law, international law and anthropology at the London School of Economics (LSE). Due to which, he is also credited as an alumnus of LSE. He had reportedly attended the lectures of the political theorist and economist, Harold Laski and was influenced by his anti-fascism. By 1937, Basu was an active member of several anti-imperialist Indian students unions such as the India League and the Federation of Indian Students, and had become acquainted with young Indian communists such as Bhupesh Gupta and Snehangshu Acharya. In 1938, he had also become a founding member of the London Majlis and subsequently its first secretary. Apart from raising public opinion for the cause of Indian independence, one of the primary function of the Majlis was to arrange receptions for Indian leaders who were visiting England at the time. Through the Majlis, Basu came into contact with various Indian independence movement leaders such as Subhas Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, Krishna Menon and Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. Before 1947 and independence movement On returning to Calcutta, India in early 1940, Basu enrolled as a barrister at the Calcutta High Court, and married Basanti Ghosh. However, in the same year, he also inducted himself as an activist affiliated to the Communist Party of India (CPI). His entry into the communist movement at the time had reportedly been in opposition to the wishes of his relatively well off family. Following the Meerut conspiracy in 1929, the Communist Party had also been made illegal by British authorities, as a result Basu was initially involved in providing liaison and safe houses for underground Communist leaders in the Independence movement. However soon afterwards, he also became involved in organising railway workers, planning strikes and is described to have preferred direct action over ballot box in the initial years. In 1941, Basu was appointed as the party secretary of the Bengal Assam Railway and tasked with organising a workers union. By May 1943, he had become the representative of the Calcutta Port Engineering Worker's Union in the All India Trade Union Congress, while the Bengal Assam Railway Workers Union under him increased its membership to over 4,000 with union members present in Dacca, Calcutta, Kanchrapara, Mymensingh, Rangpur and Assam. Although by this time, he had also become a widower with the early death of his wife, Basanti Basu, just two years into their marriage. In the following Bengal famine of 1943, the members