As I pay homage to Sitaram Yechury, whose death represents a significant loss for India since he was one of the most notable leaders of the Left and a remarkable representative of parliamentary communist politics in the nation — this tribute blends personal recollections with political contemplations.
Yechury and Prakash Karat, two general secretaries of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in the last two decades, were my contemporaries at the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and I had warm personal relations with both.
Yechury did his MA from JNU’s Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, the finest economics department in the country founded by the late Prof Krishna Bharadwaj, my MPhil supervisor. Bharadwaj once remarked on the quality of Yechury’s written coursework essays, saying that they were so outstanding that even awarding the highest grade was not enough. He started working on a PhD under Bharadwaj’s supervision but could not complete it as he had to go underground and was eventually arrested for a brief period for his opposition to the 1975 Emergency.
Politically, Yechury and I were in the two opposing tendencies of the left politics in JNU. I was part of a Marxist group known as a Trotskyist group. This group attracted the most talented and well-read leftwing students to its fold and was critical of the Stalinist orientation of India’s communist parties (especially CPI(M)). The group was widely respected by the faculty and students for the intellectual rigour of its political interventions.
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However, it did not have wide electoral support among the students partly because not being affiliated with any organised political party of the country, it did not have the political infrastructure to support it, and partly because criticism of Stalin and Stalinism was almost totally absent in the communist traditions in India in comparison with countries of advanced capitalism (such as the UK) where the damage Stalin’s terror in USSR had done to the cause of socialism was widely recognised.
Yechury, as an activist of CPI(M)’s student wing, Student Federation of India (SFI), was part of the Stalinist heritage of the Indian communists. Despite these political and ideological differences, others in our group and I had friendly relations at a personal level with some of those in the SFI. Yechury especially stood out as someone very friendly and non-sectarian. These friendly relations were also based on the mutual recognition that there was no doubt about the sincerity and dedication to the vision of Karl Marx.
In retrospect, those debates on the now disintegrated USSR that divided us then have truly little relevance now except that the strategies of industrialisation proposed by Trotsky and pursued by Stalin can be viewed as ecologically destructive in the light of knowledge we have acquired now on economy-nature relationships.
When Yechury contested for the president of the JNU students’ union in 1977, I publicly supported Rajan James, one of his opponents for the post. Rajan James, a very dedicated and committed socialist, had left the CPI-affiliated All India Students Federation (AISF). Though the CPI has been comparatively less Stalinist, his leaving AISF seemed to me to be a positive move away from Stalinism that deserved support. Yechury won the election, but he told James and me that he respected our democratic right to oppose him.
Yechury and Karat belonged to the second generation of CPI(M) leaders after the first generation of the nine who founded the CPI(M) in 1964. These nine included E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu, P. Sundarayya, A.K. Gopalan and Harkishan Singh Surjeet. All the nine leaders referred to in the inner circles of the CPI(M) as ‘naun ratan‘ (nine jewels) were mass leaders in varying degrees, having arisen from peasant or working-class struggles.
Yechury and Karat came primarily through the student movement. This generational change was not merely a change in the age profile of the leaders but reflected the new era of Indian society and politics, where articulation through the mass media appeared to be more powerful and effective than leading mass struggles. Surjeet, the last of the nine veterans, seemed to realise the power of this paradigm shift in Indian politics and groomed Yechury to be his successor.
Additionally, Yechury shared Surjeet’s personality trait of reaching out to non-communists to form alliances. This mentoring of Yechury by Surjeet had positive outcomes at the national level because Surjeet had become a central figure in the mobilisation of anti-Hindutva forces, and later, Yechury carried on that legacy of Surjeet even in more difficult circumstances than those faced by Surjeet.
However, Surjeet’s mentoring of Yechury on Punjab had negative consequences in Yechury adopting an approach towards Punjab and the Sikhs, which harmed the Left in Punjab. Surjeet had committed a grave error in his long political life by ignoring human rights violations in Punjab during the tenure of Punjab police chief K.P.S. Gill due to his proximity to Gill and wrong judgement of Gill.
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Yechury, too, ignored this aspect of Gill’s tenure while endorsing him. This wrong approach towards Punjab in extending support to the state’s repressive measures has emasculated the once-powerful communist movement in Punjab. However, to his credit, later, Yechury transcended Surjeet in acknowledging that injustice had been done to Punjab and the Sikhs.
Yechury’s ability to maintain friendly relations even with those with whom he disagreed was a testament to his character. This quality became one of the enduring aspects of his later life when he rose to become one of the top political leaders in India. There seemed to be a dialectical interplay between the personal and the political. The personal trait of friendliness helped shape his political practice and vision of forming alliances, and recognising the necessity of forming alliances became conducive to strengthening the personal trait of friendliness. This personal trait became integrated into his vision of defending democracy, minority rights and federal devolution of political and economic powers.
Yechury played a sterling role in building alliances to defend democracy and democratic institutions in India. As an acknowledged friend and advisor to Rahul Gandhi, Yechury’s role has been historic in turning Gandhi away from the old centralist politics of the Congress party towards federal devolution and decentralisation. This may have long-term consequences, if pursued earnestly, in giving a positive direction to the democratic governance of India.
How the next and third generation of the CPI(M) leaders learn from past errors and successes would be critical for the Left’s role in building a democratic and egalitarian India. Four issues on which the Indian left has not sufficiently theorised and developed adequate praxis are caste, religion, human rights, and ecology.
Yechury seemed to be aware of the importance of all these four issues, though less clearly on human rights. On caste, he seemed to recognise that in India, it is not only the economic category of class but the social category of caste that is key to socio-economic transformation. On religion, he was far ahead of most left-wing leaders and even academics in India who equate religion with what has come to be known as ‘communalism’ in Indian political discourse. He showed awareness of the more profound existential need for religion in human life.
One issue that remains glaringly unaddressed by the Left in India is catastrophic global climate change and its impact on developing countries such as India, especially its poor and Dalit population. Yechury showed remarkable knowledge of at least one aspect, namely nuclear energy. He authored brilliant articles criticising not only nuclear bombs but nuclear energy itself.
Central to the reinvention of the Left’s strength, which combines these neglected fields, is the framing of a green Left vision in India. This is the historic task facing the third generation of the Left leaders, activists, and thinkers in India. Carrying out that task would be a true tribute to all previous Left activists, such as Yechury, who gave their lives to the vision of socialism and democracy.
Pritam Singh is Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes Business School, Oxford.
A version of this article was first published on The Tribune.
