Consider using something like this:-

myList = [['blueberries', 'fruit', 5.20], [
    'bean sprouts', 'vegetable', 9.25], ['tulip', 'flower', 8.93]]

for i in range(3):
    print(sorted(myList, key=lambda x: x[i]))

Assume values stored row-by-row in list, like that:

a = [['D', 'C', 'B', 'A'],
     ['1', '3', '2', '0'],
     ['1', '3', '2', '0']]

To sort this array you can use following code:

zip(*sorted(zip(*a), key=lambda column: column[0]))

where column[0] - value to be sorted by (you can use column1 etc.)

Output:

[('A', 'B', 'C', 'D'),
 ('0', '2', '3', '1'),
 ('0', '2', '3', '1')]

Note: If you are working with pretty big arrays and execution time does matter, consider using numpy, it has appropriate method: NumPy sort

Python, per se, has no "2d array" -- it has (1d) lists as built-ins, and (1d) arrays in standard library module array. There are third-party libraries such as numpy which do provide Python-usable multi-dimensional arrays, but of course you'd be mentioning such third party libraries if you were using some of them, rather than just saying "in Python", right?-)

So I'll assume that by "2d array" you mean a list of lists, such as:

lol = [ range(10), range(2, 12), range(5, 15) ]

or the like -- i.e. a list with 3 items, each item being a list with 10 items, and the "second row" would be the sublist item lol[1]. Yeah, lots of assumptions, but your question is so maddeningly vague that there's no way to avoid making assumptions - edit your Q to clarify with more precision, and an example!, if you dislike people trying to read your mind (and probably failing) as you currently make it impossible to avoid.

So under these assumptions you can sort each of the 3 sublists in the order required to sort the second one, for example:

indices = range(10)
indices.sort(key = lol[1].__getitem__)
for i, sublist in enumerate(lol):
  lol[i] = [sublist[j] for j in indices]

The general approach here is to sort the range of indices, then just use that appropriately sorted range to reorder all the sublists in play.

If you actually have a different problem, there will of course be different solutions;-).