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Marxist veteran Dasaratha Deb is dead

One of the chief architects of Tripura's communist movement and the first tribal chief minister of the state, Dasaratha Deb died in Agartala early this morning.

He was 82 and is survived by his wife, a son and two daughters.

Deb, a father figure of communist movement in the state and member of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, breathed his last at 1600 hours today at G B hospital, where he was admitted on Monday night following a massive heart attack.

Thousands of mourners, including many eminent personalities and political leaders, thronged Rabindra Satabarshiki Bhavan, where Deb's body has been kept, to pay their last respects.

The Tripura government has declared a two-day state mourning and a holiday today as a mark of respect to the departed leader, who was also the secretary of the CPI-M Tripura state committee from 1988 to April 1993, till he became the first tribal chief minister of Tripura.

The tricolour was flying half mast on all government buildings and institutions and all entertainment programmes were cancelled.

Deb will be accorded a state funeral tomorrow at his ancestral village Ampura under the Ramchandra Ghat assembly constituency of West Tripura's Khowai sub-division.

Top CPI-M leaders, including party general secretary Harkishen Singh Surjeet, West Bengal CPI-M leaders Anil Biswas and Biman Bose, were expected to attend the funeral, party sources said.

A veteran CPI-M leader, Dasaratha Deb was a patriarch among his million-strong tribal supporters.

Considering his unmatched popularity and high regard he commanded among the state's tribal and non-tribal communities, his admirers across the party line affectionately would often prefix ''king'' before his name.

Born on January 16, 1916, in a poor farmer's family, in an obscure tribal village under West Tripura's Khowai sub-division, Deb's eventful political career spanning six decades, left an indelible mark in the minds of his party comrades and the people of Tripura.

Deb was the eldest of Krishna Kumar Debbarma's two sons and two daughters, and lost his mother when he was a student of sixth standard student.

Long persecuted in the erstwhile kingdom state of Tripura, which attained its statehood in January 1972, Deb, after some initial setbacks, did his matriculation from the Khowai high school, securing a first division in 1943.

His sheer grit and determination got him admitted in Calcutta University in 1947 for a post-graduate study in ancient history.

But he had to drop out because of his close association with the then banned communist movement. The Hardinge Hostel in the university campus, where he used to stay, was raided several times by the police during those years.

Though Deb was actively associated with the communist movement since 1943, soon after he passed out from high school, severe financial constraints forced him away from the movement for some time.

Deb served the British army during in Second World War and was sent to the Burma (Myanmar) front as the provisional lieutenant in the royal artillery regiment for some time. Before joining the communist movement full time, Deb also worked with an architecture firm in Silchar of Assam.

The Jana Siksha Samiti (mass education organisation) was set up in Tripura under his leadership in 1945. But within a year, he had to go underground after the Samity was banned by the Union government on the advice of the then ruler of the state, under the pretext of it being a militant organisation.

While underground, Deb set up the Tripura Rajya Upajati Gana Mukti Parishad in 1948 under his presidentship. The Parishad later spearheaded the entire communist movement in the state where, according to him, the most backward tribals were always exploited during the princely rule.

Determined to fight for the down-trodden in this land-locked state, he formally joined the undivided communist party along with Ashoke Debbarma, another senior leader of the state, in 1946.

Deb was soon inducted in the 16-member central committee of the undivided communist party the very next year.

In 1952, Deb contested the Lok Sabha elections for the first time as a CPI candidate from the Tripura East (tribal reserved seat) constituency and won, defeating his Congress rival by a handsome margin. But as he was still underground, he had to leave for Delhi surreptitiously, only to reappear inside Parliament at the time of taking oath and surrender, forcing the government to withdraw all cases against him later.

After that he was re-elected to the lower house of Parliament from the same constituency three more times, in 1957, 1962, and lastly in 1971, after losing in 1967.

When the first Left Front government, headed by Nripen Chakraborty came to power, Deb became the education and tribal welfare minister. Later, in the second left front ministry, he became the deputy chief minister while Chakraborty remained the chief minister. Deb, Chakraborty and Biren Dutta were considered the three founding leaders of the communist movement in Tripura.

In the 1993 assembly elections, Deb was elected for the fourth time, winning by a record margin of more than 10,000 votes to become the first tribal chief minister of Tripura.

Deb was dropped from the CPI-M central committee in the party's just concluded 16th congress in Calcutta, to be replaced by present tribal welfare minister Ashoke Debbarma.

Deb also wrote several books, including his autobiography, considered an authentic documentation of the state's history.

UNI

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