A few months into the Emergency in 1975 Indira Gandhi suggested to the then Indian Youth Congress (IYC) president, Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi, that Sanjay Gandhi be inducted into the National Council of the youth body. A product of struggle, who had won his Lok Sabha seat at the age of 26 in 1971 by defeating veteran Ganesh Ghose of CPM (a former Andaman detainee), Dasmunsi bluntly told the all powerful Prime Minister that while her younger son was welcome to join IYC, he did not have the requisite experience to be elevated to the National Council. Mrs Gandhi kept quiet.
Within a month, engineered with the active blessings of AICC general secretary P.V. Narasimha Rao, a coup was organised in the youth wing. Dasmunsi was replaced by Ambika Soni in November 1975. A month later, the National Council invited Sanjay Gandhi to join its ranks and thus began a new phase in the history of India’s party of Freedom.
Dasmunsi was reinstated as IYC chief in March 1977 by the then Congress president, Dev Kanta Barooah, after the election debacle. But that was for a short while. Congress headed for a split: a serious effort was made to oppose Mrs Gandhi’s dominance. These efforts led to the second split in the party. Dasmunsi emerged as a pivot of the “Other Congress”. The decision of the Election Commission declaring the faction led by Mrs Gandhi as the “Real Congress” in 1982 saw many revert to Congress(I)—Dasmunsi, A.K. Anthony, K. Brahmananda Reddi, Sharad Pawar and a host of others were among them. Though back in the party, Dasmunsi remained somewhat sidelined in Mrs Gandhi’s lifetime. The emergence of Rajiv Gandhi saw him back in the limelight. He emerged as Rajiv’s most trusted lieutenant in the organisation. Elevated as a minister in Narasimha Rao days, his real moment of glory was when he served as Chief Whip of the Congress in the Lok Sabha between 1999 and 2004, when the Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA was in power. Made a minister by Dr Manmohan Singh and simultaneously charged as West Bengal PCC chief by Sonia Gandhi, Dasmunsi suddenly disappeared from the political arena when he suffered a stroke in October 2008. He struggled with death for nine long years and breathed his last on 20 November.
Congress workers in Kerala and West Bengal experienced Opposition role since the 1960s—the rest of the country saw the party play Opposition only after the post-Emergency electoral debacle in 1977. Dasmunsi led the students in West Bengal along with Subroto Mukherjee (now a senior Trinamool minister). Vyalar Ravi and P.C. Chacko were in the forefront in Kerala. Chhatra Parishad (CP) in Bengal and the Kerala Students Union (KSU) produced the crème-de-la-crème of youth leadership in Congress. In 1972, Dasmunsi as IYC president and Vyalar Ravi were inducted into the Congress Working Committee. (Ambika Soni replaced Dasmunsi in CWC in 1976.) Under Dasmunsi-Ravi-Chacko influence, the National Students Union of India (NSUI)—patterned on the National Union of Students, UK—emerged, with Rangarajan Kumaramangalam as its founder president. The director of Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, Mohan Gopal, who is a key advisor to Rahul Gandhi, succeeded Kumaramangalam. Most frontline leaders of Congress, NCP, Trinamool Congress today cut their teeth in politics in the Dasmunsi era. These include Ghulam Nabi Azad, Anand Sharma, Ashok Gehlot, Ahmed Patel, Tariq Anwar, Gurudas Kamat, Mamata Banerjee (and a host of her Cabinet colleagues).
Besides politics, Dasmunsi, an ardent Mohun Bagan fan, served as All India Football Federation chief for 20 long years. The National Football League was started by him. He served match commissioner of FIFA in World Cup qualifiers. The recent FIFA U-17 World Cup successfully hosted by India is a legacy of Dasmunsi.
Unlike the Rahul Gandhi team—Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, Jitin Prasada, R.P.N. Singh, Gaurav Gogoi, etc., who emerged sans NSUI or IYC background (following the footsteps of their respective fathers), the leadership which emerged in Congress in the 1970s and the 1980s elevated itself from the student-youth wings of the party. Rahul Gandhi has introduced a new paradigm in the management and electoral process of these organisations. Veterans say that the organisational election pattern now in place excludes the possibility of middle-class and ordinary workers from emerging, as had been the case in the Dasmunsi years. The dynastic pattern is percolating in the Congress youth front too, these veterans point out.
Dasmunsi’s funeral was a rare show. BJP’s Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman graciously provided an IAF helicopter to carry his remains to his native Raiganj in West Bengal’s Uttar Dinajpur district. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, herself busy in Gorkhaland related parleys in the Darjeeling hills, also lined up a helicopter and asked Cabinet colleagues to attend the cremation. State police fired a gun salute and all state honours were extended. When the cortege reached the PCC office in Kolkata Congress, Trinamool, CPM, CPI, Forward Bloc, RSP and even BJP leaders placed wreaths. Congressmen who have joined BJP joined the mourning.
Raiganj and Kaliaganj observed a bandh in his memory—shops were closed, transport did not ply. It took seven hours for the procession to wind its way to the crematorium in a town where everything is within half-an-hour drive. The battle cry of Congress in the Freedom struggle, “Vande Mataram” rent the air as the cortege passed through dense crowd. (Both Jai Hind and Vande Mataram have their origins in Bengal. Till date both Congress and Trinamool use it as their battle cry in that state.)
Siddhartha Shankar Ray had once described Dasmunsi as “Second Netaji Subhas”. In his death, Priya Ranjan Dasmusi seemed to justify the epithet.