Sometime in August 2003, Sitaram Yechury, then a senior leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), was invited by his party’s student’s wing, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI), to speak in New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
Newly-admitted students had filled all the front rows of an otherwise packed-to-the-brim hall where Yechury would soon speak on how the then-Bharatiya Janata Party’s policies had not only targeted minority groups but all of the Indian working class.
Yechury appeared almost suddenly, without the fanfare that normally accompanies a national leader, and apologised for running slightly behind schedule. He wore a plain white shirt unbuttoned at the top and tailored trousers that went casually with nondescript sandals. For scores of students who had little exposure to communist leaders, Yechury’s self-effacing and friendly demeanour was remarkable and heartwarming at the same time.
Five minutes into his speech, however, he had the hall spellbound – the new students intently listening to his point-by-point unpacking of the anti-people policies of the BJP government, leaving almost everyone, even those who were critical of his party, in awe and inspired.
In his 45-minute speech – mellow, matter-of-fact and impeccably argued – he simplified complex thoughts on communalism and the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) policies of the government, presented the Left as the most legitimate political force to combat anti-people policies and left the students with questions that they all ought to have grappled with during their stay at a publicly funded university.
All of this, all at once. By the time he finished amidst a deafening round of applause, Yechury had successfully left a permanent imprint of not only himself but also of the Left as a political force in the country.
As he rushed to leave campus for another meeting, he also left behind a chaotic hall with students theatrically exchanging thoughts on his speech, debating some of the ideas that he touched upon and, above all, immersing themselves in the world of political and philosophical questions with no easy answers. Their JNU life had begun with a bang.
A photograph showing Yechury and Indira Gandhi, being shared across social media today.
Yechury personified the characteristic JNU student all his life – thoughtful, critical, curious, with an unending grit to forge solidarities and alliances. Even as he rose through the ranks to become his party’s general secretary, contending with multi-layered national and international political concerns and even struggling to bring back the lost glory of his party, his core remained the same.
At 72, Yechury breathed his last in New Delhi’s AIIMS on September 12, 2024 after a long bout of crippling respiratory infection. He will be known as one of the most accessible and friendly political leaders who played instrumental roles in India’s landmark events.
Despite his lifetime commitment to communism, his doors were always open to people from across the political spectrum. He kept his political aura so tightly under wraps that commoners and even journalists never hesitated in reaching out to him, sometimes to his own discomfort.
Photo: X/@pinarayivijayan.
Yechury came of age politically in the seventies, which saw India’s most energetic students’ assertions. Born in a Telugu-speaking family, he was exposed to India’s demographic diversity quite early in his life while spending his childhood with his parents who worked as officers in the government.
A meritorious student throughout, he joined St. Stephens College in New Delhi and then JNU in 1973 to study economics.
At JNU, he studied under the legendary professor Krishna Bharadwaj. It was at this university that both Yechury and Prakash Karat, whom he succeeded as the party’s general secretary, cut their teeth in Left politics, campaigning and pressing students’ concerns around education, health and existing inequities.
He was elected president of the JNU students’ union thrice in a row after the Emergency was lifted, cementing the Left’s position in the newly opened university along with Karat and the likes of the erudite D.P. Tripathi.
His temporary arrest during the Emergency disrupted his plans to finish his PhD, following which he became a full-timer in the party, leading the SFI nationally. His national role really helped him mature as a pan-India leader; he travelled widely, making connections with different students’ movements across the country, forging solidarities on common issues and helping the SFI become a mammoth students’ organisation.
His constructive role during the post-Emergency euphoria was noticed by the senior leaders of the party, and he was soon inducted into the party’s central committee as part of an effort by its leaders to infuse young blood into its decision-making mechanisms.
Yechury’s initiation in national politics also coincided with the time when the CPI(M) was making serious efforts to expand itself in the heartland. Although those attempts remained half-baked, Yechury had emerged as a leader bred in the concerns and issues of the CPI(M)’s national politics. This differentiated him and Karat from other young CPI(M) leaders of the time, who remained solely involved in party strongholds like Kerala and West Bengal.
It was around the same time that Yechury became the party’s nominee to represent the CPI(M) internationally in meetings of the communist parties of eastern European countries and other such nations, playing a crucial role in forcing his own party to engage with world politics.
The eclectic experience helped Yechury frame his political concerns not only around national issues but also the international developments of the time, placing him among those rare Indian political leaders with a definitive understanding of foreign policy matters.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the demolition of the Babri Masjid and an impending bankruptcy forcing India to adopt LPG policies in the early nineties, the Left movement in India faced a setback. It was around this time when the CPI(M) leadership, with Yechury as its integral part, really put in all the effort to build alliances with different political parties to keep the BJP at bay and create a strong political foundation for Indian secularism.
Photo: X/@RahulGandhi.
Yechury, under the mentorship of the then-general secretary Harkishan Singh Surjeet, bloomed as a leader who could effortlessly become a bridge between the CPI(M) and other parties in trying to forge strong secular alliances with not only political parties, but also a range of civil society groups.
Surjeet, a master of coalition politics, helped Yechury to come to his own, where he could wear his friendly and accessible demeanour and drop his communist uprightness to build bridges between forces that no one had imagined could come together.
Yechury was an avid reader, extremely deft with repartee and also a huge fan of old Hindi film songs. His friends will tell you how he could remember the songwriters and musicians of nearly all songs from decades before the eighties, and even had a huge collection of Hindi songs. He had shown this side of his personality even during his time as an editor of the party’s different magazines, where he not only published political articles but also experimented with interviews of novelists, poets and artists.
As the JNU students’ union president, he initiated the concept of having wall magazines, which published scholarly and literary pamphlets. Until his end, he did not stop writing for many publications, intervening in significant matters urgently and even lightening up the mood with a witty comment or piece on generally serious issues.
His nearly two-decade record as a parliamentarian bears testimony to his seriousness not only as a committed communist, but also as a skilful negotiator and interventionist.
Remarkable also were Yechury’s small gestures towards others, which earned him the respect of all politicians. His emphasis on effective communication was so much that he picked up regional languages like Bengali and Marathi, too.
In his last leg of life, much was said about his rivalry with Karat, which was not entirely untrue. But any old CPI(M) observer will tell you that both these leaders inherited leadership at a stage when stalwarts who built the party from scratch like Jyoti Basu, E.M.S. Namboodiripad, P. Sundaraiah and Surjeet had either retired or died, leaving a huge vacuum within the party.
Karat inherited a role to build the party’s organisation, while Yechury emerged as the party’s face to deal with the complexities of India’s parliamentary democracy. Both had different roles, and could have complemented each other, like they did in their JNU life, in a different situation and context. Yet, both represented the party during the crucial time of its transition in the nineties, and both hold the distinction of having emerged as national leaders from a vibrant students’ movement of the seventies.
As general secretary of the party, Yechury represented the section that believed in broader coalitions against the BJP, and remained consistently committed to his non-dogmatic approach to lead a parliamentary Left force.
He played an instrumental role in the UPA-1 government’s drawing up a common minimum programme to keep all secular forces together. As someone who constantly engaged with the Congress, Yechury also influenced the Manmohan Singh-led government to pass watershed legislation like the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, RTI, the right to education and the right to food.
Yechury will be remembered always as a slow but steady fighter who doggedly fought both fundamentalism and globalisation at the same time, and who became a cementing force in the Indian polity when communal and profit-greedy forces registered their presence like never before.
