At other times, the Left Front Government would have ignored the bandh and the demand. But it was election eve and public sympathy for the issue went far beyond the SUCI's sphere of influence.

So the CPI(M) reacted promptly, saying the government would reconsider the issue of reintroducing English at the primary level. After the polls, Chief Minister Jyoti Basu told the State Assembly that a commission would be set up to go into the question of bringing back English lessons at primary classes from the next academic session.

The commission headed by former Rabindra Bharati University vice-chancellor, Pabitra Sarkar, is expected to submit its report to the government byJune. Known for his pro-CPI(M) leanings, Sarkar can only do as his Marxist mentors want him to do. Everyone agrees that the return of English at the primary level is now only a formality. The question is at what stage the commission will recommend the study of English to be reintroduced. Once again, Sarkar's recommendation will follow the CPI(M) line.

The problem, however, is that the Marxist top brass in Bengal is divided on the issue. Basu, who is in favour of reintroduction of English at the early school stage, has influential comrades like CPI(M) central committee members Anil Biswas, Buddhadev Bhattacharyya and Benoy Konar on his side.

Arraigned against this line is the equally powerful group led by the convener of the Front's education cell and another high-profile central committee member Biman Bose, former Finance Minister Ashok Mitra and School Education Minister Kanti Biswas. This group has the support of two frontal outfits of the CPI(M), the All Bengal Primary Teachers' Association (ABPTA)and the All Bengal Teachers' Association (ABTA), which control a large middle-class constituency in the CPI(M)'s rural mass base.

This inner-party schism on the issue had been there even at the time the LF Government abolished English from the primary syllabi in 1982. The then party secretary in West Bengal, Promode Dasgupta, had his way, overruling Basu's objections. Today, Biman Bose, known as the last of the Dasgupta boys, carries on his mentor's mantle.

The anti-English group in the party today offers the same arguments that Dasgupta had advanced in 1982: English education is elitist and gives an unfair advantage to a small percentage of the people against an overwhelming majority. The mother tongue should be the medium of instructions at all levels. Teaching a foreign language at the primary stage is ``unscientific'' and therefore, English can be best taught after that stage. On a practical plain, the fear of English is one major reason for the large number of drop-outs from primary classes,particularly in villages. Supporters of this line quote a 1992 report of the Union Human Resource Development Ministry which showed that in only seven States in India -- Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Manipur, Tamil Nadu and Himachal Pradesh -- English was taught at the primary level. They also refer to several national education commissions headed by Zakir Hussain, Radhakrishnan and D.M. Kothari, which also recommended the study of English only after the primary level. Besides, they point out that no foreign language is taught at the primary school level even in the advanced countries.

The government's critics, on the other hand, allege that the CPI(M) argument was purely political and lacked academic merit. Any language, argues Sunanda Sanyal, a long-time crusader in favour of English, is best taught if introduced at an early stage. The drop-out problem, they say, is due, not to the fear of English, but to poverty and a whole range of socio-economic conditions. And, if British colonialism gave WestBengal an advantage over other States, it was foolish on the part of the Left to throw it away.

But ground realities made the Marxists to reassess the issue from time to time. Two commissions -- one headed by the late economist Bhabatosh Datta and another by former Finance Minister Ashok Mitra -- noted the sharp fall in standards of English learning in Bengal's schools. Datta recommended in 1984 that English be reintroduced as an optional subject at Class III, while Mitra in 1993 wanted it back at Class V.

An earlier commission headed by Himansu Bimal Mazumdar, set up during the Congress Ministry in 1974, had suggested abolition of English from the primary level. But this commission's report was submitted in 1979, by which time the first LF Government had taken over. The Ashok Mitra commission also noted that while the government schools did not teach English, English-medium schools of indifferent qualities mushroomed all over the State. This showed the people's, even in semi-urban areas, desire to giveEnglish lessons to their wards. Instead of bridging it, the dual system widened the gap between those who studied English from the early classes and those who did not.

While politicos debate the issue to suit their lines of action, academics and social scientists feel that the moot point is not the stage from which English is taught, but how it is taught. And, if the gap between English-educated students and others is widening, there are far more important reasons for that. The current debate over English, as one well-known social scientist put it, is ``a sickening, old political football, like most other issues in Bengal today.''

So they spoke but...

Promode Dasgupta was a bachelor. So is Biman Bose. Ashok Mitra has no children. One therefore never knew which schools these no-English diehards would have sent their children to.

But one complaint the pro-English politicos and academics constantly made was that the CPI(M) leaders maintained double standards on English. The Marxist bosses askedtheir folks to remain native, while they sent their own children to English-medium schools or ones which taught English from Class I.

Jyoti Basu, himself an alumnus of St Xavier's School and Presidency College, had no problem of choice for his son, Chandan, who passed out of school long before his father took over the reins of Bengal. But Basu's three granddaughters all studied in La Martiniere School in Calcutta.