New Delhi: A condolence meeting held at New Delhi’s Talkatora Stadium by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) on September 28 for the party’s recently deceased general secretary and former Rajya Sabha member, Sitaram Yechury, turned out to be a show of strength and unity of the opposition INDIA bloc.
Top leaders of as many as eight opposition parties attended the meeting, and took turns to pay rich tributes to Yechury, who passed away this September 12 at the age of 72. Each acknowledged the role of a ‘mediator’ and ‘glue’ that the affable CPI (M) leader played in keeping together the rainbow alliance that took on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in the recent general elections to considerable success.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge addressed a packed hall comprising people from all walks of life — “Lal Salaam” sloganeering Left party workers, a solemn bunch of social, political activists and journalists, and Yechury’s family, friends and acquaintances. Kharge gave the Left leader the credit of putting together an united opposition in the form of the INDIA bloc in the run-up to the 2024 general elections. Kharge was emphatic in stating, “The first meeting of INDIA alliance was held in my residence. The first meeting was with him.” The veteran Congress leader called him the driving force behind the opposition alliance which, by and by, led them to open channels of conversation with other like-minded parties to be able to form an Opposition alliance to take on the BJP.
Without naming Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, the veteran southern India leader of the Congress, who spoke in Hindi, said, “The one who tried to take credit for the alliance left us overnight and still we took the bloc forward by taking all parties together and the result of it was reflected in the recent general election results when the BJP didn’t get a majority and had to form a minority government.”
Talkatora Stadium in New Delhi on September 28, 2024, at Sitaram Yechury’s condolence meeting. Photo: X/@cpimspeak
Stating that Yechury would not mind late night or early meetings to keep the opposition momentum going, Kharge said, “I saw a quality in him; he never got angry with anyone, was never intolerant with anyone. He would always say, what has happened has happened, what next? He played the role of the mediator, taking everyone together. He helped to keep us united.”
The Leader of Opposition in parliament, Congress’s Rahul Gandhi, too acknowledged the ‘bridge’ that Yechury was in the INDIA alliance. Calling him a ‘friend’ – and saying that he was a better friend of his mother, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, than that of him – Rahul Gandhi spoke of Yechury’s qualities. He noted that today’s politicians have anger, aggression and arrogance, which the CPI(M)’s general secretary didn’t – “a rare thing”.
Calling Yechury politically flexible and a person who “listens even though we came from the opposite spectrum ideologically”, Gandhi said he became a ‘bridge’ between the Congress party and other parties of the alliance. He called Yechury the invisible ‘glue’ who held the structure of the alliance and kept its ‘flexible architecture’ alive.
Kharge and Gandhi’s sentiments echoed among other INDIA alliance leaders. Manoj Jha of the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Gopal Yadav of the Samajwadi Party too acknowledged the role of the link Yechury was in the alliance. Supriya Sule of Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar faction) said, “Whenever a meeting heated up, nobody moved except Yechury…my father, Sharad Pawar, would not want anyone to get out of the room till an issue would be sorted but Yechury would, and you know why. He would go out for a smoke and come back to play the mediator, the person who would calm things down…”
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Kanimozhi recalled Yechury’s close association with her father, the late Tamil leader M. Karunanidhi. To much mirth, she related that her father once appreciated Yechury’s as a United Progressive Alliance (UPA) partner for helping him relate better with various party leaders in their mother tongue, “else, none of us would have been able to understand each other”.
National Conference (NC) leader Farooq Abdullah took the occasion to assert to the growing religiously divisive forces that he is “a Muslim but was born in Bharat and will die here”, and that nobody can take away that right from him. The veteran Kashmiri leader prodded those present to not be fearful of the ruling dispensation, and unitedly fight to keep the secular tenets of the country granted by the constitution.
Among other opposition leaders who spoke at the meeting was Gopal Rai of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). Rai recalled that Yechury gave him the courage to take on the ruling BJP’s onslaught on his party by arresting most of its top leaders; he said the Left leader had told him that “we shall fight it together”. Rai also read out a condolence message from his party’s topmost leader Arvind Kejriwal.
Aside from these leaders, several veteran Left leaders also spoke at the meeting including former CPI(M) general Secretary Prakash Karat, Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan and CPI general Secretary D. Raja.
To a round of clapping, RJD’s Manoj Jha said, “Like someone had said about (Jawaharlal) Nehru after his demise, Nehru lives. I would say, Yechury lives…”
