THE year-long birth anniversary celebrations of Comrade Dasaratha Deb, a legendary Communist and icon of the movement for democratic transformation of Tripura, began on February 2. In the commencement of the celebrations, all the party offices in the state were embellished with red flags and portraits of Deb were garlanded. Hall meetings were held by various sub-divisional committees of the Party in memory of Deb, who was one of the pillars of amity and friendship between tribal and non-tribal communities.

Dasarath Deb was born to a poor tribal peasant family at a remote village of Ampura under Khowai sub-division on February 2 in 1916. He passed matriculation in first division from Umakanta School, Agartala in 1943 and graduated from Brindaban College of Habiganj (now in Bangladesh) in 1945. He got admission in post-graduate course in Kolkata but immediately came back to Tripura on the call of some of his fellow friends who had already started a mission for ‘people’s literacy movement’ among the tribal villagers deprived for ages of the ray of literacy and languishing under feudal exploitation of royal staff and village mahajans.

On December 27, 1945, the Janashiksha Samity was formed with Dasaratha Deb as its president. Sudhanwa Debbarma, Aghore Debbarma and Hemanta Debbarma were among other members. Within a year, it established 488 schools throughout the state. Rightly anticipating the threat against monarchy, the king’s men tried to throttle the organisation to nip it in the bud. But the adamant Janashiksha Samity leaders continued their mission defying the red eyes of the king’s rule.

Gradually Janashiksha Samity leaders started raising demand for a democratic elected government. Naturally, it attracted the wrath of the monarchy which unleashed unprecedented repression to crash this movement. The king’s administration deployed thousands of police and army in tribal areas. Village after village were set ablaze and their food stocks burnt to ashes in search of Janashiksha Samity leaders. The villagers were cordoned off to block their movement outside. Male members were being confined in jungles, women folks molested and manhandled by the jawans. Under such a terrible situation, Gana Mukti Parishad (GMP) was formed in 1948 to raise a resistance force to save the villagers from the onslaughts of the monarchy. By this time, Tripura had been accessed to India by an instrument of accession in 1950 and the Tripura Territorial Council was formed where Congress got majority. Thus king’s administration was replaced by Congress rule which had no different approach to the parishad. There was no respite of repression on the tribal villagers in the Congress rule. Rather, they intensified barbarism on the villagers. A reward of Rs 10,000 was announced by the government for whoever provided with tips of whereabouts of GMP leaders including Dasarath Deb.

In 1952, in the first Parliamentary election, Dasaratha Deb contested from East Tripura constituency being in underground. After being elected with a massive mandate, Deb trespassed to Delhi secretly and appeared in Parliament to ask the central government whether he had the right to move freely in the independent country. Being ashamed of the behavior meted out to an elected member by a government, then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru directed the state government to lift arrest warrant against the GMP leaders including Deb. Only then the deployment of police and Army were withdrawn from the hills of Tripura and GMP leaders came out once again.

In 1950, he joined CPI and was elected state secretary in its first conference in 1951. He was elected as a central committee member of the Party in 1952. In 1964, when CPI(M) was formed in protest against revisionism of a section of CPI leaders, Deb joined CPI(M) and was elected in the Central Committee from which he sought to be relieved due to ailment in 1998.

In the waves of struggles and movements for food for the starving people, proper rehabilitation of the lakhs of migrated refugees from erstwhile Pakistan (now Bangladesh) and mainly for four-point core demands of the tribals of Tripura under the leadership of Dasaratha Deb, Nripen Chakraborty and Biren Datta emerged the Left Front Government in 1978 with huge popular mandate.

After assuming office, the Left Front government adopted and implemented some epoch-making pro-people programmes. Among these were recognition of Kok-borok as second language of the state, strict adherence of reservation quota of tribals in education and government jobs as enshrined in the Constitution, introduction of ‘Food for Work’ for the village poor, waiving land tax for those holding land measuring up to three acres, restoration of tribal lands illegally transferred to non-tribals flouting the prevalent land act, drafting of an act for formation of ADC in tribal dominated areas and mid-day-meal for primary school students. In implementing these decisions, the Left Front government was targeted to be destabilised by vested interests through largescale violence and they ignited June 1980 disturbance between tribal and non-tribal people. Since then, Deb had been one of the targets of both Bengali chauvinists and tribal sectarian forces. He narrowly escaped from several attempts on his life. He was in charge of education and tribal welfare department in the government led by Nripen Chakraborty from 1978 to 1988 and was Chief Minister from 1993 to 1998. He played an important role as Leader of the Opposition during the semi-fascist jungle rule in Congress-TUJS coalition regime.

In this way, Deb became a bridge to the amity and friendship between tribals and non-tribals of the state. He was not only a good orator but also an outstanding parliamentarian and at the same time an expert administrator, renowned author and a prominent linguistic. Due to his sole effort, the Kok-Borok script was invented in accordance with the tribal vocabulary. His books -- ‘Aamar Srmtite Tripurer Gana Andolan’ (The history of mass movement in my memory) and ‘Mukti Parishader Itikatha’ (History of Mukti Parishad) -- are invaluable documents for the history of mass movements of the state.

On February 2, commencing the year-long celebrations of his birth centenary, a state level hall meeting was held at Rabindra Shatabarshiki Bhavan, Agartala. It was addressed by Chief Minister and Polit Bureau Member Manik Sarkar and Tripura State Secretary Bijan Dhar among others. CPI(M) State Secretariat member Niranjan Debbarma presided over the meeting.

In reminiscence, Manik Sarkar said under the feudal role Deb started the movement for universal literacy which subsequently turned to a movement for democracy. Deb could realise it was not sufficient to fight against feudalism. After accession to Indian Union, the feudalism had a pact with capitalist class which was ruling the country. So it was not possible to bring about emancipation of the down-trodden people without fighting against class enemies. At the same time, it was imperative to fight against imperialism, Sarkar said.

Another credible achievement Comrade Deb made was to guide the Ganamukti Parishad’s resistance movement in the right direction though attempts were being made to derail it in parochial ethnic line, Sarkar said.

On the prevailing national situation, Sarkar said the RSS-BJP combine being at the helm at the Centre, a new situation has emerged. They are more aggressively implementing neo-liberal policies. All economic safeguards are being opened for the multi-national corporate sectors. Even the strategic sovereignty of the nation was being compromised. The history has assigned the responsibility to resist these anti-national drives on the Left forces. We cannot do this on our won. We have to mobilise friends for the cause of integrity and sovereignty of the nation. If we success in this noble responsibility, it would be the real tribute to Comrade Deb, Sarkar concluded.

Bijan Dhar, in his address, said the neo-liberal policies are not only working in the economic field but it is equally influencing our life-style, culture, media, etc. where there is every possibility of being slipped into wrong path or attacked by non-Communist vices. We must take lessons from life and legacy of Deb to keep us safe from such vices. Niranjan Debbarma narrated some events of the formative days of Janashiksha Samity and Gana Mukti Parishad. (EOM)