated that "People of West Bengal know quite well that the Congress Government and its food policy are responsible for their destitute condition. They also know that only by hitting hard, time and again, they could be forced to do at least something..." Earlier on 6 July,
26934-533: The government sought to extend the act through the West Bengal Security Ordinance which would remove the restriction of "reasonable grounds" for imprisonment. According to Basu, the new ordinance had made it clear that the Congress intended to establish a police state in West Bengal . By this time, the state of West Bengal had already been declared as a "problem province" by the Congress administration and Bidhan Chandra Roy replaced as
27135-499: The graph মি [mi] represents the consonant [m] followed by the vowel [i] , where [i] is represented as the diacritical allograph ি (called ই-কার i-kar ) and is placed before the default consonant sign. Similarly, the graphs মা [ma] , মী [mi] , মু [mu] , মূ [mu] , মৃ [mri] , মে [me~mɛ] , মৈ [moj] , মো [mo] and মৌ [mow] represent the same consonant ম combined with seven other vowels and two diphthongs. In these consonant-vowel ligatures,
27336-412: The graphical form. However, since this change is not as widespread and is not being followed as uniformly in the rest of the Bengali printed literature, today's Bengali-learning children will possibly have to learn to recognise both the new "transparent" and the old "opaque" forms, which ultimately amounts to an increase in learning burden. Bengali punctuation marks, apart from the downstroke । daṛi –
27537-617: The identification and redistribution of ceiling surplus land, and played a significant part in the rise of agricultural growth through the 1980s. Among the more prominent measures initiated by the new government was that of Operation Barga . Introduced in 1978, it was a comprehensive and radical measure for land reforms which was further formalised through two legislation in 1979 and 1980. The operation sought to actively identify and record bargardars (trans: sharecroppers ) by present occupational status without any reliance on ancestral records, producing official documentation for enforcement of
27738-434: The identity of the assailant has remained unknown til date. The government continued to be operational until the dissolution of the assembly by presidential proclamation on 30 July. In the following West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1971 , the parties contested alone but CPI-M remained as the single largest party while increasing its number of seats from 80 to 113. Both the former chief minister Ajoy Mukherjee of
27939-417: The initial motion, the new government too fell within 3 months when the assembly was dissolved on the recommendation of the chief minister. In the West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1972 , Congress (I) won an overwhelming majority and Siddhartha Shankar Ray who was previously in the Bangla Congress and later appointed as a specialised union cabinet ministry called West Bengal Affairs Minister became
28140-515: The issue, Basu played a significant role in the latter with frequent moves for adjournment motions and participation in heated debates. By the end of 1958, the Communist Party initiated the formation of the Price Increase and Famine Resistance Committee (PIFRC) in collaboration with the other primarily leftist members of the opposition. Basu became one of the formative leaders of the committee. Food insecurity in West Bengal had reached
28341-494: The language as: While most writing is in Standard Colloquial Bengali (SCB), spoken dialects exhibit a greater variety. People in southeastern West Bengal, including Kolkata, speak in SCB. Other dialects, with minor variations from Standard Colloquial, are used in other parts of West Bengal and western Bangladesh, such as the Midnapore dialect, characterised by some unique words and constructions. However,
28542-523: The language movement. Although Sanskrit has been spoken by Hindu Brahmins in Bengal since the 3rd century BC, the local Buddhist population spoke varieties of the Prakrit . These varieties are generally referred to as "eastern Magadhi Prakrit ", as coined by linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji , as the Middle Indo-Aryan dialects were influential in the first millennium when Bengal
28743-547: The language. Major texts of Middle Bengali (1400–1800) include Yusuf-Zulekha by Shah Muhammad Sagir and Srikrishna Kirtana by the Chandidas poets. Court support for Bengali culture and language waned when the Mughal Empire conquered Bengal in the late 16th and early 17th century. The modern literary form of Bengali was developed during the 19th and early 20th centuries based on the west-central dialect spoken in
28944-468: The left at the time) election meeting was held in Calcutta on 31 January 1998 with Jyoti Basu as the main speaker. Basu undertook a tour of all West Bengal districts to campaign for the Left Front candidates. The CPI(M) candidates included 18 incumbent Lok Sabha MPs, whereas the CPI and RSP fielded all of their incumbent MPs. The Left Front fielded the ex-mayor and 4-term minister Prasanta Sur to contest against Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee for
29145-585: The leftist anti-Congress section to overwhelm the rightist section which sought tactical cooperation with the Indian National Congress. On the other hand, with the flare-up of the Sino-Indian War , the leftist section of the Communist Party was portrayed as "pro–china" by their opponents from both within and outside the party. Before the outbreak of the war, the section had taken the stance that dialogue and diplomatic partnership with
29346-428: The letter ত tô and the numeral ৩ "3" are distinguishable only by the presence or absence of the matra , as is the case between the consonant cluster ত্র trô and the independent vowel এ e , also the letter হ hô and Bengali Ôbogroho ঽ (~ô) and letter ও o and consonant cluster ত্ত ttô . The letter-forms also employ the concepts of letter-width and letter-height (the vertical space between
29547-490: The list of candidates. Out of the 234 seats won by the Left Front, 175 were won by CPI(M) candidates, 8 from CPI, 23 AIFB, 20 RSP, 4 WBSP, 2 MFB and 1 DSP. Most of the incumbent ministers were re-elected, exceptions being Prabodh Chandra Sinha (Parliamentary Affairs, DSP) and Mohammed Amin (Labour, CPI(M)). The Left Front Chief Whip, Rabin Deb , also lost his seat. In 4 seats the Left Front supported other parties, two each for
29748-558: The merger proposal. In the West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1957 , Basu was re-elected as the representative of the Baranagar constituency and the Communist Party returned as the second largest party with an increased representation. As a result, Basu formally became the Leader of Opposition in the assembly. This platform enabled the Communist Party under the leadership of Basu in West Bengal to exacerbate agitations against
29949-546: The movement. After the revocation of the emergency, the CPI-M joined an electoral alliance with the Janata Party in the 1977 Indian general election which resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Janata Alliance. For the 1977 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election , negotiations between the Janata Party and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) broke down. This led to a three sided contest between
30150-605: The neighbouring states of Odisha , Bihar , and Jharkhand , and sizeable minorities of Bengali speakers reside in Indian cities outside Bengal, including Delhi , Mumbai , Thane , Varanasi , and Vrindavan . There are also significant Bengali-speaking communities in the Middle East , the United States , Singapore , Malaysia , Australia , Canada , the United Kingdom , and Italy . The 3rd article of
30351-400: The new chief minister of the state. The CPI-M was only able to secure 14 seats and Basu for the first time lost his seat in the Baranagar constituency to his former associate Shiba Pada Bhattacharjee , who had remained in the CPI after the split in the party. Before the election, the Communist Party of India allied with Congress (I) while a section of the Bangla Congress had also merged with
30552-466: The new chief minister. During the presentation of the ordinance as a bill in the assembly, Basu attempted to oppose it on a clause by clause basis but in vain due to the dominance of the Congress in the assembly, only the two communist legislators Ratanlal Brahmin and Basu along with independent members opposed the bill. Basu argued that while the Congress spoke of Kisan Raj ( transl. Farmer's Rule ), it had made no progress in abolishing
30753-415: The new fares, the city underwent a series of agitations which began with disobedience to pay the new prices and caused severe losses for the company, culminating into police deployment and arrests of hundreds of disobedient passengers. Basu was arrested on 4 July alongside Ganesh Ghosh and Subodh Banerjee who were also involved in the agitations, he was bailed out the following day. On 7 July, during
30954-506: The next large scale flare up in 1966. In the West Bengal Legislative Assembly election of 1962 , Basu was once again re-elected as the representative of the Baranagar constituency and the Communist Party increased its vote share from 17.81% to 24.96%. In the following period the Communist Party underwent a vertical split with a section of the party including Basu going on to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) . There were several ongoing ideological conflicts between sections within
31155-629: The nine founding members commonly referred to as the Navaratnas (trans: nine gems). On 27 June 1965, Basu also became the founding editor of the English language organ of the new party called People's Democracy . Between February–March 1966, a second and more spontaneous food movement flared up across West Bengal. As a result of price rise of essential commodities, the new chief minister, Prafulla Chandra Sen had suggested that people should shift from their staple of rice–potatoes to wheat–green bananas and subsequently agitations had broken out in
31356-480: The official RJD candidate and ran a dissident candidate of their own which finished in second place, ahead of the official Left Front-supported RJD candidate. The sixth Left Front government, with 48 ministers, was sworn in of 19 May 2001. In the 2004 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 32 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. CPI(M) won 26 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 3 seats and RSP 3 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal reached 18,766,404 votes (50.7% of
31557-457: The operation is noted to have improved the social status and security of tenancy of bargadars as well as decreased economic inequality . In addition it accounted for approximately 36% of agricultural growth during the period as a consequence of greater production incentives due to a lack of eviction threat and increased output stake. The operation is also credited to have created a cushion against farmers' suicides in West Bengal by improving
31758-408: The opposition parties is described to have been impactful in its political ramifications in the subsequent years; among others, leading to the Indian National Congress losing its absolute majority for the first time and Basu becoming the deputy chief minister of West Bengal in the following year. Civil unrest also peaked during the ensuing period which led to a succession of unstable governments,
31959-517: The parliament of Bangladesh and the legislative assembly of West Bengal proposed that Bengali be made an official UN language. As of January 2023, no further action has been yet taken on this matter. However, in 2022, the UN did adopt Bangla as an unofficial language, after a resolution tabled by India. In 2024, the government of India conferred Bengali with the status of classical language . Approximate distribution of native Bengali speakers (assuming
32160-476: The police department under Basu launched a campaign of state repression on the movement which continued under succeeding governments. According to Basu, "(The Naxalites), forgetting everything else that the country stood for, followed the China model with disastrous consequences which had no relation to Marxist philosophy." In August 1969, Basu was also faced with a protest from the police department itself after
32361-562: The prevalent food crisis in West Bengal by acting as the principal opposition on the floor of the assembly, increasing public awareness and providing a united front for agitators to rally around. Since the beginning of the British Raj , the region of Bengal had suffered from severe food shortages culminating into large-scale famines at times. Following independence of India, the Public Distribution System (PDS)
32562-452: The primary functions of the Majlis was to arrange receptions for Indian leaders who were visiting England at the time. Through the Majlis, Basu came into contact with various Indian independence movement leaders such as Subhas Chandra Bose , Jawaharlal Nehru , Krishna Menon and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit . On returning to Calcutta , India in early 1940, Basu enrolled as a barrister at
32763-406: The primary opposition to the emergency rule of Indira Gandhi . The following period witnessed a succession of authoritarian measures and political repression, which was particularly severe in West Bengal. The members of the CPI-M's labour union became the first subject to political repression and mass arrests while the rest of the members of the CPI-M went underground. With the initiation of
32964-513: The process of "democratic decentralisation " in West Bengal by amending and implementing the provisions of the Panchayat Act. On 4 June 1978, local body elections were resumed after 14 years and the first direct elections were held to elect 56,000 representatives from 15 zila parishads, 324 panchayat samitis and 3,242 gram panchayats in West Bengal. By 1993, the number of representatives was expanded to over 71,000 representatives while Basu
33165-561: The recommendations of the Secondary Board for raising the allowances of secondary school teachers. The association was joined in by various labour unions and opposition parties in support of their demand. The government as a result decided to crack down on the leaders of the agitation but Basu escaped custody and took refuge in the West Bengal Legislature . The police force who were trying to arrest him through
33366-451: The remainder of Left Front partners (RCPI, WBSP, DSP, BBC, MFB) and contested as independents. The Left Front won 238 out of 294 seats in the election. CPI(M) won 174 seats, CPI 7 seats, AIFB 28 seats, RSP 19 seats, WBSP 4 seats, DSP 2 seats, RCPI 2 seats, MFB 2 seats. The combined Left Front vote was 11,869,003 votes (52.7% of the votes cast in the state). The incumbent Food Minister, the RCPI leader Sudhindranath Kumar , lost his seat. Kumar
33567-464: The representative of the Satgachhia constituency from 1977 to 2001. In the first term of the coming to power, the Left Front government under Basu initiated a number of agrarian and institutional reforms which resulted in reduction of poverty rates , an exponential rise in agricultural production and decrease in political polarisation . It also enabled the large scale adoption of technological advancements which had earlier been brought in through
33768-434: The rightist section such as the trade unionist A. B. Bardhan . Basu reportedly received the news of his father's death during this time in prison. Although, the war ended in November 1962, the detainees were only released in December 1963 after an order from the Supreme Court of India . On 11 April 1964, in a landmark incident, 32 members from the "Leftist faction" in the CPI national council including Basu walked out of
33969-467: The rights of bargardars to crop share from landlords and priority rights to lands in cases of both voluntary sale of land and forced sale of ceiling surplus lands. The number of recorded bargardars increased from 0.4 to 1.2 million by 1982, and resulted in the coverage of 50%+ output share concessions towards bargardars to increase from 10% to over 50% among registered bargardars and over 33% for unregistered bargardars . The implementation of
34170-429: The seats in the pre-electoral seat-sharing talks with the Janata Party. On 21 June 1977 the Left Front formed a government with Jyoti Basu as its Chief Minister. The first cabinet meeting of the Left Front government ordered the release of political prisoners. The Socialist Party joined the Left Front after the 1977 elections. Prior to the arrival of the Left Front government, the political environment of West Bengal
34371-429: The second United Front government as a result experienced a record of 551 strikes and 73 union lockdowns across the state with a participation of approximately 570,000 workers. The labour department headed by Krishnapada Ghosh of the CPIM is also noted to have coordinated with the department of general administration to enable the registration of new trade unions and legalisation of gheraos (trans: picketing ) as
34572-416: The second largest party outstripping its former party, the CPI. Following the election, the two alliances joined forces to form the United Front government in West Bengal. During the negotiations between the two alliances, Basu was denied the position of chief minister due to opposition to the idea from the CPI and Bangla Congress, all of whom eventually settled for Ajoy Mukherjee of the Bangla Congress as
34773-402: The second-largest party in the assembly. Following which Basu was unanimously elected as the legislative party leader of the CPI in West Bengal . In the following year, he was also elected as the secretary of the state committee of the CPI. The ensuing period in West Bengal was marked with the rise of a number of anti-establishment mass movements , in which Basu is described to have played
34974-427: The so-called "inherent" vowel [ɔ] is first expunged from the consonant before adding the vowel, but this intermediate expulsion of the inherent vowel is not indicated in any visual manner on the basic consonant sign ম [mɔ] . The vowel graphemes in Bengali can take two forms: the independent form found in the basic inventory of the script and the dependent, abridged, allograph form (as discussed above). To represent
35175-462: The status. The Human Development Index was also noted to have improved at a much faster rate than in other states, growing from being the lowest in the country in 1975 to above the national average in 1990. Between 1977 and 1980, Basu oversaw the identification of nearly 1 million acres of ceiling surplus land and its subsequent redistribution. The number of landless rural households decreased by 35% during this period. The Basu government began
35376-536: The superposed chôndrôbindu (ঁ) , denoting a suprasegmental for nasalisation of vowels (as in চাঁদ [tʃãd] "moon"), the postposed ônusbar (ং) indicating the velar nasal [ŋ] (as in বাংলা [baŋla] "Bengali") and the postposed bisôrgô (ঃ) indicating the voiceless glottal fricative [h] (as in উঃ! [uh] "ouch!") or the gemination of the following consonant (as in দুঃখ [dukʰːɔ] "sorrow"). The Bengali consonant clusters ( যুক্তব্যঞ্জন juktôbênjôn ) are usually realised as ligatures, where
35577-459: The time of his resignation. He declined the post of Prime Minister after the 1996 Indian general election after the CPM refused to let him head a multi-party coalition as would not be able to implement Marxist programs and relinquished the prime ministership to Deve Gowda . Jyotirindra Basu was born on 8 July 1914 to an enriched Bengali Kulin Kayastha family at 43/1 Harrison Road, Calcutta , British India . His father, Nishikanta Basu
35778-612: The usage of the Preventive Detention Act and the West Bengal Security Act. The movement however continued with civil disobedience, continuous general strikes and mass demonstrations while Basu was also able to evade arrest. On 31 August 1959, a massive demonstration cum general strike was held in the city of Calcutta which brought the city and its surrounding districts to a standstill and ended with lathi charges and instances of police violence on protesters. This caused an outburst of students protests against police atrocities and led to instances of police firing on student protesters. Over
35979-416: The vice-president of the All India Railwaymen's Federation . In the same year, the federation had held a strike ballot which displayed overwhelming support for a railway strike on 9 March in demand of better wages and working conditions in the Indian Railways . The strike notice was however withdraw by the socialist leadership of the federation to whom the government had shown a reconciliatory attitude but
36180-484: The visible matra and an invisible baseline). There is yet to be a uniform standard collating sequence (sorting order of graphemes to be used in dictionaries, indices, computer sorting programs, etc.) of Bengali graphemes. Experts in both Bangladesh and India are currently working towards a common solution for this problem. Throughout history, there have been instances of the Bengali language being written in different scripts, though these employments were never popular on
36381-435: The vocabulary may differ according to the speaker's religion: Muslims are more likely to use words of Persian and Arabic origin, along with more words naturally derived from Sanskrit ( tadbhava ), whereas Hindus are more likely to use tatsama (words directly borrowed from Sanskrit). For example: The phonemic inventory of standard Bengali consists of 29 consonants and 7 vowels, as well as 7 nasalised vowels . The inventory
36582-517: The votes cast in the state). In the 2006 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election the Left Front won 234 out of 294 seats and received 19,800,148 votes (including votes for allies, representing 50.2% of the statewide vote). The Left Front had contested 290 seats (210 CPI(M), 34 AIFB, 23 RSP, 13 CPI, 4 WBSP, 2 DSP, 2 MFB, 1 RCPI, 1 BBC). In selecting candidates, the Left Front denied tickets to 64 incumbent legislators (52 from CPI(M), 8 from AIFB, 2 from WBSP, 1 from RSP, 1 from CPI), seeking to rejuvenate
36783-403: The votes cast in the state). On 27 May 1980 the Left Front cancelled the past Code of Conduct for state government employees, which had limited the right to strike. In 1982 the Left Front acquired three new members, CPI joined the Left Front ahead of the 1982 West Bengal Legislative Assembly elections and the Socialist Party was split into the Democratic Socialist Party (Prabodh Chandra) and
36984-618: The votes cast in the state). On 30 June 1985, the first Calcutta Municipal Corporation elections were held under the Left Front rule, an election that the alliance won. In the 1987 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election the Left Front increased its share of seats to 251. CPI(M) had contested 213 seats, CPI 12 seats, AIFB 34 seats and RSP 23 seats. 12 candidates were fielded by smaller Left Front partners on independent tickets. CPI(M) won 187 seats, CPI 11 seats, AIFB 26 seats, RSP 18 seats, WBSP 4 seats, MFB 2 seats, DSP 2 seats and RCPI 1 seat. The Left Front vote stood at 13,924,806 (53%). In
37185-515: The votes for the JD candidate, reached 18,011,700 votes (47.8% of the votes cast in the state). In the 1998 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 32 seats, RSP 4 seats, CPI 3 seats and AIFB 3 seats. The list of candidates was announced at a press conference on 6 January 1998. The Left Front had been able to reach consensus on its candidates well before the other major parties, and subsequently the CPI(M) election campaign came off to an early start. A mammoth United Front (the national alliance backed by
37386-424: Was a doctor whose hometown was the village of Barudi in Dhaka District of the Bengal Presidency while his mother Hemlata Basu was a housewife. He grew up in an Indian style joint family and was the youngest of three siblings. He had an affectionate nickname called Gana. One of his elder uncles, Nilinkanta Basu was a judge in the High Court . His family also retained ancestral lands in Barudi where Jyoti Basu
37587-442: Was a part of the Greater Magadhan realm. The local varieties had no official status during the Gupta Empire , and with Bengal increasingly becoming a hub of Sanskrit literature for Hindu priests, the vernacular of Bengal gained a lot of influence from Sanskrit. Magadhi Prakrit was also spoken in modern-day Bihar and Assam , and this vernacular eventually evolved into Ardha Magadhi . Ardha Magadhi began to give way to what
37788-404: Was again delegated to organise labourers working for the East Indian Railway Company (now Eastern Railway and East Central Railway ) in order to further the interests of the Indian workers and is described to have been instrumental in the formation of the Bengal Nagpur Railway (now South Eastern Railway , East Coast Railway and South East Central Railway ) Workers' Union of which he became
37989-439: Was an active member of several anti-imperialist Indian students unions such as the India League and the Federation of Indian Students, and had become acquainted with young Indian communists such as Bhupesh Gupta and Snehangshu Acharya . In 1938, he had also become a founding member of the London Majlis and subsequently its first secretary. Apart from raising public opinion for the cause of Indian independence , one of
38190-413: Was attached crucial importance. Jyoti Basu, former Prime Minister V.P. Singh and CPI leader A.B. Bardhan campaigned for the Left Front candidate whilst Mamata Banerjee campaigned for the Trinamool Congress candidate. The defeat of the Left Front candidate (former Rajya Saha MP Gurudas Dasgupta of CPI) by the Trinamool Congress candidate was a major jolt to the alliance. On 27 October 2000 Basu, aged 86,
38391-467: Was chaotic, and the new cabinet struggled to establish order. The first years of governance was shaky, as the CPI(M) struggled with the notion of managing a communist government within a capitalist framework. Minor coalition partners expressed concern over inviting multinational corporations to invest in West Bengal. In the initial phase of Left Front governance, two key priorities were land reform and decentralisation of administration. On 29 September 1977
38592-404: Was credited to have been successful in the introduction of grassroots democracy and self governing units in West Bengal which substantially improved bureaucratic transparency , irrigation work , rural infrastructure and political participation and as a result standards of living . The successful implementation of panchayat raj in the state is also noted to have played an integral part in
38793-399: Was defeated due to a lack of requisite members. The series of events had also heightened public resentment against the Congress government across West Bengal, especially in Calcutta and would set the foundation for latter political activism in the following decade. The food movement would also go on in the form of a number of localised spontaneous agitations over the following years till
38994-403: Was established and two land reforms were enacted in 1953 and 1955 in West Bengal. However, the implementation of these initiatives and reforms was rife with problems and the agricultural sector had remained in despondency while food shortages continued to afflict a largely impoverished population. The food crisis and general poverty had led to multiple outbursts of public agitations throughout
39195-436: Was extensively developed during the Bengali Renaissance and is one of the most prolific and diverse literary traditions in Asia. The Bengali language movement from 1948 to 1956 demanding that Bengali be an official language of Pakistan fostered Bengali nationalism in East Bengal leading to the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. In 1999, UNESCO recognised 21 February as International Mother Language Day in recognition of
39396-438: Was given permission by the CPI(M) leadership to resign as Chief Minister. Buddhadev Bhattacharya was sworn in as new Chief Minister on 6 November 2000. In the 2001 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election the Left Front won 199 out of 294 seats, having received 17,912,669 votes along with its RJD and JD(S) allies (49% of the votes in the state). For the first time since 1977 CPI(M) did not hold an absolute majority of its own in
39597-540: Was held at Brigade Grounds on 25 March 2001 with participation from various Left Front leaders and with former Prime Minister V.P. Singh as special guest. CPI(M) won 142 seats, CPI 7, AIFB 25, RSP 17, WBSP 4, DSP 2 and BBC 1. In 2 seats (Bara Bazar and Hirapur) the Left Front had supported candidates of Rashtriya Janata Dal and in 2 seats (Chowringee and Rash Behari Avenue) the alliance had backed candidates from Janata Dal (Secular) . No RJD nor JD(S) candidates were elected. In Hirapur local CPI(M) cadres rebelled against
39798-435: Was imprisoned among other major communist leaders such as the former chief minister of Kerala, E. M. S. Namboodiripad , the organisational specialist Promode Dasgupta , the founding leader of Communist Party of India (Marxist) , Hare Krishna Konar , the Indian revolutionary freedom fighter, Benoy Choudhury , the Telangana revolutionaries , Puchalapalli Sundarayya and Makineni Basavapunnaiah as well as some members of
39999-417: Was no space for the continuation of a democratic mass movement. In light of the violence, the PIFRC formally withdrew the agitation by 26 September and the committee was disbanded. In the aftermath and over the course of the following years, Basu condemned the "police barbarism" against the agitators, engaging in fiery criticisms against the government and even brought a motion of no confidence , although it
40200-537: Was proposed as a candidate for a Rajya Sabha seat on behalf of the Left Front in 1984, but that move did not go down well with RSP and AIFB. Jyoti Basu and five cabinet minister were sworn in on 27 May 1982. Another 15 cabinet ministers and 22 Ministers of State were sworn in on 2 June 1982. In the 1984 Lok Sabha election , CPI(M) contested 31 seats, RSP 4 seats, AIFB 4 seats and CPI 3 seats. CPI(M) won 18 seats, CPI 3 seats, AIFB 2 seats and RSP 3 seats. The Left Front vote in West Bengal reached 12,296,816 votes (47.6% of
40401-413: Was reconstituted after Amar Singh took over the Samajwadi Party and Kiranmoy Nanda (Fisheries Minister of Left Front government 1982–2011) broke away. In 2000 a by-election was called for the Panskura Lok Sabha seat as the sitting CPI MP Geeta Mukherjee died. Mukherjee had held the seat since 1980. The by-election, as it occurred just months before the 2001 West Bengal Legislative Assembly election,
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