This article is part of a series by The Wire titled ‘The Early Parliamentarians’, exploring the lives and work of post-independence MPs who have largely been forgotten. The series looks at the institutions they helped create, the enduring ideas they left behind and the contributions they made to nation building.
Bhagat Singh’s martyrdom on March 23, 1931 influenced thousands in the country. One of them was Harkishan Singh Surjeet, later a staunch nationalist, peasant leader, communist, parliamentarian and even kingmaker.
Born on March 23, 1916 to a Bassi Jat Sikh family in Badala in Punjab’s Jalandhar district, Surjeet began to follow and support Bhagat Singh from a young age, and joined Bhagat Singh’s Naujawan Bharat Sabha in 1930 when he was barely 15.
When Surjeet was a young boy in 1936, he razed the standing maize crop on two acres of his village farm so that then Congress president Jawaharlal Nehru could hold a meeting that was being blocked by those who opposed him. Young Indira Gandhi too accompanied her father for this meeting.
Inspired by Bhagat Singh, Surjeet as a teenager hoisted the Indian tricolour on a court in Hoshiarpur in March 1932, an action that led the police to open fire. He survived but was arrested for his act of defiance and sent to a reformatory school for juvenile offenders. For this valiant act, Surjeet earned the title ‘London Tod Singh’ (one who breaks London, the centre of colonial power).
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
After his release, Surjeet took to politics in Punjab. He came in touch with the early communist pioneers and embraced communism as an 18 year old, joining the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1934, India’s second most powerful party after only the Congress. Three decades later, he was one of the nine who founded the breakaway Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPI(M).
While in the Communist Party, Surjeet became a member of the Congress Socialist Party in 1935. He was elected as the secretary of the Punjab State Kisan Sabha in 1938. The same year, he was externed from Punjab and went to Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh where he started a monthly paper, Chingari, and later Dukhi Duniya.
When Surjeet was underground after the outbreak of the Second World War, he was arrested in 1940. He was imprisoned in the notorious Lahore Red Fort, where he was kept for three months in solitary confinement in terrible conditions. Later he was shifted to Deoli detention camp jail in Rajasthan where he remained till 1944.
He was the CPI state secretary in Punjab when India became independent in 1947. During the Partition days, he tirelessly worked for communal harmony in violence-torn Punjab.
Just after independence, Surjeet was again forced to go underground for four years as the communist party was banned at that time. He then made a mark organising peasants in Punjab, becoming the president of the influential All India Kisan Sabha. He also worked in the Agricultural Workers’ Union.
He led the historic ‘anti-betterment levy movement’ in Punjab in 1959. His work with farmers led to his election as general secretary and then president of the All India Kisan Sabha.
Surjeet was a committed communist. He was elected to the Central Committee and Polit Bureau of the CPI at the third congress of the party held in January 1954. He continued in the leadership of the CPI till the split in the party in 1964. Surjeet was one of the leaders who fought against revisionism and constituted the core group of the leadership who went on to form the CPI(M).
In 1964, he was elected to the Central Committee and Polit Bureau of the CPI(M) at the seventh congress and continued in these positions till the 19th congress of the CPI(M) in 2008. His experience in developing the peasant movement and building the party led him to shun Left sectarian positions whenever such deviations arose in the communist movement.
In the CPI(M), Surjeet headed the international department for three decades. He developed relations with all communist and progressive parties around the world. Under his leadership, the CPI(M) expressed firm solidarity with anti-imperialist struggles and national liberation movements. He made a notable contribution to solidarity activities during the Vietnam liberation struggle, the Palestinian movement and the Cuba solidarity campaign. He worked tirelessly for the defence of democratic and secular values and to see that India maintained its non-aligned and independent foreign policy. His views were sought and his advice heard with respect in political circles.
Surjeet made a key contribution to the party’s programmatic and tactical policies. He was a master tactician who could translate the party’s political line into practice, implementing it with great skill and innovation.
In parliament
Surjeet was a member of the Punjab Legislative Assembly from 1954 to 1959 as a unified CPI member. In 1967, he was elected to the Punjab legislative assembly for the CPI(M) and served till 1972. He was elected to Rajya Sabha from Punjab as a CPI(M) candidate on April 10, 1978 and served for six years till April 9, 1984.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
Surjeet played a remarkable role in the defence of national unity and in formulating policies to counter the threat from divisive forces. His firm stance and leadership in fighting against Khalistani terrorism in Punjab and the sacrifice made by over 200 Communists in fighting extremism constitutes an important chapter.
From the late 1950s, Surjeet was involved in tackling the problems of Jammu and Kashmir. He played a role in the evolution of the Assam Accord in the 1980s. Imbued with anti-imperialism and the values of the nationalist movement, Surjeet looked at all issues of national unity from a democratic and secular standpoint.
His was a lifelong fight against communalism. He was one of the first leaders who recognised the threat posed by the rise of the communal forces to the secular principle of the Indian state. Surjeet played a crucial role in 1989, 1996 and 2004 in creating the political formations and the setting up of governments which excluded the communal forces.
HKS served as the general secretary of the CPI(M) from 1992 to 2005 and was a member of the party’s Polit Bureau from 1964 to 2008. As general secretary, he became the most authoritative spokesman for the Left and democratic forces in the country.
His congenial attitude – and his ability to share a joke, a rarity among the comrades – helped him in no small measure to make friends with the leading lights of the Indian political establishment. So, when India entered the coalition era, Surjeet became the natural kingmaker. Despite his best efforts, he could not convince his party to let Jyoti Basu become the prime minister of India in 1996, and had he enjoyed power he would have saved the CPI(M) from making this historic blunder.
Surjeet, who always sported a white turban, was also passionately opposed to the Sikh separatist campaign that bled Punjab for a decade until 1993. An atheist, he led a spartan lifestyle and always wore simple, even crumpled clothes. Yet he was the man who was known as the kingmaker, the person who made prime ministers, chief ministers, governors, officials and groomed young comrades who now run the party. He helped many set up business enterprises and he was the person who collected funds for his party.
Although he considered Stalin an icon, he believed in electoral democracy. He was always ready to talk to the media – another rare trait among the comrades. urjeet passed away on August 1, 2008. He was 93.
On his death, the CPI(M) Polit bureau released the following condolence message:
“Surjeet played an important role in making the CPI(M) the largest contingent of the Left movement in the country. Surjeet absorbed Marxism-Leninism by sheer dent of self-study and learning from experience. He always stressed the fundamental importance of critically examining the Party’s ideological and political positions on the basis of Marxism. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in the nineteen nineties, he guided the Party in arriving at correct positions learning from the experience of the past. In his death, the Party has lost an outstanding leader and the country an authoritative representative of the Left and secular tradition. The entire Party will cherish and uphold the ideology and principles for which Harkishan Singh Surjeet dedicated his life. The Polit Bureau pays respectful homage to this outstanding Communist and beloved leader.”
He authored the books Land Reforms in India, Happenings in Punjab and the Outline History of the Communist Party. He wrote innumerable pamphlets on current political issues.
Qurban Ali is a trilingual journalist who has covered some of modern India’s major political, social and economic developments. He has a keen interest in India’s freedom struggle and is now documenting the history of the socialist movement in the country.
