COMRADE Bakshiji is no more. But Comrade Bakshiji is very much with us.
Mao quotes, dialectics and Comrade Bakshiji were inseparable. His dialectics was original and creative. It helped in understanding political situations and tasks. It helped in solving problems. It helped in building institutions. That is why he is very much with us, even when he is no more.
Whether it is Assam or Tamilnadu or any other place in India, he was close to all our comrades. Transcending language and cultural barriers was part of his second nature. As he practised what he believed, integration with comrades was very much part of him. Though he needed interpreters, his earnest desire to communicate was understood by the comrades without the help of interpreters.
Comrade Bakshiji taught comrades. He always learnt from comrades young and old without the slightest hint of hesitation. He talked and talked with comrades but that went well because he listened to them for hours. His approach was always political. There was nothing personal in his agreements and disagreements. He taught us how to function and remain as revolutionaries even when there was no revolutionary situation and when you had to prepare and prepare for long for that.
There was nothing superficial, spontaneous in his style, methods or approach. Taking up a supervisory, managerial, bureaucratic attitude was anathema to him. In Tamilnadu he was almost there in all the places of our work. He helped us in building systems, structures, organisations and magazines. His indelible mark is imprinted on everything that is positive in our Tamilnadu organisation.
Com.Bakshiji has always been a contemporary communist. But he was one with old world values, traits and charms. He is one of the last links to that earlier batch of communist revolutionaries who knew Russian, Chinese Revolutions, who had his Marxist moorings, who updated his knowledge of current politics and was able to feel the pulse of the comrades with whom he worked.
For comrades committed to the communist cause, to the defeat of corporate communal fascism, to the vision of people’s India, to the dream of building a mass revolutionary Bolshevik party Comrade Bakshiji will always remain a source of inspiration. We owe it to him to pass on his life’s message to the coming generation.
