Sitaram Yechury Stayed the Course Through the Rise and Decline of His Party

I met Sitaram Yechury soon after I joined the Jawaharlal Nehru University for a PhD programme in 1977. The Emergency was over and the Janata government had taken over. The first thing to hit me was the amazingly democratic culture in campus. The spirit of dialogue and debate prevailed. There was no ragging and no goondaism during elections. This was the result of a democratic culture fostered by the students union. Various student bodies vied with each other to get the attention of the newly admitted students so that they could be drawn into their fold.

The issue of the ‘Guilty Four’ was festering then. The student body wanted the top functionaries of the University – including the Vice-Chancellor and the Registrar – to resign since during the Emergency they had collaborated with the government and had allowed the students to be arrested. To press their demand, the students unanimously decided to go on strike. Sitaram was the president of the Students Union and actively mobilised the students.

The Library was captured by the student body and run by them 24×7. Later on, it was said not a book was lost. Senior students held classes for the new students. So, while a strike was on, there was a semblance of academic normalcy. Simultaneously, there were discussions and debates on how the situation was to be handled. Some students went back home but most stayed on. All this was a contribution of the student leadership in place. The SFI under Sitaram played an important role in this unique episode where learning and agitating went hand in hand.

The ethos in campus was anti-establishment.

Sitaram as the president of the Student Union was in the lead and perhaps these were his formative experiences which stayed with him all through his life. Those were the days when students did not reveal that they were preparing for the Civil Services examinations. It is only in 1980 that a notice was seen on a Library notice board announcing availability of material for preparing for the Civil Service examinations. There was consternation and it was widely discussed on campus. During the 1970s, so many democratic practices got adopted in JNU. Like, representation in decision making bodies, student faculty committee, running student elections and say in admission policies.

Not only was the student body against Indira Gandhi for the Emergency during which many active students were arrested but also against the Morarji Desai government. The Janata government saw JNU as a bastion of the Left and wanted to put it in its place. JNU’s expansion was stalled. Funding for the Library was curtailed. The Library was supposed to get two copies of every book printed in India. That stopped because there was no place to store them and/or display them. 

The 10-storey new Library building stood as a shell for many years because the funding had been cut. The shift of the campus from what was built for the IAS Academy to its own campus called the ‘up campus’ was stalled. Departments functioned from the hostel rooms which were meant for IAS probationers. Fortunately, there were good lecture halls near the library and reading room, called the ‘L’ and the ‘S’ Halls – for large and small – lectures.

Also read: A Fighter and a Thinker, Sitaram Yechury Leaves Behind a Towering Legacy

Sitaram, an economics student, had joined the PhD programme after completing his MA. In the small first batch of MA Economics, he was considered to be one of the best students. He demonstrated that one could be a good student and also an activist. He was also in the first batch of PhD in Economics and got a fellowship. His supervisor professor Krishna Bharadwaj, the founder of the Centre, used to be at her wit’s end to get Sitaram to write something to show progress in the programme. The Economics faculty realised that given Sitaram’s commitment to student and national politics, it was going to be difficult for him to write a dissertation. The department did not give up hope since he was a bright student who was also polite and respectful to teachers.

Sitaram’s anti-establishment framework in life resulted in his becoming a whole timer for the party. Most of his class fellows got good jobs and earned well but that did not lure him. Many of the JNU student leaders after leaving JNU joined established parties. Many changed sides and joined the mainstream and became critical of the Left. This happened especially after the New Economic Policies were launched in 1991. Sitaram took all this in his stride and remained committed to the Left even though it must have been tough to see so many comrades change side. He did not show disappointment and remained affable. Perhaps, it was his connect with people on the ground and the understanding that there was a larger fight in the world.

His party, CPI(M), was in the ascendency in the period up to the 1990s. That kept him engaged. The emergence of the National Front with support of the Left and the Right from 1989 led to hectic activity in the opposition ranks. He was a part of that. There was hope of building an alternative to Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress.

That hope was quickly belied with the fall of the National Front government, the economic crisis that engulfed the economy and the launch of NEP in 1991. These policies were introduced under the conditionalities set by the IMF and the World Bank. That was also the time of the emergence of the Dunkle Draft, proposing the creation of WTO. Sitaram was actively engaged in opposing these diktats from outside.

He participated in the National Patent Working Group’s activities to oppose the Dunkle Draft and the proposed Patent Laws under the aegis of the WTO, created in 1995. He was a part of the Preparatory Committee for Alternative Economic Policies (PCAEP) which worked on drafting Alternative Budgets 1993-94 and 1994-95 as vehicles of alternative policies. He argued that the Congress introduced NEP saying that ‘there is no alternative’ or ‘TINA’ – a term coined by Margaret Thacher in 1978. He argued that we have to show that an alternative is feasible in India.

When the Congress was the main national force of the establishment, he worked against it and as the BJP rose to power in the 1990s on the back of raking up communalism, he worked for the unity of the anti-BJP parties. There was the United Front (UF) and then the UPA. More recently he has worked to bring the opposition together under what became the INDI Alliance. While as a General Secretary of the CPI(M) he opposed Congress in Kerala (earlier also in West Bengal), at the national level he worked to build an anti-BJP front.

In JNU it was clear, he could get along with a diverse set of people and worked towards convincing people rather than adopting a strident and dogmatic view. Many of the student leaders in JNU belonging to other parties were his good friends and respected him in spite of the wide differences that existed due to what was seen as Stalinism.

This art of working with a diverse set of people while maintaining his ideology served him well in alliance building. He learnt a lot from his mentor, Harkishan Singh Surjeet, who was a master of the art of building alliances in Delhi. But Sitaram was doing it at a time when alliance building had become far more difficult than in the earlier period. The disarray in the opposition had become greater and authoritarianism had scared many of the opposition leaders who were not coming out openly to oppose the ruling party. They were not mobilising the people to come out in the streets on critical issues. This was unlike in the 1980s and 1990s when there was strong public mobilisation.

It must have been tough for Sitaram to be heading the party when its strength had greatly diminished. West Bengal and Tripura were lost. Strength in parliament was minimal. He was a part of a small band of parliamentarians who raised critical issues. He was heard with rapt attention in the House. At a recent panel discussion he pointed out how he had opposed the issue of electoral bonds. Earlier he had raised the issue of attack on institutions of higher education, especially the characterisation of JNU as anti-national and home to the ‘tukde-tukde’ gang. He raised the issue of Rohit Vemula’s death at the Central University Hyderabad. 

He constantly raised the issues of conditions of workers, women, farmers, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes – all the marginalised. His command over public policy was exceptional and he could quickly get to the heart of the problem. So, his responses were sought by the media. This was because of his clarity about the way the establishment functions and how it pushes its narrow interest at the expense of the marginalised. He understood that power play was for pushing narrow interests. Even policies seemingly for the marginalised had an ulterior motive and delivered little to the supposedly intended beneficiaries.

It is easy for a leader to work with hope when the party is on the rise and things are going well. It is far more difficult to maintain equanimity when the party is in decline. It is not easy to build alliances with those with whom one has ideological differences while maintaining one’s ideology which is contrary to that of the others. As it is, being Left in a capitalist system is difficult at the best of times. Perhaps JNU played a small part in making Sitaram what he was – an affable democrat who was widely admired.

Arun Kumar is retired professor of economics, JNU.