Somnath Chatterjee

Somnath Chatterjee (born July 25, 1929, Tezpur, India—died August 13, 2018, Kolkata) was an Indian lawyer, politician, and parliamentarian, who was a longtime senior official in the Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPI(M). He served 10 terms in the Lok Sabha (lower chamber of the Indian parliament) between 1971 and 2009, the last of which (2004–09) was as its speaker.

Chatterjee was born in what is now Assam state, northeastern India, but he grew up in Calcutta (now Kolkata). His father, Nirmal Chandra Chatterjee, was a lawyer, jurist, and parliamentarian who was a prominent member of the Hindu Mahasabha, the pro-Hindu ideological forerunner of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The younger Chatterjee attended the University of Calcutta, after which he continued his schooling in England, earning a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge and a law degree from Middle Temple (one of the Inns of Court) in London. Returning to India, he pursued a legal career that included work as a barrister at the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court of India.

Chatterjee joined the CPI(M) in 1968. He first ran for office in 1971, winning the seat in a Lok Sabha constituency in West Bengal state that had been held by his father. He continued to be reelected to the chamber from various constituencies in the state. Although he lost in the 1984 contest to Mamata Banerjee of the Indian National Congress (Congress Party), he won a by-election for a different seat the following year. He became a widely respected member of parliament, known for his many eloquent speeches, and was honoured with the Outstanding Parliamentarian Award in 1996. After he was unanimously elected as the speaker of the Lok Sabha in June 2004, Chatterjee attempted to streamline the functioning of the house and improve the conduct of its members. He soon inaugurated limited live telecasts of the chamber’s proceedings, which increased to 24-hour television coverage in July 2006.

Within the CPI(M) hierarchy, Chatterjee served as the leader of the party in the Lok Sabha from 1989 until he became speaker in 2004. He built a reputation as a prominent advocate for secular politics and was particularly opposed to the strong pro-Hindu positions often taken by the BJP. In mid-2008 Chatterjee refused to step down from office after the CPI(M) had withdrawn its support from the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) coalition government over the issue of a civilian nuclear agreement between India and the United States. He argued that the speaker’s post was apolitical and not tied to his party’s status vis-à-vis the government. Nonetheless, in July the CPI(M) expelled Chatterjee from the party, and the following month he announced that he would retire from politics, which he did in 2009, at the end of his tenure as speaker.

After his retirement, Chatterjee served for a time on the governing board of a women’s college in Shantiniketan (Bolpur), West Bengal, which he had helped found in 2004. His autobiography, Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a Parliamentarian, was published in 2010.