Shuttling between Dogmatism and Populism

Aloke Mukherjee

Azizul Haque will be remembered as one of the colourful personalities in the Indian communist movement from the youth and students in the turbulent sixties of the last century.

Born in a rich Muslim family with landed. Property in a village in Howrah district, he came to Kolkata for studies. There, he got in touch with communists and joined the party-led movements. It was 1959. Soon, he became a leader of the student movement. That was a time when to be a decedent was not just in words but in deeds, necessary to be a communist party member. In 1964, he joined CPI(M) during the split with CPI. Soon, he became identified as ‘ultra’ within West Bengal CPI(M) because of his ideological leaning towards the line of the Communist Party of China and proximity with student leaders Saibal Mitra and Nirmal Brahmachari who had been expelled earlier for preaching armed struggle.

So after the great Naxalbari Uprising in May 1967, he did not take any time to openly come out in support of it.

He left the city to develop a peasant struggle in the remote islands of the Sundarbans. But just before the State Conference, he was arrested along with some other activists.

By 1973, there were sharp differences on the line accepted by the Party Congress, which later some people had branded as the CM [Charu Mazumdar] line. Earlier, the division was between those who were ready to change the line and those who were against any criticism of the old line, and became known as followers of CM. Led by Sohal Sharma and Mahadeb Mukherjee, the followers of CM got organised for a short time, since after the 10th Congress of the CPC, that group was split between pro-Lin and anti-Lin sections. From the jail, Azizul Haque and a few others supported the pro-Lin faction, which was by then being led by Mahadeb Mukherjee. Sohal Sharma dissociated from both factions. Soon, the section led by Mahadeb Mukherjee collapsed after his arrest. In 1976, Azizul Haque, Nisith Bhattacharya, Ajit Chakraborty, and some other leaders executed a jail break from Presidency Jail. But within months, all of them were rearrested and brutally tortured.

After the change of government in West Bengal, along with other political prisoners, Azizul Haque was released. So was Mahadeb Mukherjee. But by then they fell apart. Azizul Haque, Nishith Bhattacharya, Ajit Chakraborty, and others formed a separate organisation calling themselves the 2nd CC of CPIML, which was earlier being led by Mahadeb Mukherjee.

They started to practise the so-called CM line. It was an attempt to repeat history. In the early 1980s, with the bang of the declaration of forming a parallel government and army with brigades, within a short period, with some activists sacrificing their lives and the rest getting arrested, it ended with a farcical declaration of “cease fire” by AzizulHaque from the police custody.

However, after a movement for the release of political prisoners and the historical Open Letter to Biman Basu by Saibal Mitra, the CPIM leadership released Azizul and others.

That became the turning point of Azizul’s life. He was no more in active politics and started writing a regular column in the AJKAL, a Bengali daily propagating policies of the CPIM. His articles were on the same line as the editorial policy. He started writing books and became a successful writer.

But what made him a controversial figure was his open support of Buddhadev Bhattacharya’s policies on Singur and Nandigram.

Looking back, one can say that Azizul Haque was a person who acted on what he felt was right. It might have led him to a farcical call of “cease fire” from police custody or supporting the neoliberal policies under the garb of development, ala Buddhadev Bhattacharya. He failed to differentiate between populism and Marxism. Yet Azizul’s forte was his speaking in the language of the people.

Unlike the present-day intellectuals who have sold their conscience for some pelf and power or some award from the state, Azizul did not sell his conscience; rather followed his conscience wherever it led to. He was rewarded both with claps and brickbats, but he went on.

Even after his death, controversy has not left him. Azizul will be remembered for the positive aspects of his life, which are many, at the same time leaving aside his negatives, which are abundant.

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Frontier
Vol 58, No. 9, Aug 24 - 30, 2025