THE legendary trade union leader and iconic figure of the communist movement in Bangladesh Jasim Uddin Mondal passed away on October 2 at the age of 97 in a hospital in Dhaka.

Following his death, the Presidium of the Communist Party of Bangladesh met and passed a resolution commenting that the “death of Jasim Uddin Mondal has meant that the working-class and the communist movement has lost a towering leader and a father figure.

“His demise is an irreparable loss to the country. The revolutionary movement of the working class will follow his lead and continue to march forward.”

For his contribution to the Liberation war of 1971, he was given a guard of honour before his body was taken away for burial.

Mondal was born in the Kushtia district in 1922. He grew up in the Narkeldanga railway colony in Kolkata (West Bengal) and cut his teeth in politics in colonial India in the 1930s.

In 1940 he took his first job as a boiler foreman in Sealdah Railway station in Kolkata. In the same year he joined the Communist Party of India.

For over 75 years he remained steadfast and committed to the struggle of the working class and the fight for socialism. During this period, he remained underground or in prison for nearly two decades.

In 1946 he played a prominent role in getting a young Jyotirindra Basu (later the famous leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and Chief Minister of West Bengal) elected to Bengal legislative assembly from the railway constituency.

A year later he refused to accept the partition of India and did his utmost to prevent the communal carnage in Bengal.

In the events leading to the partition of India, trains were being waylaid by communal forces to kill passengers.

On one occasion, Mondal prevented a communal mob from attacking passengers on a train in which he was working by shovelling four times the amount of coal necessary so that the train sped away without stopping.

In the first 25 years of Pakistan’s existence, he was either in prison or living underground, though this did not deter him from organising the railway unions or the wider trade union movement.

Under severe repressive conditions, he also built up the Communist Party. Even in prison, he struggled to defend humane conditions for political prisoners. His courage, boldness and ability to take innovative actions never deserted him.

During the Liberation War of 1971 to establish Bangladesh, he was a key organiser of the communist and progressive forces in their fight against the Pakistan Army.

In recognition of that he was given a Guard of Honour when his body was brought to the Martyrs memorial in Dhaka to lie in state.

Mondal would have smiled wryly at the irony as he was a relentless and fierce critic of the present regime in Bangladesh for its pro-capitalist and pro-imperialist policies.

In 1992, following the fall of the Soviet Union, the majority of the central committee members of the Communist Party of Bangladesh decided to liquidate the party. But it failed since a majority of the party’s members, especially the youth, mobilised in force to defend it.

Where was Mondal at this time? At the age of 72 he came out of “retirement” and toured the country from one end to the other to organise the working and toiling masses and acted as the glue of continuity of the Communist Party. He never looked back.

At every subsequent Congress of the party he was there urging, rebuking and cajoling comrades to keep the red flag flying. Over the next 25 years he brought into the communist fold thousands of youths through his speeches and exhortation.

He had the rare ability in explaining the essence of class societies, the exploitation of common people and extraction of their surplus labour, the machinations of imperialist forces to plunder and dominate.

He used to do this in a language that was precise, pithy, and passionate; his delivery was in the form of epigrams and illustrated with colourful examples; his presentation, even when he was in his nineties, electrifying, and, above all, his speeches were accessible and made vivid to all.

I thought of translating some of his snippets. But I gave up as I felt the translation would lose the rawness, the immediacy, the passion, the anger and above all the chiselled prose which was his hallmark. It is not surprising since he learnt his Marxism in real life.

In his imitable style he used to say: “I used to carry tons of rice from one district to another by train but did not have enough rice on my plate at home. When I started querying that, the revelation of the class and imperialist nature of exploitation was clear.”

He always led from the front line. He was a key election organiser for Basu in 1946, an activist and leader during the liberation struggle for Bangladesh in 1971 and an inspiration behind the reorganisation of the Communist Party of Bangladesh in 1992.

He defended the rights of the garment workers after the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013 and continuously acted as an adviser to the Communist Party of Bangladesh till his death.

For nearly seven decades, he was always fighting and leading from the front.

Lal Salam to Jasim Uddin Mondal. We pledge to keep the Red Flag Flying.

Moshfiqur Noor is secretary of Tower Hamlets Trades Union Council.