Four American planes as well as some belonging to the British government also landed at our airport during that time. It was only our party mouthpiece "Swadhinata" which carried this news with the importance and display it deserved. Bhupesh Gupta headed the editorial board and I was secretary of the West Bengal state unit of the party.

The treaty signed between Pakistan and the US in June 1954 was a direct threat to our national security. On 14 June, under the presidentship of Prof Hiren Mukherjee, a meeting was held at Wellington Square of the city. At that meeting, I said: "With the direct intervention of the Americans, Mohammed Ali Jinnah has succeeded in installing an Army Raj and deposed the democratic process in East Bengal. This is the first direct fallout of the treaty between Pakistan and US. By this, Pakistan is trying to exert pressure on India. It is this reason which should compel us to stand by the people of East Bengal and also generate a mass movement against the imperialist designs on India. I hope that the democratic people of East Bengal shall not be trampled upon for too long."

On July 6, 1954, the Army regime in East Bengal had banned the Communist Party there. On July 25, the party was made illegal in West Pakistan too and there were widespread arrests in Lahore, Peshawar and Rawalpindi.

One of the most significant incidents in 1954 was a visit to India by China’s Prime Minister Zhou-En-Lai. He was given a grand and warm welcome in Delhi. A message went out from the Communist Party during a rally held at Wellington Square on June 28 hailing the meeting between the Prime Ministers of China and India in New Delhi. They had our best wishes. Apart from myself, Hiren Mukherjee and Bhupesh Gupta also spoke at this meeting.

On June 26, 1954, an agitation was kicked off on the retrenchment of employees belonging to the food and supplies department. A joint statement was issued by the trade union leaders, Opposition legislators and Parliamentarians asking for alternative jobs for those who had got the sack. I was also one of the signatories alongwith Hiren Mukherjee, Bhupesh Gupta, Ranen Sen, Kana Bhattacharjee, Amar Basu, Barin Ghosh (the then editor of "Basumati" magazine), Makhan Pal and Mohit Maitra.

A total of 7000 workers of the food and supplies department converged in a rally at Wellington Square. An announcement was made that the West Bengal government had been forced to withdraw the retrenchment notice on 100 workers. This created a tremendous sense of enthusiasm among those present. The government had to accept defeat in the face of a unified movement by the employees and the support they had from the Opposition parties.

The Assembly was tense on August 31. I had a fierce argument with the chief minister and the Speaker. The chief Minister, in reply to a question by Ambika Chakraborty on police atrocities on a refugee camp at the Lake barracks, said that he had nothing to add to what he had clarified before.

I protested immediately that it was the Speaker’s prerogative to decide on what question could be asked and that the chief minister could not be an arbitrator in such matters. I said that the rights of the members were being curtailed and had a long debate with the Speaker himself. Finally, I suggested that non-official matters be discussed every Friday. The Speaker said that he would look into the proposal.

Another incident comes to mind. In September 1954, Jalpaiguri district went down under floods. The BPTUC president Manaranjan Roy and the Jalpaiguri District Tea Estate Mazdoor Union secretary, Deboprasad Ghosh, went for a on-the-spot study in the flood affected areas of Nagrakata.

From their accounts, it was evident that it was not only nature which was at fault but that the white-skinned managers of the tea estate also had a major part to play in ensuring the plight of the people. We started relief work in these places.

It is important to note here that while the Teesta had always played havoc in North Bengal, government after government of the Congress had done nothing to implement the Teesta Barrage Project. It was left for the Left Front government later to put it on the priority list.

September 23, 1954 will remain an important day in the Assembly records of West Bengal. During the voting on the Development Corporation Bill, 28 Congress members cast their ballots mistakenly against the party line invalidating Clause Number 5. Dr Roy himself voted against his own proposal. However, the suicidal action by the Congress members was not sudden. The Opposition had raised its voice against this much earlier, right from the initial stages; by the torrents of protests, there was chaos in the Congress ranks. It was this confusion which led to 80 ballots being cast against the clause while 74 members voted for it. There were seven abstentions.

The food crisis was getting acute in the rural areas and the government had taken no steps to counter it. On the party’s instructions, I went on a tour of the hunger-striken areas of the Sunderbans, including Haroa, Sandeshkhali and Hasnabad. The legislator from Haroa, Sandeshkhali, Hemanta Ghosal, accompanied me. Despite the incessant rain, our public meetings were widely attended. I called for a sustained agitation against police atrocities, evictions and illegal bheries in the Hansnabad, Phulgachi and Haroa areas.

In January 1954, the government had extended the term of the black law which gave it unlimited powers to arrest. I remember addressing a rally at Wellington Square alongwith Kaka-babu, Comrade Ismail and Comrade Niranjan Sengupta. Countless Communist leaders and workers had been held without trial under this Act.

While the states had the option to use this law, it was only in 1967 when the first United Front Government came to power that we decided to stop its implementation in Bengal. The undivided Communist Party made a lot of noise in Parliament and Prof Hiren Mukherjee left no stone unturned to make the party voice relevant and readily heard in the House.

Andhra Pradesh had its first Assembly elections as a separate state in 1955. Our central committee attached great importance to this election. The main rivals were the Communist Party and the Congress. I went for a lot of campaigning to Andhra Pradesh carrying alongwith me two microphones as symbols of fraternal love that the people of West Bengal had for the southern state. We must appreciate that there was hardly any media hype in those days. I was told one day that a Communist Party candidate had been held hostage by Congressmen for two days and that he had been served an ultimatum to withdraw his nomination. But that plot failed.

I addressed two huge public meetings at Bijanagar and Vishakapatnam during January 12–13 in 1955. I remember telling these gatherings that if the Communist Party won in Andhra Pradesh, it would be victory for all the toiling masses of the country.

But the Congress won. The reasons for the defeat were discussed by the central committee. The election results were as follows :–

Total Seats — 196
Congress led
United Front — 146
Communist Party — 15
PSP — 13
Swatantra Party — 22

Total voters 86,30,311; Congress-led United Front 42,65,814, and the Communist Party 29,95,562 ( which was 30 per cent of the total electorate).

In the previous election, the Communist Party, with 14 lakh votes, had won 67 seats. It is true that this defeat did create a sense of confusion among the party ranks in Andhra Pradesh.

There were several interesting incidents in the political arena during that year; the Goa liberation war, the discussion on the re-organisation of the states in the West Bengal Assembly and the agitation against the extension of the term of the black law, these took place then. All the frontal wings of our party took active part in this agitation, which helped to give a forward thrust to our movement. It was possible to bring all the Left-minded and the democratic, anti-Congress forces on the same platform under a common minimum programme.

On February 16, elections to the Bardhaman municipality were held on the basis of limited franchise. I went for campaigning there. Of the 25 seats, the Democratic Citizens’ Committee which was formed at the initiative of the Communist Party got 10, the Congress nine while Independents bagged six seats. The victory of the Democratic Citizens’ Committee under the system of limited franchise was significant.

On February 18, the local self government minister, Iswar Das Jalan, moved an amendment Bill on the Calcutta Municipal Act 1951. According to this, the term of the Calcutta Corporation would be extended to four years from the then three years with the government having the option of increasing it by another year. I said that the amendment should also include the right to vote for all as was prevalent in the Corporation elections of other states.

The government had proposed the extension of the Corporation term to keep parity with the norms prevalent in states like Bombay and Madhya Pradesh.

The Communist Party legislator Ganesh Ghosh protested strongly against this Bill, describing it as ridiculous, shameful and shallow. But naturally the Congress rushed it through.

The right to vote for all in local self-government has always been opposed by the Congress. It is we who have struggled hard to install autonomy in the municipal bodies. In fact, participating in the debate, I had categorically said that the Congress government would be forced to accede to our demand. On March 2, 1955 _ the Budget Session had just began_ 3000 women went on a rally to the Assembly asking for jobs and presented a memorandum signed by 30,000 people to the government. A total of 160 women farmers courted arrest at Wellington Square. The rally was addressed earlier by Manikuntala Sen, Sudha Roy, Bimal Pratibha Devi and other leaders. I told the chief minister that such a rally was unprecedented and protested against the deployment of armed forces, saying that it was a shame that the police had to use strongarm tactics against women. The PSP leader, Haripada Chatterjee, Hemanta Basu of the Forward Bloc, Manikuntala Sen and Ganendra Chowdhury took up the issue inside the Assembly. But a defiant chief minister in his usual style said that the police would not move from that place and he would not meet representatives of the women’s delegation in the Assembly but would talk to them at Writers’ Buildings on March 9.

I asked for an adjournment but the Speaker rejected it. After coming out from the Assembly, I addressed the women who were staging a dharna. Haripada Chatterjee, Hemanta Basu and Ganendra Chowdhury were also with me. Geeta Mukherjee was in the forefront of those present at that rally. Manikuntala Sen presented a memorandum to the deputy speaker which demanded that retrenchment of women could not be allowed in factories, offices and other business establishments, equal wages for equal work, and the creation of new work opportunities in a planned way in the cottage industry.

On January 22, more than 30,000 tea workers observed a successful one-day token strike in the Darjeeling hills against the government’s policies. The secretary of the Darjeeling Tea Estate Mazdoor Union, Ananda Pathak, and its president, Ratanlal Brahman, were among 70 leaders who were arrested for demanding bonus and hike in wages. On June 25, six workers, including two women, were killed in police firing.

A strike and protest rally were held in Darjeeling the next day against the killings. Two of those injured in the police firing died later. On June 26, the Congress government imposed Section 144 on Darjeeling town and some other tea gardens. The next day,more than 15,000 mourners took out a rally with the dead bodies and subsequently the warrants issued against Ratanlal Brahman and Ananda Pathak were withdrawn.

Some of my comrades and I went for a on-the-spot study to the Margaret Hope Tea Garden where there were reports of police atrocities. The firing on the tea workers was also raised in the Assembly by Opposition leaders. On September 2, the chief minister gave a statement in the Assembly supporting the firing. He said, "The situation at the Margaret Hope Tea Garden had become dangerous and the police had to fire in self-defence". I attacked this statement and said : "This is sheer provocative, malintended and partially untrue". I added that it was important that copies of the statement be circulated to all the members and a debate be allowed.

On November 29, the two Soviet Leaders, Krushchev and Bulganian, arrived in Calcutta to a tumultous welcome. The Soviet leaders were overwhelmed. I was among those who had gone to receive them at the Dum Dum Airport; the others were Dr Roy, state ministers, Communist leader Bankim Mukherjee, Assembly Speaker Saila Kumar Mukherjee and Suniti Chattopadhyay. On November 31, the two leaders were given a citizens’ reception at the Brigade Parade Grounds; according to newspaper estimates, the gathering touched around 50 lakhs! Whatever be the actual figure, the fact was that it was indeed highly impressive.

On September 7, the then labour minister Kalipada Mukherjee gave a statement in the Assembly on the strike by tea workers of Dooars and Terai regions. The statement tried to put the lid on the actual status of the tea workers. On November 20, on persistent demands by the Opposition, the Speaker allowed a two-hour debate on the issue.

Initiating the debate, I said that the statement was unilateral and that there was no point in paying any heed to it. On previous occasions, the government had tabled statements in the Assembly but we had not been allowed to speak. This was the first chance that we had go to speak.

I also said that going by the speech of the labour minister, it seemed that he was arguing on behalf of the tea garden owners; it did not sound like a minister's statement at all. There was no sympathy for the workers. ``Incidentally, Kali-babu has been a trade union leader in his time,'' I said.