The funeral procession of Jyoti Basu, Chief Minister of West Bengal, will begin at 9:30 AM on Tuesday. The public will be allowed to pay their last respect to him until 2:30 PM. The procession will continue towards the medical hospital where Jyoti Basu’s body will be donated to the anatomy section for medical research in order to fulfill his wishes. His eyes have already been donated on Sunday before his body was taken out of the hospital. There will be no cremation.
On Tuesday, Sheikh Hasina, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh, will attend the funeral along with other leading political leaders of Bangladesh. They believe that Jyoti Basu has been a friend of Bangladesh. He was born in Bangladesh and has sided with the country when it came to the Ganges and other such issues.
Jyoti Basu passed away on the 17th of January at the age of 95. He belonged to the Communist Party of India (CPM). In 1996, his own party did not allow him to be the Prime Minister of India. Gautam Gupta, VOA Correspondent from Kolkata, looks back at the period of time and wonders how the course of history would have been altered if Jyoti Basu became Prime Minister.
