Communist veteran Hiren Mukherjee dead

Condoling the death of Mukherjee, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said his demise was ‘‘an irreparable loss’’ to India’s parliamentary democracy. ‘‘Hiren babu’s death is a great loss to the nation,’’ he added.

An ‘‘…unrepentant Communist’’ till his last day, in Professor Mukherjee’s own words, he had got his party membership renewed even this year. ‘‘A little delay on our part to send the renewal form to his residence, would provoke him to call us and ask, if we had decided not to renew his membership,’’ recalls a senior CPI leader.

Born on November 23, 1907, Mukherjee finished his higher education in Presidency College, Kolkata, and obtained his Master’s Degree in History from Oxford University.

A brilliant scholar, Mukherjee was later called to the bar in Lincoln’s Inn, London. Returning home in 1936, he joined the Communist Party which was then banned.

Representing CPI in Parliament from 1952 to 1977, Mukherjee endeared himself to then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru for his oratorial skills, while his brilliant academic career drew personal attention of former President S. Radhakrishnan.

With Professor Mukherjee’s death, the Communists all over ‘‘India lost a liberal who could always transcend a kind of ideological sectarianism that still inhibit the Left,’’ said Professor Nemai Sadhan Bose, a noted historian.

‘‘I knew him personally and always found him as an ideal teacher who had the ability to appreciate the historical understanding of a non-Left writer,’’ he added.

‘‘He wasn’t India’s first Prime Minister’s friend in Parliament, though he wrote the Gentle Colossus, a study on Nehru,’’ said Left historian Narahari Kabiraj.

‘‘I don’t agree that he has been rather soft about his criticism on Nehru,’’ he added.